Administration

  • M1/CS1000 Media Gateway
MG – Redundancy Configuration

Overview

The MGC Redundancy feature improves reliability of your phone system by allowing an Alternate UCX Server to be provisioned. If the Primary UCX Server fails, resources register with the Alternate UCX Server.
The Primary UCX Server administers the database, which is replicated to the Alternate UCX Server manually. The Primary and Alternate UCX Servers can be a mix of any of the UCX platforms.

Prerequisites

  • Both the Primary and the Alternate UCX Servers must be running Release 5.0 software and up.
  • Both Servers must be updated to the same latest version of software.
  • A USB storage device to backup the MDSE database (See Select Backup Location on how to prepare the USB device)

Configuration

Step 1 – Configure Alternate Server on Primary UCX

NOTE

The actions in this step will trigger a reboot of the MGC(s). It is highly recommended that you schedule a maintenance window for this operation.

  1. Open the Administration page for the Primary UCX Server
  2. Navigate to the PBX – MDSE tab
  3. Press the Edit button corresponding to the Media Gateway that you want to modify
  4. Enter the IP address of the Alternate UCX Server in the Alternate Server IP Address field
  5. Press the Submit button
  6. The corresponding MGC will reboot
  7. Repeat the above steps for all the Media Gateways configured on the Primary UCX Server

Step 2 – Replicate MDSE Database

Perform Backup on the Primary UCX Server:

  1. Open UCX Administration
  2. Navigate to the System – Backup/Restore page
  3. Insert the USB storage device to a USB port on the UCX Server and change the backup location to USB drive (See Backup/Restore – Select Location for details.)
  4. Click on Perform a Backup and select MDSE Configuration located under Addons
  5. Click on Process to create the backup
  6. Remove the USB device after the backup process has completed successfully

Perform Restore on the Alternate UCX Server:

  1. Open UCX Administration
  2. Navigate to the System – Backup/Restore page
  3. Insert the USB device with the backup file to a USB port on the Alternate UCX Server and change the location to USB drive
  4. Select the backup file from the USB device and perform a Restore (See Restore a backup file from a different system)
  5. Remove the USB device after the restore process has completed successfully

Step 3 – Modify Configuration File

From the Alternate UCX Server:

  1. Navigate to the PBX – PBX Tools – Configuration File Editor page
  2. Search for the file /etc/asterisk/ucx_mdse.conf
  3. Edit the file and make the following changes:
    • UCXIP=<IP address of Alternate UCx Server>
    • CS=<IP address of Alternate UCx Server>
  4. Click on Save followed by Reload Configuration
CODE

# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------;
# Do NOT edit this file as it is generated by the UCx Web-based Configuration ;
# Utility. All modifications to this file must be done via the management GUI! ;
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------;
#
UCXIP=192.168.3.36
SETRELOCATION=1
LOCALSWITCH=0
CS=192.168.3.36
CS_SW_VERSION=4021
CS_SW_ISSUE=750
CS_SW_PHASE=68
CS_SYSID=1
3 4 0 102 104 103 105 MGC IP=192.168.3.38
5 8 0 110 112 111 113 MGC IP=192.168.3.41
7 12 0 118 120 119 121 MGC IP=192.168.3.44

Step 4 – Replicate Analog and Digital phones Configuration

The Nortel extensions configured on the Primary UCX Server for the Analog and Digital phones connected to the MGC(s) need to be manually replicated to the Alternate UCX Server.

See Adding XSTIM Extension for steps to add Analog and Digital sets to both Primary and Alternate Servers.

Any future changes to the phone configuration performed on the Primary UCX Server needs to be repeated on the Alternate UCX Server.

 

Operation

  1. The switchover of MGC(s) from Primary UCX to Alternate UCX Server is triggered by failure conditions like:
    • Loss of connectivity to the Primary UCX Server
    • Software errors on the MDSE module
    • Hardware failure on the Primary UCX Server
  2. The MGC(s) will reboot when there is a switch over from Primary UCX to Alternate UCX and vice versa. The time taken for MGCs to complete the switchover, including detection of failure condition and rebooting is approximately 7 to 8 minutes.
  3. The MGC(s) after registering with the Alternate UCX Server will stay registered to the Alternate Server until the failure condition on the Primary UCX Server is cleared.
  4. Once the Primary UCX Server recovers, the MGC(s) will automatically switchover back to the Primary Server after 2 minutes.

Limitations

Once redundancy has been setup using the procedure on this page, any future changes to MGC configuration can only be applied to the Primary UCX Server. The same procedure on this page must then be followed to replicate the MGC data to the Alternate UCX Server.

NOTE

Do not make changes to the MGC configuration on the Alternate UCX Server via the Administration web pages.

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