Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 8.6(2) Upgrade

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7th October 2011

Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 8.6(2)

Nice little challenge if you’re upgrading any Cisco MCS7825H3 servers to CUCM 8.6(2) or indeed Unity Connection to the same release.

In a nutshell, the upgrade process converts the RAID on the server from hardware to software based and effectively results in a total reformat of the machine during the process. A few points about this:

  • You need to attach an external USB storage drive with a minimum size of 16GB (CUCM) or 128 GB (CUC) to the physical server. During the upgrade the server will dump off its current config to the USB drive and then import it after the format is complete.
  • The USB drive will be reformatted during the operation so beware!
  • Obviously this means that remote upgrades will not be possible, and physical access to the machine will be required.
  • Finally, as the server is formatted, you cannot switch back to the old version like you can on most other upgrades. The only way to revert the software is to reimage the entire server, and restore from DRS backup. Ouch!

A link the release notes is here which provides more details on the process.

Because of the RAID conversion, the process can take at least a couple of hours longer than previous upgrades.

Not as straight foward as other upgrades it is fair to say.

Barry Hesk

More Cisco UC Installation Issues

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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