30th September 2011

Cisco CUCM 8.6 Installation Problems

Yet more severe problems upgrading to the latest version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

We’d already reported a problem with the Unity Connection 8.5 installer hanging. Now it seems that other issues are present in the latest 8.6 releases too. As the operating system code base is common across all of the main Cisco UC applications, thes issues will probably impact Communications Manager, Unity Connection and and Contact Centre Express.

Details of the issues are:

1. Upgrading to 8.6(2) seems to work ok. A “switch version” is issued on the Publisher. After the reboot, the publisher comes up for a few minutes and then reboots again on the old version. Cisco TAC need to be involved to fix this issue. The latest code on CCO is still broken.
2. Instaled 8.6(2) on the Publisher; rebooted and all ok (see the previous issue). Attempted to install 8.6(2) on Subscriber. Installation hangs for hours and has to be cancelled. Workaround for this is to run the upgrade with “Automatic switch back to previous version if upgrade is successful” set to “no”.

Being brutally honest, this is all an utter mess. Cisco seem unable, or unwilling to actually test anything before they release it these days and it is starting to have a huge impact with customers.

Barry Hesk