Normalization scripting for SIP Trunking first step

Posted on May 10, 2012 by jderidde

SIP trunks can connect to a variety of endpoints, including PBXs, gateways, and service providers. Each of these endpoints implements the SIP protocol a bit differently, causing a unique set of interoperability issues. To normalize messages per trunk, Cisco Unified Communications Manager allows you to add or update scripts to the system and then associate them with one or more SIP trunks.

The normalization scripts that you create allow you to preserve, remove, or change the contents of any SIP headers or content bodies, known or unknown. After you configure a normalization script in Cisco Unified Communications Manager, you associate the script with a SIP trunk by configuring the Normalization Script fields in the Trunk Configuration window

The language used is Lua it is an open source, lightweight scripting language.

For info on Lua see http://www.lua.org/

As a practical example we change in the SIP invite for a outgoing call on a sip trunk, the IP destination addresses in the SIP URI to a domain name.

From: 

INVITE sip:+3227784342@1.1.1.10:5060 SIP/2.0

The normalization script:

M = {}

function M.outbound_INVITE(msg)

local method, ruri, ver = msg:getRequestLine()

local uri = string.gsub (ruri, “1.1.1.10″, “domain1.a.be”)

msg:setRequestUri(uri)

end

return M

Changes into:

INVITE sip:+3227784200@domain1.a.be:5060 SIP/2.0

For some more info see:

http://developer.cisco.com/web/sip/home

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/admin/8_6_1/ccmcfg/b06scrpt.html#wpxref92424

Filed under: Collaboration | Leave a Comment »

Some very good thoughts about Why should you care about Cisco UCS

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Michael Neefs

Folks,

I wanted to share a few very good articles and web documents coming from friends into one condensed updated post about all the great things that Cisco UCS can provide to your organization :

Last performances update about our solution :

In the three years since its introduction, Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS™) powered by Intel® Xeon® processors captured 63 world performance records,UCS and Intel Xeon Processors: so, please check this out : 63 World-Record Performance Results

In response to what skeptics were saying 3 years ago :

Cisco as a server vendor! Ha!

Remember back when the company first unveiled its “Unified Computing System” (UCS)? At the time, the thought of Cisco being in the server market seemed almost laughable. But, this was a journey that we had seen before. Similar guffawing was heard when Cisco jumped into the voice market. Way back in the day, when I was in internal IT, Cisco acquired its way into the VoIP market and rode the IP wave to market leadership in only about a decade. When you think about how, historically, extremely difficult voice share was to gain, the fact that Cisco managed to grab as much share as it did, and as fast as it did, was remarkable…

more to read, here…

Some good tips to bear in mind if you want to do an apples to apples cost comparison ?

…therefore evaluate the real cost of implementing Cisco UCS solutions

The Service-Profile concept :

In this post Marcel will try to explain what a service profile template is within Cisco UCS. However to start with the basics let’s start with a service profile. I assume you are aware of the Cisco UCS Emulator. if not you can download it from here using your CCO account: http://developer.cisco.com/web/unifiedcomputing/home

So what is a service profile within Cisco UCS?
A service profile defines a single server and its storage and networking characteristics and are stored in the Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects. Each server connected to the Fabric Interconnects are specified with a service profile. The advantage of service profiles are mainly automation of your physical hardware configuration like BIOS settings, firmware levels, network interface cards (NICs), host bus adapters (HBAs) etcetera…

Cisco Unified Computing System Ethernet Switching Modes

Great paper to understand end-host & switch modes and when to use the most appropriate option.

What You Will Learn ?

In Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS™) environments, two Ethernet switching modes determine the way that the fabric interconnects behave as switching devices between the servers and the network. In end-host mode, the fabric interconnects appear to the upstream devices as end hosts with multiple links. In end-host mode, the switch does not run Spanning Tree Protocol and avoids loops by following a set of rules for traffic forwarding. In switch mode, the switch runs Spanning Tree Protocol to avoid loops, and broadcast and multicast packets are handled in the traditional way. This document describes these two switching modes and discusses how and when to implement each mode.

 Cisco UCS Manager Configuration Common Practices and Quick-Start Guide

The introduction of the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS™) in June 2009 presented a new paradigm for data center and server management. Today Cisco UCS is used by more than 10,000 unique customers. While the paradigm is no longer new, many customers are deploying Cisco UCS for the first time. This guide provides a concise overview of Cisco UCS essentials and common practices. This guide also covers the most direct path to working in a stateless-server SAN boot environment, upon which much of the Cisco UCS core value is predicated. In support of a utility or cloud computing model, this guide presents a number of concepts and elements within the Cisco UCS Management Model that will hopefully help data center operators increase responsiveness and efficiency by improving data center automation.
 
read more here…
 
Cisco UCS and Storage Connectivity Options and Best Practices with Netapp Storage : 
This paper will provide an overview of the various storage features, connectivity options, and best practices when using the Unified Computing System (UCS) with NetApp storage. This document will focus on storage in detail, both block and file protocols and all the best practices for using these features exposed in UCS with NetApp storage. There will not be an application or specific use case focus to this paper. There are existing Cisco Validated Designs that should be referenced for a deeper understanding of how to configure the UCS and NetApp systems in detail for various application centric use cases. These documents treat the combination of UCS and NetApp from a more holistic or, end to end approach and include the design details and options for the various elements of UCS and NetApp systems. The reader is encouraged to review these documents which are referenced below.
 
 So what does is it mean for you, proven by real business cases..? There you go !
 
Citrix and Cisco virtualizing your workspace through cisco VXI implementation :
Awesome 8min demo
 
KPIT deploys VDI/VXI for 800 users and saves 75% desktop management & 60% desktop energy thanks to VCE and its vBlock Architecture :
read the details here
 
Banco Azteca deploys 500 user VDI/VXI pilot in just 3 weeks using VCE and its vBlock architecture :
read the details here
 
Novis sees 25% increase in its SAP applications per blade with Cisco UCS and Nexus Architecture :
Read this article speaking about how cisco helped out to deliver Cloud services for less
 
Hierro Barquisimeto expects 70% reduction in hardware, power, cooling, and space with Cisco UCS implementation :
read the details here
 
NTT Data reduces TCO and provisioning time by 50%, CO2 emissions by 79% with Cisco Unified Computing Systems :
read the details here
 
Training institute reduces infrastructure costs by upto 50%, energy consumption by 18%, provisioning by 90% with Cisco UCS :
read the details here
 
Hoping this article, through the initial writers posts of course, could help you to access as much relevant info as possible, I invite you to reach me out and let me know what sort of info and desired topic you would like to see more on this blog.
 
Happy reading, and I sincerely hope I helped you, just a bit, to gain more confidence into our Fabric Computing solutions.
 
cheers,
Michael

Filed under: Datacenter | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Cyber Threat Defense - enhanced visibility into stealthy, advanced network threats

Posted on March 17, 2012 by savgoust

Reblogged from Security Down Under:

Click to visit the original post

Advanced Persistent Threats

For many years the security community has been advocating that perimeter defense is just one (although important) part of an overal security architecture. With the threat landscape evolving, both governments and large enterprises became victims of well targeted, custom attacks referred to by the media as Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs).

APTs are often in the form of determined, motivated and possibly well financed attackers who are able to bypass the perimeter defenses of an organization to gain an operational footprint on the network.

Read more… 496 more words

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The When, Where and How of Cisco versus Microsoft for Unified Communications

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Rudy De Keninck

Zeus Kerravala, a renown analyst in our industry, published his thoughts on the how, where and whens of Cisco versus Microsoft for Collaboration on Networkworld.com a while ago.

Regardless of whether this is an objective view or not, we found it fair enough and worth sharing with you. Please read and judge for yourself…

http://m.networkworld.com/community/blog/when-where-and-how-cisco-versus-microsoft-unified-communications#mobify-bookmark

Filed under: Collaboration | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Nexus 1000V Product Family Public Webcast Series for Customers & Partners

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Michael Neefs

Dear customers and partners,

I’m delighted to invite you to the next wave of webinars related to our Virtual Data Center products line.  Feel free to register to each relevant sessions and contact me if you need more details about one of them at mneefs@cisco.com.

Date

Technical Track Topics

Webcast

2/14/12

 Virtual Security Gateway (VSG) v1.3 Technical Deep Dive

Register

2/22/12

 Nexus 1000V v1.5 Technical Deep Dive

Register

2/29/12

 Nexus 1010-X v1.4 Technical Deep Dive

Register

3/7/12

 vWAAS and Nexus 1000V Technical Deep Dive

Register

3/14/12

 FlexPod & Nexus 1000V/1010

Register

3/21/12

 QoS for multimedia traffic in the Virtualized DC (w/ Nexus 1000V)

Register

3/28/12

 Vblock & Nexus 1000V / VSG / vWAAS

Register

4/4/12

 vCloud Director, Nexus 1000V, and VXLAN Technical Deep Dive

Register

4/11/12

 Cisco’s CloudLab Deep Dive: Hands-on labs for N1KV, VSG & VXLAN

Register

 The above table is also posted @ http://www.cisco.com/go/1000vcommunity. 

The presentation and Q&A will be  posted at this link after each webcast.

Resources

Best regards,

Michael

Filed under: Datacenter | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Ready for CiscoLive !!!

Posted on January 30, 2012 by ciscobelgium

 

Follow the Belux community at CiscoLive London through this blog or through twitter (@CL12belux).

If you can’t be in London, don’t hesitate to visit the CiscoLive virtual site to view the keynote sessions and some technical sessions : https://www.ciscolivevirtual.com/

 

Filed under: General | Leave a Comment »

UCS and Nexus 1000V Network Architectures and Best Practices

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Michael Neefs

 

 

 

 

UCS and Nexus 1000V Network Architectures and Best Practices Forum Invitation!

 

The Cisco Data Center Server Access and Virtualization Technology Group would like to personally invite you to the UCS and Nexus 1000V Network Architecture and Best Practices Forum. This event will provide and equip you with the latest information on Cisco Data Center Network Virtualization solutions and products. This one day event will feature the Nexus 1000V and the Nexus 1010 deployment/integration best practices in a UCS environment. The best practices of deploying the Nexus 1000V in Vblock and FlexPod will be discussed. Also, the best practices discussion will include the Nexus hardware platform in various redundant topologies, such as vPC with the Nexus 1000V.

 

 What  

 UCS Overview

 Nexus 1000V/1010 Overview

 Nexus 1010 Best Practice Network Options

 Nexus 1000V Deployment Best Practices in a Vblock

 Nexus 1000V Deployment Best Practices in a FlexPod

 
Who Network, Server, and Virtualization Engineers/Managers
When Various dates/times – see link under “Registration” below
Where Various locations – see link under “Registration” below
Registration Click Here to Register

 

 

Agenda
8:30am – 9:30am UCS Overview This session focuses on Unified Computing System (UCS) architecture and relevant features and technologies that affect the Nexus 1000V. Configuration considerations of the UCS “Service Profiles” and UCS operational mode will be discussed as it pertains with the Nexus 1000V deployment.
9:30am – 10:30am Nexus 1000V and Nexus 1010 Overview This session describes the general overview of the Nexus 1000V and Nexus 1010 architecture. A general description of the components that make up the Nexus 1000V and the communication that happens between the VSM, VEM, and VMware’s vCenter Database.
10:30am – 12:00pm Nexus 1010 Best Practice Network Options

This session will dive into details of the Nexus 1010 network options and best practice designs for those network options, including deploying L2/L3 communication of the VSM. Describing the various options for the “virtual service blades” that are currently supported and use cases of upcoming virtual service blades that could be deployed on the Nexus 1010.
12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.
1:00pm – 2:00pm Nexus 1000V Deployment Best Practices in a Vblock
2:00pm – 3:00pm Nexus 1000V Deployment Best Practices in a FlexPod

 

Filed under: Datacenter | Leave a Comment »

Cisco Catalyst 6500 ready to serve you another decade!

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Xavier Mertens

The Cisco Catalyst 6500 was born more than 12 years ago when it started its baby steps in the networking market around June 1999. In the last dozen years this platform has seen great evolutions and even caused some ‘revolutions’ in the networking industry. The first release went out and stayed in the market for about 6 years. Then the E-series chassis and SUP720 were introduced as from 2004. One year later in 2005 the SUP32 was also introduced, focusing on the Access layer. Although new chassis were launched you could still use the older chassis for the new SUP720 and SUP32. Also existing linecards could be reused with the new supervisor and in the new chassis. During its lifetime, the platform had some linecard additions, linecard revisions and supervisor enhancements. But overall the solution with SUP720 and SUP32 remained there for another 6 years.

This track record brings us twelve years later in 2012 where a lot of questions from customers arise around the future life of the Catalyst 6500. Certainly after the launch of our Datacenter centric Nexus products most of our customers started to question its future. Can the Catalyst 6500 keep up with these developments? Will the Nexus 7000 replace the Catalyst completely? Or will Cisco launch a complete new platform for the Campus?

Well, exactly at that time the next step for the Catalyst 6500 was already getting ready of being launched. A brand new Supervisor with amazing speed and without compromising on the vast amount of available features on the platform, together with a new set of linecards. The supervisor almost delivers 3x more speed and brings new in-hardware features.

Just to tease you already, it offers an amazing 2 Terabit crossbar with 80 Gbps per slot (even for the 13 slot 6513-E) and also new PFC4 and MSFC5 daughtercard on board. These 3 new components together deliver also new features like TrustSec incl MacSec, VPLS in hardware, L2/L3 MPLS in hardware and innovations in QoS, Managebility and Virtualization. And if these where not yet enough it also offers you up to 512k/1024k (for XL) of Flexible Netflow entries, up to 720Mpps* of IPv4 routing and 390Mpps* of IPv6 routing all performed in hardware as well. Like all the above was not yet enough you can of course use this in a proven Virtual Switching System (VSS) solution offering a massive 4Tbps system with all these features.

As for backward compatibility, the product has been developed with our customers as prior focus, to offer them maximum investment protection on their existing installed base. To begin with, all the existing E-chassis and power supplies are supported with this new hardware. With regards to linecards there are a few options. First of all it supports most of the existing 67xx linecards in CFC or in DFC as soon as you upgrade them to DFC4 with exception for the WS-X6708-10GE linecard which has been replaced with a new WS-X6908-10GE card. These 67xx linecards offer you the same backplane connection of 40Gbps. In case you would be ordering new linecards in this range they are available as a 68xx series where the same hardware ships with the DFC4 upgrade onboard. If you really want to take all advantages of the additional speed you can use the 69xx series linecards which offer you a 80Gbps bandwidth to the backplane. Last but not least it also supports a few of the 61xx line cards but only in a non-VSS setup.

All these new and exciting speeds and features make the Catalyst 6500 ready for again another decade. The platform provides a unique investment protection to customers, valuing the trust they have for all those years already in this great platform. This launch is only a beginning. Don’t forget to visit Cisco Live 2012 in London to discover what this platform will unleash even more in the future.

The Catalyst 6500 serves you again for another decade!

Cisco Live 2012 - London - January 30th till February 3rd

Filed under: Borderless Networks | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Cisco Cius Tidbits

Posted on January 3, 2012 by jderidde

Wanted to share some small movies on the Cisco CIUS.

Let us start with a basic Single Number Reach scenario:

To give you a view on the Cisco AppHQ and a sample application:

Basic calling & IM/Chat between Cisco Jabber for Blackberry & Cius

For more information goto www.cisco.com/go/cius

Filed under: Collaboration | Leave a Comment »

Before and after VXI

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Rudy De Keninck

Recent studies have revealed that over 60% of enterprise companies plans to deploy desktop virtualization in some way over the next 3 to 4 years.  From a TCO point of view the advantages of desktop virtualization are simply amazing. As we move further into the so called “post-pc era”, having the ability to “port over” the virtual desktop environment to other devices or let’s say locations than the traditional office desk brings unseen flexibility and mobility.  Think of our Cius business tablet that offers you a full desktop environment in the office, while keeping access to the virtual desktop  over wi-fi or 3G/4G connectivity while on the go.

Desktop virtualization however just doesn’t prove to be that good a solution when it comes to integrating real-time audio and video. Using a soft phone or video client over a display protocol such as Citrix ICA or VMWare PCOIP simply doesn’t scale. “Hair-pinning” all the real-time traffic back and forth to the data center where the virtual desktop resides causes delay and jitter and puts a heavy burden on data center resources, not to mention possible bandwidth exhaustion…

Thanks to our Virtual Expirience Infrastructure or simply VXI, we are able to separate real-time traffic out of the VDI display protocol, routing voice and video traffic directly between end points, bypassing the data center.

Please take a moment to view a short video on our VXI solutions, showing you how separating voice and video traffic from the display protocol enhances the user experience. To start with, you will first see what you get without VXI. They say that seeing is believing. Well,  this video really speaks for itself.

 

 

To find out more about our VXI offering and VXC clients, please visit the link below, and see how we effectively bring the best of our borderless networking, virtualization and collaboration technologies together.

http://www.cisco.com/go/vxi

Filed under: Borderless Networks, Collaboration, Datacenter | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.