For most of my labbing time I’ve been using Proctorlabs vRacks.  Well…I have 10 sessions remaining which means I need to seriously leverage my home lab for topic “deep dives”. 

While setting up my PSTN router to a site router’s ISDN voice PRI, I was not able to intially get Layer-2 established between the two VWICs.  My “show ISDN status” output yielded the “State = TEI_ASSIGNED”.  An output of the “isdn debug q921″ showed:

*Jul 10 23:49:02.232: ISDN Se0/1/0:23 Q921: L2_EstablishDataLink: sending SABME
*Jul 10 23:49:02.232: ISDN Se0/1/0:23 Q921: User TX -> SABMEp sapi=0 tei=0
*Jul 10 23:49:02.304: ISDN Se0/1/0:23 Q921: User RX <- BAD FRAME(0x00017F)

Linecode and framing were set correctly on both sides, but the reason Layer2 wasn’t coming up was because by default the serial interface is set to be a “slave” (or end-user).  When setting up a back-to-back PRI, one side must be set to be the “master” with the command “isdn protocol-emulate network” under the serial interface.

It’s hard to believe, but this time next week I’ll be driving up to ATL for a night’s stay before flying out to RTP!  The past three weeks and moving into this next week, I have been labbing, labbing, labbing.  When I purchased my IPExpert blended learning solution (BLS) I was able to take advantge of an offer for vRacks that gave me a total of 75 vRack sessions.  Intially I thought I would never need that many…but come to find out I am glad I have them!

I had an “ah-ha” moment a couple weeks back in that I can request IPExperts to “link” a morning session and afternoon session creating a 16hr vRack session.  Now of course for me – its impossible to spend that much time on a lab at once, but I have been able to use the time more productively.  We all have our primary work responsibilites so when the distractions do pop-up at least I can pause my labbing, focus on the customer, and get back to the lab without worrying what time it is and having to restart from scrathc at 4:00EDT.

So – between now and next Sunday6/19 I hope to continue labbing as much as I can.  I can pretty consistently build my foundation of all WAN routers, CUCM, UC, CUE, SRST,  CUPS, and base UCCX integration, phones registered, etc within 2.5 to 3 hours.  That’s leaving more than 50% of the time remaining to do about 1/3 of the remaining tasks…granted they are the time consumers.  Hopefully this strategy (based on Cisco VoiceGuru’s device-based approach) will pay off in the lab!

Now that I’m 30days out from the lab I’m spending as much time as I can labbing up each of the examples in Vol2 of IP Experts Blending Learning Solution. Here’s some thoughts on Vol2-Lab3:

Within about 2.5 hours I had significant amount of work completed. All the branch sites setup for calling, RSVP MTPs, XCODING, and SRST (fallabck). CUCM was setup base for inbound calling, UC intergrated (SCCP) and CUE intergrated with CUCM. Emergency DPs setup with SLRGs.

I had forgotten to put in the “rsvp” with the dspfarm profile for MTP. Even still I had issues with BR2 being able to call HQ and BR1.

It’s key to recognize in this lab that there are NO 9-prefix outbound calls – except for emergency dialing. All of the dial-plan is focused on Globalizing / Localizing internal numbers to each other, as well as PSTN calls. And then focused on being able to return those calls.

No H323 (except for the SRST portion) and the WAN QoS can use auto-qos.

Overall a relatively simplistic lab – by CCIE standards.

It’s typical, though not required, to localize E.164 calling numbers so that the ringing display shows a number that the end-user is used to seeing.  Before we can localize a number we have to get that calling number into a consistent format – hence we need to globalize the number.  We’ll assume that has been done up to this point.

Localizing the Calling Number is typically done with Calling Party Transformation Patterns and is then “linked” with a special CSS to the Device Pool for phones.  First, create a partition for each site called PT-HQ-LOCALIZE, PT-BR1-LOCALIZE, & PT-BR2-LOCALIZE.  Then create a CSS for each site called CSS-HQ-ANI-XFORMATIONS – replacing the “HQ” with appropriate site tag.

For each location’s Device Pool, add the site’s new CSS-[site]-ANI-XFORMATIONS to the Calling Party Transformation CSS, then save & reset the Device Pool.

Create new Calling Party Transformation Patterns for calls from each site’s phone(s) to the other sites.  Use the PT-[site]-LOCALIZE for the pattern’s partition and set the Calling Party’s Transformation Mask to be XXXX – which is the number of digits of the internal extension we want to show.  DO NOT select the “Use Calling Party’s External Phone Number Mask” option.  Don’t forget that since our globalized E.164 starts with a “+”, we’ll need to start the pattern with the “\” as an escape character.

Example:  If you have (3) sites (HQ, BR1, & BR2) you would have the site’s calling number mask (i.e. +12123945XXX) listed three times – each using a different site PT-[site]-LOCALIZE partition.  There would be a total of nine Calling Party Transformations.

VERIFY:  At this point any internal 4-digit call to any other internal 4-digit should be displayed in the ringing state as a 4-digit extension HOWEVER it will show up in the Missed/Received calls directory as a full E.164 number.

Just like we can globalize an incoming PSTN number to the full E.164 number (including +), we can do the same for internal ext-to-ext dialing – albeit I’m not sure why one would want to do this.

To do this we need to EXPAND the typical 4-digit internal extension (i.e. 5002) to the full E.164 version (+12123945002) and present that on the other IP-Phones (both within the same location & branch sites). We probably just out of habit have already created all internal extensions and put them within a “PT-INTERNAL” partition.  A CallingSearSpace “CSS-INTERNAL” is also probably already created which contains this PT-INTERNAL partition. That is fine – leave it alone as gateways, CTI ports, MWI DNs, etc are already probably referring to this.

Create a new Calling-Search-Space called “CSS-INT-GLOBALIZE” and include the PT-INTERNAL partition. We will use this new CSS in a translation-pattern…BUT first create a new partition for each location to expand the ANI to E.164 format. For example; PT-HQ-GLOBALIZE-EXT, PT-BR1-GLOBALIZE-EXT, PT-BR2-GLOBALIZE-EXT.

Each phone device typically has it’s own CSS which contains not only what PSTN partitions can be dialed (for Class Of Restrictions), but also contains the PT-INTERNAL partition so that it can dial other internal IP-phones. Under each phone device’s CSS remove the PT-INTERNAL and substitute an appropriate site specific PT-[site]-GLOBALIZE-EXT partition.

Create a new TRANSLATION PATTERN of ‘XXXX’ (vary this per extension length) for each site using the PT-[site]-GLOBALIZE-EXT and the CSS-INT-GLOBALIZE. Within the Calling Part Transformation section, this is where we expand (or globalize) the extension, check the “Use Calling Party’s External Phone Number Mask” and enter an appropriate prefix digit (i.e. +1 for US sites / +34 for Spain, etc). If you need to mask only a specific number of digits, use the Calling Party Transform Mask (i.e. for Spain to use only the first 8 digits). Each site will have only ONE Translation Pattern.

VERIFY: At this point any internal 4-digit call to any other internal 4-digit should be displayed in the ringing state as a full E.164 number AND will show up in the Missed/Received calls directory as a full E.164 number.

So I started out this morning labbing up IP Experts Voice Vol 2 Lab 10. Now that I’m 60 days out from sitting for the lab I’m focusing on trying to build my exam habits. This includes putting my cell phone out of sight (but within earshot), putting ear plugs in (yes I can still hear phone ring) to help me focus, and following some planning tips given by Matthew Berry – specifically the device-based configuration approach and dial-plan charting.
Within the first 3 hrs I had accomplished a mountain load…Had all basic integrations of CUPS, and UnityConnection completed, phones registered, infrastructure setup, internal dialing completed, QoS partially completed, CUE re-licensed and integrated, and Inbound PSTN basically working…I felt like I was able to get a lot done in 3 hour time so I took a small break to call a customer back and eat something.
Then I got a call that a prospective customer was in a panic state with a failing Call Manager…so much for the 2nd half of the lab – which is all the stuff I need practice on!!!

I’ve purchased my seat for the voice lab at RTP – June 21st. 60 some-odd days out.

While setting up the QM-RecMon Server there comes a point where you run the Monitoring & Recording Administrator tool.  This is the tool that is used  to setup personnel, QM workflows, and some minor changes to the UCCX / CUCM / RecMon DBServer integration.  Part of the root integration is a database synchronization between RecMon and UCCX – this is done when  first setting up the RecMon server.  The two system synchronize every 10min and can be manually sync’d with the Admin tool.

An error was being received when I manually tried to sync to the UCCX database…at this point there were no agents listed in the personnel section.  An error window pops up with the error message; “QMAD2003: Sync Server error: SyncFailure: Sync failed com.calabrio.sync.engine…

After a lot of research and digging I found the error is related to how the UCCX servers are defined in the initial integration steps.  The Informix database is created in all lower-case; so even if  the UCCX are indeed configured with upper-case alpanumerics (as shown by CLI ‘show status’ on UCCX) you need to enter the hostnames in lowercase. Also watch out that  any hyphens (‘-’) are re-entered as underscores.  The uccxworkforce password needs to be “simply complex” meaning only use letters
and numbers and at least 8 characters long (i.e. t3l3ph0ny).  Be sure to manually change that on all your UCCX servers if running in HA mode.

For my specific integration th two UCCX servers are “UCCX-PRI” and “UCCX-SEC”; this translates to “uccx_pri” and “uccx_sec” when completing the initial QM integration.  Once I made the changes and re-tried the manual sync all was good.  My agents populated the personnel chart and I was off to the next step…

Here are the quick steps to calibrate the battery in a MacBook Pro – mine is the 13″ unibody purchased Q3 2010.

1.  Plug in the power adapter and fully charge the battery until the LED on the power adapter changes from orange to green and the onscreen menu bar shows that the battery is fully charged.

2.  Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours.  You can use your computer during this time as long as the power adapter is plugged in.

3.  Disconnect the power adapter while the computer is still on and continue running the computer off battery power.  Use the computer during this time putting to sleep as you need to and so forth.

4.  Watch the battery meter and as it gets low, continue to work off the battery – BUT be cautious and save your work BEFORE the computer automatically goes to sleep.

5.  Turn the computer off (or let it just sleep in a “deep state”) for five hours or more.

6.  Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged – you can use the computer during this “recharge” period.

 

I completed my CCIE Voice Written exam back in March 2010 and since that time I have been passively studying / preparing for my lab sitting.  A LOT has happened since completing my written exam including the transition to a new employer.  I had always planned on sitting for the exam sometime around the late spring / early summer months – but I have now put a stake in the ground…

I am now committing my studies towards a lab sitting at RTP on May 10, 2011.  While I haven’t booked that date just yet (which I will book at the end of this month) it mentally sets a target date for me to work towards.

I’ll be using IP Expert’s Blended Learning Solutions (BLS) for Voice 3.0.  I’ve had the product since last April, and while I’ve only used a few vRack sessions I’ve spent a lot time with the documentation / on demand videos.  If you are still looking for a self-study solution, I would recommend the IPExpert (IPX) products and especially the BLS solution.  They are top notch – and from speaking with other professionals in my field and geographic area (Atlanta, GA) the IPX products are highly regarded and trusted.

I invite you to follow my posts, add comments, and make any suggestions for my studies / approach, what have you.

My twitter account is @stevenjuras and look forward to meeting you!

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