Successfully installed CUCM 8.6 on VMware ESXi 5 in 13hrs

Its 1am here on the west coast and I have just successfully logged into my CUCM web interface that is installed on my 16gb ram HP Workstation running VMware ESXi 5 VMvisor and vSphere client on my laptop to connect to the server and manage the VMs.

I have a Subscriber and a Unity Connection install still running in their VMs and seem to be moving along smoothly.

I cannot express the joy inside. 13hours of one wall after another. And now I have conquered them all.

I plan to post a followup to this thread with a list of tips for the next guy. After I get some sleep that is and rational thought process returns.

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chopsticks

Congrads! How will you configure PSTN call after this?

stlsmoore

looking toward to the tips, I'm slowly setting up my lab and I have the PUB halfway installed and my equipment racked.

rchase

INSTALLING CUCM PUB and SUB, and CUC on VMware ESXi 5:

TIPS:
Here's a list of my trials and errors, this should save the next guy many hours of frustration -

So I finally obtained my UC 8.6 install CD. The first thing I did was boot up my ACER ASPIRE x1200 with 3gb ram, 500gb hd, AMD 64 processor. (I have a 16gb HP Workstation, but it is my main computer with Windows 7 etc so I wanted to first try it out on my lab computer.)

1. Booted the ACER into its OS which is Ubuntu 12.04, then created a VM in Virtualbox and loaded the ISO. No output at all, wouldn't boot up.

2. Proceeded to read many useless forum articles.

3. Read in my CCNP Cisco Press book that VMware Player was an option (supposedly), so I booted up the HP and loaded the ISO into VMware Player. This time it did begin to bootup, but died at "Detecting Server Hardware - this may take several minutes" It would then say something like "Install Halted, hardware not compatible"

4. Back to the Google. Found this article:
Unified Communications VMware Requirements - DocWiki
Didn't bother reading the whole thing.
Skipped to this section:

Supported Virtualization Hypervisor Vendors

At this time, the only vendor supported for UC is VMware.
Other vendors/products - such as Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Xen, Red Hat KVM - are not supported for Cisco UC virtualization.

Supported VMware Products

VMware vSphere ESXi is required for Cisco UC virtualization.

ESX and ESXi are architecture options for VMware vSphere (click here for a comparison). UC only supports ESXi. Recall that vSphere 3.x and 4.x offered both options, but 5.0+ only offers ESXi.
VMware vSphere ESX, regardless of version, is not supported for UC. This is due to technical reasons and VMware’s direction to transition from ESX to ESXi. Note a VMware ESX cluster can contain VMware ESXi servers running Cisco Unified Communications.
No other VMware server virtualization products are supported.

THERE YOU HAVE IT, Cisco says ESXi is supported, and NO OTHER VMWARE SERVER VIRTUALIZATION PRODUCTS ARE SUPPORTED. So others options may work, but they will probably be even more difficult to get working/aren't supported by Cisco.

Well VCP is on my to-do list certs wise, and I happen to have a copy of VMware ESXi 5, although previously had no experience with the product, only VirtualBox and VMware Player.

So, I went back to my ACER and installed VMware ESXi VMvisor using a burned CD. The install wipes the harddrive, so I lost my Ubuntu. It does prompt you with a Yes/No before formatting so keep that in mind.

Once the ACER ESXi boots up, you just configure the network settings. Everything else is done from another computer running vSphere client. Setup vSphere client on my laptop, connected to the ACER, then created the VM for CUCM install. Which I will also mention here the requirements for the VM:

CUCM VM REQUIREMENTS:
2gb RAM
72gb HDD
Also, I used RHEL 4 (32bit) Linux as the operating system type. There might be other options that work as well, but I saw this in a youtube video and it works for me.

CUC VM REQUIREMENTS:
2gb RAM
250gb HDD
Type: RHEL 4 (32bit) Linux OS

5. I connected to my ACER, created the CUCM VM and it booted, but again stuck on "Hardware not compatible".

6. So I pulled the 500gb HDD from the ACER and put it into the HP (to try the different hardware). VMware did allow this swap but had to do some reconfiguring of itself at bootup with a short dialogue. I then connected to the HP ESXi server from my vSphere client on laptop, and booted the CUCM VM. This time the VM gave a different error message something along the lines of "Host is virtual hardware capable, but Intel-VT is disabled"

7. Shut down the HP, booted into BIOS. Finally found the option for VT under a "OS Security" menu. Enabled it. Rebooted. Connected from the laptop. Started the VM, same problem. Amazed, I kept trying but it wouldn't work. FINALLY, I got the idea to DELETE the VM and recreate it. The newly created VM with same setup information worked and the installation continued.

8. Now here is another great tip I learned from a youtuber: take snapshots throughout the install proccess because it is many hours long and if something goes wrong, or you make a mistake on one of the options, you'll have to start all the way over unless you have a snapshot. A good tip, BUT this caused my CUCM SUB and CUC installs to fail. Why? because I took too many snapshots for them which by default the snapshots take up the allotted HDD space of which I gave the minimum required for both.

So what happened to my CUCM SUB and CUC installs? They failed towards the end. "Not enough Disk space left"
As it turns out, there is an option to make the snapshots NOT consume the VM's own diskspace. But the only way to enable this option is to first delete all of the snapshots. So I had to delete all my snap shots, enable the option for Independently stored snapshots, and start the whole install over from the begining.

SO CHECK THAT OPTION BEFORE STARTING THE INSTALL and BEFORE TAKING A SNAPSHOT.
That setting is under: EDIT SETTINGS> HARDWARE> HARDDISK> MODE. Check Independent and Persistent

Well thats all for now. My CUCM is up and running and my SUB and CUC installs are down right now while I delete the snapshots then try again.

ehnde

Now that you have some experience with ESXi, this will be easier the next time around. Thank you for sharing your experience

waragi

Thanks for sharing those hard earned insights.
What about licensing for cucm.

pitviper

waragi wrote: »

Thanks for sharing those hard earned insights.
What about licensing for cucm.

Cisco's CUCM demo license (in VMware) is rather generous = 150 DLUs (phones typically consume 3-4/each) and 3 nodes.

pitviper

I remember the days of fighting with the installs - now I just VPN into my ESX cluster and setup all of the servers in the background while at work! LOL

rchase

I was reviewing this thread today bc I am reinstalling CUCM SUB, PUB, CUC, CUPS, and UCCX for my fresh CCIE Voice lab setup. I have an 8tb NAS now and I added that as a datastore to my VMware ESXi. I will also snapshot each fresh install so that for each lab I can recall fresh install of each image.

One thing I wanted to add is that, in order to install CUC, I put a requirement of 2gb RAM above, however 4gb is required in the initial setup. If you run setup without 4gb RAM, you will have the options for CUCM and CUCMBE, but not CUC. Once the install completes, the RAM can be lowered back to 2gb

aaron0011

I'm getting ready to install CUCM Pub, Sub, UC, and CUPS for a CCNP Voice lab. I've got the resources on one of our UCS servers here at work so I am just going to install it on that.

aaron0011

To anyone else building a lab here is a tip on how you can make Unified Communications ISO images downloadable from CCO into bootable versions. That way you can build your lab using any version you like.

UC Corner: Make a non-bootable ISO image bootable

If you don't have access to a bootable disc here is the file you inject to make the downloadable images bootable.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7900788/Temp/UCOS-boot.bif

Have all four of my lab server installs running at once.

aaron0011

Does anyone know if you revert to a snap after the 60 days does the trial period reset? It would be much easier to do this and restore backup than have to reinstall from scratch again.

azaghul

I guess you're talking CUCM v9.x here?

I'd probably say no, as it would go out and check the NTP server for the current time to compare against the trial...might get lucky rolling back the NTP clock if not attached to the internet...

aaron0011

@azaghul. Thanks, I figured that would be the case.

gorebrush

ESX Servers are for WINNERS. I have one myself, 8 cores, 16GB RAM, few hard disks. It is made of win.

pitviper

azaghul wrote: »

I guess you're talking CUCM v9.x here?

Yeah, I was reading a bit on this recently – No more non-expiring DLUs (90 day trial mode), and the actual eval license is good for 6 months, but you have to jump through flaming hoops to get it. Not sure why Cisco has decided to continually put the screws to people who want to better understand their products.

rchase

Just get 8.x images would be my recommendation - CCIE Voice is 7.x and CCNP Voice is 8.x currently. I should rewrite my original to post in an easy to understand list of requirements for each install.

I've posted a few updates about my installs here:
http://www.twitter.com/VoIPChase

aaron0011

rchase wrote: »

Just get 8.x images would be my recommendation - CCIE Voice is 7.x and CCNP Voice is 8.x currently. I should rewrite my original to post in an easy to understand list of requirements for each install.

I've posted a few updates about my installs here:
http://www.twitter.com/VoIPChase

9.X isn't much different than 8.6. Ability to register more types of video end points, support for URI dialing, new licensing model are a few of the things that stand out.

pitviper

My point is that Cisco seems to be closing the door for future learning, or at the very least making it more difficult – IOS 15 licensing, and now CUCM. Sure 8.6 is fine now (it’s what I’m using) but someday it’ll be much harder to setup a lab at home, or even a work lab if you’re not working for a big partner who has the resources to fully license a lab.

shodown

If you work for a partner they have already released discount pricing on getting a pretty good functional lab going. However I do agree that with the 15IOS changes they are making things hard. In there defense I have been to many a a enterprise where they are running adv enterprise on there routers and have not paid for them. Usually the only time where cisco makes a big fuss is if you are running it on something like a 6500 where they damn near charged 8K per 6500 that was running them. Turned out to be a pretty hefty bill for this customer.

pitviper

I wish they would just release an everything IOS for educational purposes – heck, how hard would it be to cripple throughput so that it couldn’t be used in production?

behruz

i am receiving black console screen. in the status field shows OS bootd up but i cant see anything. i am trying to install windows server 2012 datacenter and CUCM 9.0. for each i have one virtual machine. My server is CUCM. Xeon processor and 64 gib ram. I cant find solution exactly for this. esxi 5.1 and vSphere client 5.1. One day ago i was successful on booting up windows server and CUCM. Then something goes wrong and i lost my console screen. Can anyone help me about this problem?

gorebrush

Out of curiosity...

How much can you do practical wise with just VMWare and some VM's?

I remember you could get the Communicator software that allowed you to run a softphone on a PC.. Can you do a full lab with no equipment (physical) at all?

I'd love to do more Voice if I get the R&S out of the way next year.

pitviper

gorebrush wrote: »

Out of curiosity...

How much can you do practical wise with just VMWare and some VM's?

I remember you could get the Communicator software that allowed you to run a softphone on a PC.. Can you do a full lab with no equipment (physical) at all?

I'd love to do more Voice if I get the R&S out of the way next year.

You can do a lot of the basics if you just want to play around with on-net calling and features – You can even setup branch offices via routers in GNS3. At some point you’ll want an IOS gateway with DSP resources though – that’s one thing that cannot be virtualized and it’s needed for connectivity to the PSTN (even for lab PRI connections), transcoding, conferencing, and so on.

dentry

Thank you very much for that info, im sure that will save many frustrating hours ahead.

rchase

Hey dentry and others,

I've rewritten the original post here and took out all the "drama" so that the important parts can be easily referred to. I have since reinstalled my lab several times for different reasons and still refer to this thread.

HOW TO INSTALL CUCM and CUC on VMWARE ESXI

CUCM VM REQUIREMENTS:
2gb RAM
72gb HDD
Also, I used RHEL 4 (32bit) Linux as the operating system type. There might be other options that work as well, but I saw this in a youtube video and it works for me.

CUC VM REQUIREMENTS:
2gb RAM
250gb HDD
Type: RHEL 4 (32bit) Linux OS

If on boot, stuck on "Hardware not compatible", your PC may not support hardware virtualization. (Get hardware that is supported)

If on boot, stuck on "Host is virtual hardware capable, but Intel-VT is disabled":

Shut down your PC, boot into BIOS. Find option for VT (mine was under an "OS Security" menu) Enable it.

Reboot.

When I rebooted and started the VM again, the error message persisted. Had to delete the VM and recreate. The newly created VM with same setup information worked and the installation continued.

TIP: If you have lots of hdd space - take snapshots throughout the install proccess because it is many hours long and if something goes wrong, you'll have to start all the way over unless you have a snapshot to refer to.

If you are going to take snapshots, make sure that you check the option for "independently stored snapshots" If you don't, the snapshots will save inside the space allotted for the VM which will cause the install to eventually fail because it will run out of space which is being taken by the snapshots.

SO CHECK THAT OPTION BEFORE STARTING THE INSTALL and BEFORE TAKING A SNAPSHOT.
That setting is under: EDIT SETTINGS> HARDWARE> HARDDISK> MODE. Check Independent and Persistent

Also, take snapshots once the installs have finished. This way you can work on your lab and then snapback when you want to start with fresh installs.

dentry

Your explanation is greatly appreciated, thank you.

gaurav_cvoice

aaron0011 wrote: »

To anyone else building a lab here is a tip on how you can make Unified Communications ISO images downloadable from CCO into bootable versions. That way you can build your lab using any version you like.

UC Corner: Make a non-bootable ISO image bootable

If you don't have access to a bootable disc here is the file you inject to make the downloadable images bootable.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7900788/Temp/UCOS-boot.bif

Have all four of my lab server installs running at once.

hi...I was looking for boot.bif file but unfortunately, the url provided here doesn't seem to work....I need the file to make a copy bootable...any help would be appreciated...thank you

Exabyte

You dont need any bif or other file. Yesterday i made own CUCM bootable DVD. Just follow this few steps.
1.Download cdrtools - http://smithii.com/files/cdrtools-latest.zip
2.Unzip it to folder like

\mkiso\
3. Extract your UCS image UCSInstall_UCOS_8.6.x-xxxxx-x.sgn.iso into folder, like

\UCSInstall_UCOS_8.6.x-xxxxx-x.sgn
4. Open cmd. Go to folder, where is extracted image is placed - cd /d

\UCSInstall_UCOS_8.6.x-xxxxx-x.sgn
5. Finally, run in cmd this command "

\mkiso\mkisofs.exe -A "CDROM" -V "CDROM" -p "Cisco" -J -R -r -v -T -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o Bootable_UCSInstall_UCOS_8.6.x-xxxxx-x.sgn.iso ." DOT in the end is mandatory
6. Enjoy

JeanM

did000 - Do you have any plans on step-by-step for CUPS install by any chance?

I recently installed 8.6.2.1000 and didn't really have any issues, installed just fine on ESXi 4.1.0

JeanM

Cool! I installed new instance of 9.1.x pub/sub + cups/unity in VM as well, but haven't had much time to make the integration work yet.