Cisco Connect

Posted on April 5, 2013 by jderidde

Friendly reminder don’t forget to come to Cisco Connect Belgium !

ciscoconnect

To Register:

http://www.cisco.com/web/europe/ciscoconnect2013/index_be.html

Welcome to Cisco Connect 2013

Cisco Connect will happen on Thursday April 18 2013 in Kinepolis Imagibraine in Braine-L’Alleud and it promises to be a unique experience.  It will be an interactive event with 10 North-European countries ‘connected’ in realtime.

We will offer you a very appealing program with inspiring keynote speakers such as Pieter Timmermans, CEO, Carlos Dominguez, Senior Vice President Cisco, Andy Butler, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner who will bring their ideas and experience live and- or virtually.

The agenda holds several keynote- and breakout sessions by Cisco Experts, Intel® and Platinum Sponsors.  Besides, you will also find a large exhibition area with Cisco partners showing their added value.  Off course we would like you also to take the time for expanding your network with your peers in industry.

Looking forward to meet you at Cisco Connect 2013!

Kindest regards,

Pol Vanbiervliet
Managing Director
Cisco Belgium & Luxembourg
Intel® is Official Sponsor for Cisco Connect 2013

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Cisco Jabber for Windows plugin twitter

Posted on March 28, 2013 by jderidde

Hi All,

If you would like to show up your twitter messages (or other applications) as a plugin in Jabber Client please do the following:

CaptureJabberoverview

Instructions:
  1. On a Windows 7 machine, go to the directory: C:\Users\%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Cisco\Unified Communications\Jabber\CSF\Config   (best is you do a search in your windows for jabber-config-user.xml)
  2. edit the jabber-config-user.xml file in wordpad (save as text file with extension xml).
Working config:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
   <config version=”1.0″>
    <Client>
        <jabber-plugin-config>
            <browser-plugin>
<page refresh=”true” preload=”false”>
                     <tooltip>twitter</tooltip>
                    <url>https://mobile.twitter.com/</url>
                </page>
          </browser-plugin>
        </jabber-plugin-config>
    </Client>
       </config>
                  3.  Save the file and ensure its still called jabber-config-user.xml
                  4. restart jabber
It is possible to add multiple applications in the TAB,  for example if you would like to add in linkedin you slide the following after the  </page> :
<page refresh=”true” preload=”false”>
     <tooltip>linkedin</tooltip>
     <url>http://touch.www.linkedin.com/</url&gt;
</page>
For info on Jabber goto http://www.cisco.com/go/jabber
Have fun,
Johan

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CiscoLive 2013 in London is ready to start

Posted on January 27, 2013 by frankdereymaeker

The biggest European Cisco event of the year – CiscoLive – is ready to start!!

As from tomorrow the techtorials are starting, followed as from Tuesday by the Keynotes and the general sessions. We look forward to meet the numerous Belgian and Luxemburg customers and partners attending the event. To give you already a glimpse of one of the main content tracks, please see underneath banner !

unified access ciscolive 2013

For those not able to attend physically CiscoLive in London, do not hesitate to register on the virtual event web site, where you will be able to see the keynotes and get access to very interesting event content : http://www.ciscolive.com/london/virtual/

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CiscoLive 2013 – Jan 28 – Feb 1st 2013, London, UK

Posted on October 22, 2012 by frankdereymaeker

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UC virtualization – Co-residency of 3rd party apps with Cisco UC VMs is now supported!

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Rudy De Keninck

Customers have been asking for co-residency of 3rd party non-UC applications on the same VMware host / physical server with our UC apps for a very long time. Virtualization has matured, and is common practice in any IT organization. Although it still makes sense to “isolate” virtualized UC applications on dedicated hardware, customers now get the flexibility to mix and match our applications and 3rd party as they prefer. The server industry, including our own UCS portfolio, can nowadays scale servers to 10s of CPU cores, hundreds of gigabytes of RAM and virtually unlimited storage capacity. Customers wanting to maximize and optimize resource utilization and consolidate many servers to limit the server hardware footprint and cost of operation can now also include our UC apps in there…

Not sure if the example is relevant, but basically this means that a customer can now run Cisco Unified Communications Manager, file and print services and a mail server on the same box / VMware host.

The biggest challenge for Cisco was how to guarantee that our apps would get the required resources when they are co-located with others on the same physical server. Getting it working is one, but how can you define a design that you can actually fully support while there are so many things outside of your control… It’s possible,

All relevant details can be found on the following url:

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_Virtualization_Sizing_Guidelines#General_Rules_for_Co-residency_and_Physical.2FVirtual_Hardware_Sizing  (see topic 2.2)

In summary, this is a short overview of the rules we have set forward for “full co-residency”:

-UC on UCS rules apply with 3rd party VMs (no oversubscription for vCPU, vRAM, vDisks, etc…)

- Not allowed with BE6k

- Not allowed with Cisco UC Virtualization Foundation or Cisco UC Virtualization Hypervisor

- Cisco cannot guarantee the VMs will never starved for resources. If this occurs, Cisco could require to power off or relocated all 3rd party applications

TAC has defined the criteria that need to be met to get their support in an application note that can be found at:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6884/products_tech_note09186a0080bbd913.shtml

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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

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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

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