Discovery 1: Configure Cisco Unified Communications Manager Initial

Parameters
Introduction
In this discovery lab, you will explore the different administration interfaces used to configure and maintain the
Cisco Unified Communications Manager. During the navigation of the different interfaces, you will also activate
services, learn how to stop, start, and restart services, change service parameters (particularly the Call Detail
Record settings), and view some of the global settings that impact the entire cluster.

This lab will take approximately 40 minutes to complete.

Topology

Credentials
Usernames and Passwords

Device IP address Username Password

HQ-UCM 10.1.5.5 administrator C0ll@B

PC-1 10.1.5.200 Student C0ll@B

Task 1: Navigating Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration Interfaces

Activity
Step 1
Connect to PC-1.

Step 2
 Open Firefox and navigate to https://10.1.5.5/ccmadmin.

Step 3
You will receive a certificate error. If you do, select ADVANCED, and then click Proceed to 10.1.5.5 (unsafe).

The certificate error is due to the Cisco Unified CM having a self-signed certificate which, by default, is
not trusted by your browser.

Step 4
From the Cisco Unified CM Administration page, select Cisco Unified OS Administration from the Navigation
dropdown on the top right portion of the page.

Step 5
Once you have selected Cisco Unified OS Administration, click the Go button located directly to the right.
The Cisco Unified OS Administration pages are where you will perform tasks related to the server such as ping,
upgrade the software, and view the network status.

Step 6
Log into Cisco Unified OS Administration with username (administrator) and password (C0ll@B).

Step 7
From the Cisco Unified OS Administration page, select Show > Network from the top left of the toolbar.
Step 8
Review the network settings and statistics for the server including IP address, IP mask, link detected status,
MAC address, Primary DNS, and gateway. Make a note of the MAC address as you will need this information
later in the lab.

Step 9
Select Services > Ping from the toolbar.
Step 10
Enter the IP address of the Gateway you wrote down in previous steps. Change the Ping Iteration to 5 and
click Ping. Verify that all 5 ping attempts were successful, proving connectivity between the Cisco UCM and the
gateway. The Ping tool can be very useful to confirm connectivity between Cisco Unified CM and other devices in
the network.
Step 11
On the top right of the page, select Cisco Unified CM Administration from the Navigation dropdown and click
the Go button.

Step 12
Log in to Cisco Unified CM Administration with the username (Administrator) and password (C0ll@B).

Once you have logged in, you may see a warning message about Backup and Paging. Ignore these
messages for now. This is normal, since we have not yet configured these settings.

The Cisco Unified CM Administration page is where you will spend most of your time. This page allows you to
configure all the features and settings with regards to call control, call routing, phone settings, and permissions just
to mention a few.

Step 13
From the Cisco Unified CM Administration page, select System > Server from the left portion of the toolbar.
The Find and List Servers page is displayed. This page shows all the servers that are currently installed in the
cluster. Nothing is currently listed. On most pages in Cisco Unified CM Administration, there is a search field. This
search is especially useful when you have pages that have large amount of data, for example: if your company had
5000 phones it would be hard to scroll through all of them to find the one you wanted to modify. The search allows
you to narrow down the list to only the objects that are important.

Step 14
Leaving the search empty, Click Find next to the search box.

Step 15
Review the servers listed on the page. You should see the following servers listed:

CUCM-PUB.CLL-COLLAB.INTERNAL This is the Publisher server — The first node installed in this cluster.
IMP-PUB.CLL-COLLAB.INTERNAL This is the IM and Presence server, which provides presence and instant
messaging services for you cluster.
Step 16
On the Server page, select the CUCM-PUB.CLL-COLLAB.INTERNAL server.

Step 17
Review the Server Configuration page. Notice that the Server Type is a CUCM Voice/Video server and the
Database replication is Publisher. This server is a Cisco Unified CM and is the first server installed in the cluster
and therefore, the owner of the database.

Step 18
From the Server Configuration page, enter the MAC address you discovered in a previous step in the MAC
address field and add the description (CUCM Publisher). This action is not required and will not change any
configuration but can be useful for documentation purposes.

Complete the following information on this page:

MAC Address: Enter the MAC address you discovered in an earlier step.
Description: CUCM Publisher

Your MAC Address may vary from the one shown in the graphic.

The Host Name/IP Address field is used by Cisco Unified CM in certain files, such as phone configuration files
which are passed onto other devices. These devices which include your phones, then use the host name or IP
address to locate Cisco Unified CM. To remove the need for devices such as phones needing to locate the IP
address of Cisco Unified CM from a DNS server, you could change the hostname to the IP address. Removing the
need for DNS should be considered carefully as some processes within a collaboration network may rely on DNS
to work such as Single Sign On.

Deploying Unified CM with DNS

DNS servers deployed within a network provide a database that maps network services to hostnames and, in turn,
hostnames to IP addresses. Devices on the network can query the DNS server and receive IP addresses for other
devices in the network, which helps to facilitate communication between network devices.

A complete collaboration solution relies on DNS for various services to function correctly, and therefore, requires a
highly available DNS structure in place.

You should always deploy DNS servers in a geographically redundant configuration, so that a single DNS server
failure will not prevent network communications between IP telephony devices.

Unified CM can use DNS to:

Provide simplified system management.
Resolve fully qualified domain names to IP addresses for trunk destinations.
Resolve fully qualified domain names to IP addresses for SIP route patterns based on domain name.
Resolve service (SRV) records to host names and then to IP addresses for SIP trunk destinations.
Provide certificate-based security.

Collaboration clients use DNS for:

Single Sign-On (SSO).
Jabber deployments requiring user registration auto-discovery.
Certificate-based security for secure signaling and media.

When DNS is used, Cisco recommends defining each Unified CM cluster as a member of a valid sub-domain within
the organization’s domain.

Deploying Unified CM Without DNS

Removing DNS removes the dependence on the service for collaboration endpoint to function. There are cases
where the removal of DNS is not possible, such as, when deploying Cisco Unified Presence. For basic IP
telephony deployments where DNS is not desired or not required, Cisco recommends that you configure Cisco
Unified CM, gateways, and endpoint devices to use IP addresses rather than hostnames. This procedure should be
performed during installation of the Unified CM cluster.

If you choose not to use DNS, Cisco recommends that you do not select the option to enable DNS during
installation of the publisher and subscriber nodes. After the initial installation of the publisher node in a Unified CM
cluster, the publisher will be referenced in the server table by the hostname you provided for the system. Before
installation and configuration of any subsequent subscriber nodes or the definition of any endpoints, you should
change this server entry to the IP address of the publisher. Each subscriber node added to the cluster should be
defined in this same server table by IP address, rather than hostname.

By default, hostnames are also used in IP phone URLs. If DNS is not to be used, you must also replace the
hostnames in the URLs with IP addresses. These URLs can be changed in the Enterprise Parameters in the Cisco
Unified Communications Manager Administration page. You will review these settings later in this lab.

Since this network is more complex, and you have services that require DNS. Therefore, you will leave the
hostname at the current default setting.

Step 19
Click Save. This option can be found on the top left, or near the bottom left of the screen.
Step 20
On the top right of the screen, the second dropdown menu from the top is Related Links. Back To Find/List is
currently displayed. Click the Go button next to this dropdown. The Find and List Servers page is displayed. The
Related Links dropdown very often displays the logical next page you might want to go to while you are
configuring something that requires multiple pages, so it is always worth looking at.

Task 2: Activation of Services

Cisco Unified CM clusters have a number of different feature services that can run on each node. What role a
server in the cluster performs depends on the feature services that are activated on that individual server. For
example, if you want a specific server in your cluster to be an TFTP server then you must activate the TFTP feature
service on that specific server. Likewise, if you want a server in your cluster to be a call processing server then you
must activate the call manager service on that server. A new server doesn’t have any feature services running by
default so you will need to activate the services you need. A single server can run one or multiple feature services.
Activity
Step 1
On the top right of the page, select Cisco Unified Serviceability from the Navigation dropdown and click the Go
button.

Step 2
Log in to Cisco Unified Serviceability with the username (Administrator) and password (C0ll@B) if required.
The Cisco Unified Serviceability menu is controlled with the same login credentials as the Cisco Unified CM
Administration menu. The Cisco Unified OS Administration has a different set of login credentials which can be
set to the same username and password as in our lab or different ones if you want to restrict access to this area.

Step 3
On the Cisco Unified Serviceability page, select Tools > Service Activation from the toolbar.
Step 4
On the Service Activation page, select the publisher server (CUCM-PUB.CLL-COLLAB.INTERNAL—CUCM
Voice/Video) from the Server dropdown. Then, click the Go button.

Step 5
In the CM Services section, select the Cisco CallManager and Cisco Tftp services checkboxes.
The Cisco CallManager service allows this server to act as a call processing node. You can only have eight call
processing servers within a single cluster of which only four are active at one time.

The Cisco Tftp service allows this server to serve configuration files and firmware files to endpoints. Tftp services
can run on a dedicated server in larger implementations and for redundancy, up to two can be configured.

We will not activate any other services at this time. You will need to be familiar with this process as you will
need to activate additional services as required. Browse this page to become familiar with the names of
the other available services.

Step 6
Click Save, which can be found at the top left and bottom left of the page.
Step 7
A popup will inform you that this process might take some time, select the OK button. Starting of the selected
services will take approximately 40 seconds.

Step 8
Once the two services have been started, you should see a message at the top of the screen stating: Update
Operation Successful.
Task 3: View Control Centers to Start, Stop, Restart Services
As well as feature services, your Cisco Unified CM server also has network services. Network services are started
automatically and do not need to be activated and do not depend on what function the server will perform.
Occasionally, a network or feature service will need to be restarted, for example in order for a new configuration
settings to take effect. Although you do not need to restart any services at the moment, this task will demonstrate
the process.

Activity
Step 1
From the Cisco Unified Serviceability page, select Tools > Control Center – Feature Services from the toolbar.

Step 2
On the Control Center — Feature Services page, select the publisher (CUCM-PUB.CLL-COLLAB.INTERNAL—
CUCM Voice/Video) from the Server dropdown. Then, click the Go button.
Step 3
The Cisco Tftp service is Started and Activated. Select the radio button to the left of the Cisco Tftp service.
Then, select the Restart button at the top of the page.

Step 4
A popup indicates that a restart can take some time. This delay will depend on which services you selected.
Some services may require more time than others. Click OK.

Step 5
Once your service has restarted, you will see status information at the top of the page letting you know the
restart operation was successful. The Status field is a good place to verify all save and update operations.
Step 6
From the Cisco Unified Serviceability page, select Tools > Control Center – Network Services from the toolbar.

Step 7
On the Control Center — Network Services page, select the publisher (CUCM-PUB.CLL-COLLAB.INTERNAL—
CUCM Voice/Video) from the Server dropdown. Then, click the Go button.
Step 8
Under the Performance and Monitoring section, select the radio button next to Cisco CallManager
Serviceability RTMT. Then, click Stop at the top of the page.

Step 9
A popup indicates that this process may take a while to complete. Click OK.

Step 10
After you have received the notification that the service has successfully stopped, select the radio button next to
the Cisco CallManager Serviceability RTMT service again. Then, click Start at the top of the page.
Task 4: View Enterprise Parameters (DNS and Phone URL’s)
Activity
Step 1
From the Cisco Unified Serviceability page, select Cisco Unified CM Administration from the Navigation
dropdown at the upper right portion of the page. Then, select the Go button.

Step 2
If prompted to Log in again, Login with the username (Administrator) and password (C0ll@B).

Step 3
From the Cisco Unified CM Administration page, select System > Enterprise Parameters from the toolbar.

Enterprise Parameters allow the administrator to view and change settings that impact the entire cluster.
Step 4
Scroll down to the Phone URL Parameters and Secure Phone URL Parameters sections.

To remove DNS reliance, the URL’s listed under these two sections could be modified to no longer reference the
server name of CUCM-PUB.CLL-COLLAB.INTERNAL, but rather reference the IP address of the Cisco Unified
CM server. This procedure is advisable in smaller networks that do not require DNS services to function. However,
in this lab environment, you will be deploying services and application that depend on DNS. Therefore, you will
leave these settings as currently displayed.

Take a moment to review and become familiar with the various options listed on this page.

Step 5
Select System > Service Parameters from the toolbar.

Service Parameters allow the administrator to view and change settings relating to a service running on
the node. Settings can be different for each node in the cluster.

Step 6
On the Service Parameters Configuration page, select the following options from the dropdown menus:

Server: Select the Publisher server (CUCM-PUB.CLL-COLLAB.INTERNAL—CUCM Voice/Video)

Service: Cisco CallManager (Active)
Step 7
This page is a summary of the most common settings for this service. To view the entire list of options available
for this service, you could select the Advanced option at the top of the page. The settings you need to modify
are in the common list, so there is no need to select the Advanced option at this stage. To look for a setting, you
can use the browser find capability accessible via the browser menu or the short cut ctrl F on a Windows
machine.

Step 8
The third section from the top is titled System, locate the CDR Enabled Flag and CDR Log Calls with Zero
 Duration Flag settings. Then, change both of these values from False to True.

The CDR Enabled Flag is needed to save records of all calls made in the system.

The CDR Log Calls with Zero Duration Flag will log calls to the database even if the call did not complete (hang
ups, for example are logged). Also, if you place a call to a colleague and they do not answer their phone, the event
of you calling them will still be logged.

Step 9
Click Save at the top of the page.

Step 10
From the Cisco Unified CM Administration page, select System > Enterprise Phone Configuration from the
toolbar.

The Enterprise Phone Configuration parameters allow the administrator to view and change default
settings for all phones within the cluster. Some settings can be overwritten at the individual phone level.
Step 11
On the Enterprise Phone Configuration page, scroll about halfway down the page. Locate the setting called, Web
Access. Set this option to Enabled. This option enables the built-in web server on each phone so that users and
possibly more useful any support person with web access to the phone.

When looking for a particular setting in a page such as this one which has a lot of information, it’s often
easier to perform a web browser search. To do this press <ctrl>+f and then type “web” in the search. It
will show you how many occurrences the phrase “web” appears in the page, and you can cycle through
each one until you find it. In this example, searching for the phrase “web” will only return a single result.
Step 12
Click Save.