How to Virtualize Cisco Unified Communications in your existing VMware Infrastructure and use SIP to fund it….

Attend our upcoming seminar for a technical overview of the options and benefits of Virtualizing Your Cisco UC infrastructure and how SIP can be used to offset costs.

 

 

 

 

Have you considered what benefits virtualization offers, and wonder what it will take to move your Unified Communications environment into Virtualization?

 

Common virtualization questions Adcap encounters:

• Why should I virtualize?
• Does Cisco have hardware to support virtualization?
• Can I use my existing VM infrastructure?
• What is supported if I use my own environment?
• What is not supported?
• How do I plan for virtualization?
• How much is it going to cost me?

Cost is always a design factor!

This is where SIP can help.

 

SIP-Trunking Delivers Cost Savings And Improved Reliability!

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking is a replacement for an organization’s voice T1′s that can be combined with a Wide Area Network or Internet connection for significant cost saving and improved business availability.

Come join us as we discuss the specifics of SIP Trunking – when to use it, how it can lower costs, the equipment requirements, and the differences in SIP Trunking capabilities of different service providers.

 

Common SIP questions Adcap encounters:

• What is SIP Trunking?
• How does SIP Trunking work?
• What are the requirements to implement SIP Trunking?
• Typical SIP Trunking costs vs. traditional voice circuits.
• Where is SIP Trunking going tomorrow?

 

Where/When:

Flemings Prime Steakhouse
4501 Olde Perimeter Way,  Atlanta, GA 30346

Wednesday February 22,’12 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Register Now! About the presenter: **Michael Cavanaugh is a dual CCIE, with certifications in both Voice and Route/Switch. He has been involved in the networking industry for over 20 years as an accomplished implementation and design engineer. He is also a published author of several comprehensive technical books on Unified Communications with Cisco Press, the premier publisher for Cisco technical reference material. Adcap utilizes his expertise as our VP of Solution Architecture.

Traditional blade servers have redundant power supplies and server blades in them. They also have system controllers, SAN cards, and LAN cards. These cards all connect the individual blades to the outside world, and since the blade server has to be reliable, the cards are usually redundant. That means each chassis has two controllers, two LAN, and two SAN cards.

Cisco did something fundamentally different with the UCS. They took the controller, LAN, and SAN connections and put them into a special box called a Fabric Interconnect. Each UCS chassis only has power supplies and server blades in it, and the dual Fabric Interconnects can connect anywhere from 8 to 16 chassis with good data throughput. That means that a company deploying Cisco UCS does not have to buy two controllers, two SAN cards, and two LAN cards for those 8 chassis, but just have to hook them up to the two Fabric Interconnects.

The Fabric Interconnects are the connection from the Unified Computing System to the rest of the datacenter. It has 10G ethernet ports to connect to the core LAN, and 8GB Fibre Channel ports that connect to the SAN. Everything outside the system is compatible with almost any brand of switch or storage. In many cases the organization also deploy Cisco Nexus switches, but it is not required.

Cisco designed other things into the Unified Computing System that makes it attractive for people that manage many racks of servers. All the fixed hardware information of the blades are programmable, so applications that are tied to MAC addresses or other specific features of a server can be migrated from one  server to another, even if server virtualization is not being used. If the server is running a hypervisor, the network card can be set up to virtually split up the blade’s dual 10G ports into multiple connections, which is necessary to properly operate a virtual environment.

The other major technical accomplishment that permits this revolutionary design is the full adoption of FCoE, or Fibre Channel over Ethernet, within the confines of the Unified Computing System. All the storage and network traffic from the blades to the Fabric Interconnects goes over FCoE, which is a combination of regular Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic encapsulated within jumbo Ethernet frames. The storage traffic gets where it needs to go because Cisco uses Quality of Service mechanisms to prioritize the Fibre Channel traffic. At the Fabric Interconnects, the Ethernet and Fibre Channel are decoupled, and the storage traffic gets onto the Fibre Channel SAN just like it would from any other server.

There are actually storage manufacturers that are shipping FCoE interfaces on their storage arrays, allowing organizations to move away or not deploy a separate Fibre Channel SAN at all. This is the Unified Fabric that Cisco Nexus switches are optimized for, and permits even better performance and further cost savings.

Cisco has reached 10,000 customers for the UCS because they created a new design with proven technology that significantly lowers the cost deploying multiple blade server chassis. They also made the system easier to manage, and added lots of little details that add up to a product that is notably better than the chassis blade systems that have traditionally been deployed.

Here is a video that I made last explaining the big picture differences of the Cisco Unified Computing System:

Author: Rolf Versluis

Posted at Adcap Network Systems

The Evolution of the Datacenter:

Are You Prepared for 10G?

(10G Datacenter Operations with Nexus Switches)

 

Do You Know What a Unified Fabric Is?

How to Interconnect Hosts and Storage?

Is the Fabric Redundant?

We have a full house, and are excited to be moving to our newly constructed building!

Move Date: January 23, 2012

Our convenient location is just off Mansell Road in Alpharetta, near Hwy 400 and Northpoint Mall.

• Moving from 7,000 to 20,000 square feet of new office space!
• Networked Seminar Room
• Multiple Private Conference Rooms
• Guest Offices
• Sales, Executive, and Operations Suites
• Larger Common Areas and Facilities
• Great Proximity to Dining, Shopping, and Interstate Access
• Larger Warehouse

New Address: 10400 Old Alabama Road Connector, Suite 100, Alpharetta, GA 30022

We welcome you to visit us… tours and an Open House will be scheduled in the near future!

Security and Compliance in 2012:

How Next Generation Firewalls and Innovative Data Management Software Can BEST Protect Your Organization!

Valuable Data may be tracked and secured through Advanced Data Management Solutions. Online Applications can be identified and protected through Next Generation Firewalls.   Join Adcap, as we host Palo Alto Networks and Commvault for their Security and Compliance Solutions, relevant to ALL organizations! Palo Alto Networks: Empowering IT organizations with an unprecedented level of user-based application visibility and control. Presenting: Information on high risk applications that are probably on your network right now. Insights in how your employees are circumventing your security controls. Education on why traditional security devices are no longer effective. Why Gartner recommends enterprises migrate from traditional firewalls and IPS, to next generation firewalls, at the next refresh opportunity. Surprising cost savings from customers that have already made the transition! Commvault: Delivering the unparalleled advantages and benefits of a truly holistic approach to data management, via SIMPANA software solutions. Presenting: Single-platform architecture to perform all data management functions quickly, easily, and reliably. eDiscovery, compliance, backup, deduplication, replication, encryption, and reporting. Comprehensive, risk-averse, cost-effective management for retaining and accessing archive e-mail messages, files and documents, along with backup data. Identify, collect, and preserve critical information assets. Manage data from its creation to deletion across all repositories. Provide audit-ready reporting and reduce the burden on end-users for data classification. Leverage the widely adopted U.S. Federal encryption standard to protect data, as it moves across networks and is migrated to different media as part of long-term retention and disaster recovery strategies.

Register Now! FREE lunch | Actionable Information

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Flemings Prime Steakhouse 4501 Olde Perimeter Way, Atlanta, GA 30346   For more information, please contact: Michelle Temple, Adcap Marketing Director mtemple@adcapnet.com  |  (678) 456-6755

What I mostly use my tablets for is immediate access to email, contacts, and calendar. I also use them for reading books in the Kindle App, blogs in the RSS reader, and  articles and other posts in the browers. I create blogs in the WordPress app, and sometimes I will create text documents in QuickOffice HD then transfer them to my desktop with Dropbox, and at other times jot down notes in SpringPad which then synchronizes over the web. The only way I have been effective at using the tablet when creating a lot of text is with an external bluetooth keyboard. I have found that the Logitech Tablet Keyboards specifcally designed for the iPad and the Android 3+ are the best.

I have been very frustrated using the browsers on the tablets. It is difficult to enter text in fields. There is no mouse hover capability, so a link has to be selected in order to see what it does. Pages don’t resolve correcty in the browser, and the iPad does not support Flash, which is still used on many websites. Basically, when I try to get work done using the browsers on the tablet, I have to stop because it is very difficult.

Even though QuickOffice HD has also improved significantly in the last six months, it is not the equivalent of the Microsoft Office Suite. For reading and creating basic documents, it works well. Unfortunately much of my work does not involve basic documents. I have to read Word docs that are redlined and commented, and I have to work with with spreadsheets that are large, have multiple tabs, and complex formulas. Neither of those work well in QuickOffice HD.

So to get around the browser and application limitations, when I really have to get something done and all I have is a tablet I use the VMware View client to log in to my main desktop, which is a virtual desktop running on the servers at our datacenter. When I am using that I have access to the full Microsoft Office suite and can get things done. It is a PCoIP client and performance is usually pretty good. It is still much slower than accessing my virtual desktop from a laptop, though, but it is better than not being able to get access at all.

Of the three tablets I have been using, the Cisco CIUS has the best email and calendar apps of the group, and it has an outstanding telephone app and a great 720p 30 fps HD video conferencing app that hooks into our back end systems. I use both the phone and video client on a regular basis. Once I stopped trying to use tablets as devices for content creation, and thought about how I wanted to use them, I decided that the Cisco CIUS was the best one for me.

Now I have a new way of working. When out of the office and I have time to be productive, I use my CIUS as my office phone and HD video conferencing device, while creating and interacting with complex content on my laptop. In meetings, I bring my CIUS so I can quickly reference content, check email and the calendar. And at home I use the full size tablets for reading CiscoPress books in Kindle, casual web browsing, and other forms of entertainment. Tablets definitely have a place because of their convenience and adaptability, but for serious work when on the go a laptop is a necessity.

The email, calendar, and contact applications are excellent. I have mine hooked into our Exchange server, and everything works flawlessly. Emails are easy to read, and the interface layout is top notch. A really nice feature is the spelling word suggestions pop up in a line across the screen, ready for selection. The Samsung still can not get the spelling and word suggestion feature operating in the native email client, as recipients of my mis-spelled emails can attest to.

The CIUS calendar application is way better than the easily confused calendar on my HTC Incredible Android phone. All the meetings show up exactly like they do on my Outlook client, with no extra meetings, no deleted meetings, and no confusing layout. Just the meeting information that I need, layed out in both a week view as well as a scrolling agenda view. One minor issue is there is no direct link to Google maps for addresses.

Contacts are great. All the contacts you need are right there. There is a good fast search function. All my Google contracts are sitting right there alongside my Exchange contacts. After installing the LinkedIn app, it integrates pictures and contact info from LinkedIn into the contacts view as well, so that most of my contacts end up having pictures showing. What is really neat is that the contact are integrated into the phone application, which is where the Cisco CIUS really starts to differentiate itself from other Android devices.

The Cisco CIUS is a full Cisco phone. I have mine hooked into a Plantronics bluetooth headset, and have been using it from home. I just authenticated the built-in Cisco AnyConnect client to our VPN service, and it grabbed the profile from the Cisco Communications Manager server. I set up a custom button layout for the CIUS because I wanted to have one phone line and five Busy Lamp Field buttons so I could speed dial people. The voice quality is really good – Cisco must have set some kind of processing priority on the phone application.

It is of course a full 720p HD video conferencing endpoint as well. This is integrated into the phone application. External callers, EX90 users, and Movi client users can reach me by dialing either my internal extension, or my URI, which is just my phone number at my domain, 6784565740@adcapnet.com. How easy is that? I have also tested the video calls over the 4G Verizon mifi connection that I have. When using that, the video codec switches to the lower bandwidth Standard Definition automatically. Even when the video pixellates slightly, the voice stream on the video call is clear with no distortion. The only trouble I am having is switching the video to the back camera to show people stuff – that feature could be more intuitive. Voice is good both using the Plantronics headset, and using the built in speakers and microphone, with both sides of the call working well.

The Jabber and Webex clients come standard on the Cisco CIUS. They logged into my accounts no problem. The Jabber client is good for Instant Messaging and Presence now, and because everyone at my office uses Webex Connect, it is nice to sometimes have this alternate communications path, especially when I am in a meeting. Both clients are pretty basic for now, and I am looking forward to the upgrades that are coming that will integrate voice and video into them, just like their desktop counterparts. If there is one thing I have learned from owning tablets, it is to have patience with applications, since they are constantly getting usability upgrades.

The VMware View virtual desktop client is surprisingly good. I expected that it would be hard to use on a 7″ tablet. But it is just about as easy to use at the same client on the Samsung Galaxy Tab. I think the touchscreen is more sensitive or accurate on the CIUS, or maybe I am just used to figuring out where my fingerpad is going to land on the screen, but I was able to check a few different applications for information that I needed.

I have not tried any games on this tablet yet. I have no idea if there is a 3D engine or not, nor do I care. This tablet is all about business. The Cisco design team clearly put some time and effort into making the business applications work well. I know there is a bunch of security stuff and app store control stuff as well, but that has no bearing on usability.

The improvements I would like to see are around charging and battery life. The battery life is short, but part of that is because the tablet seems to be running all the time! The screen never turns off, even when it is running on battery. If I don’t manually push the power button it will happily chug away and drain the battery in a few hours. I would also like to see some little LED light up when the tablet is being charged, because one night I thought I plugged it in but didn’t, so I was not able to use it at a meeting the next day. Well, I could have, but I didn’t want to plug the power into the wall to show it off. There is no car charger available as far as I can tell – although I am going to go to Fry’s and see if there is some universal car charger that has a plug that would work for it.

The Cisco CIUS tablet is a really nice device. Even though the specs are basic (see Cisco CIUS review), those don’t tell the real story about this tablet. This has the best core business applications I have seen on any device, including the iPad2 and Droid phones. The AnyConnect, Jabber, and Webex collaboration applications are outstanding. But what really sets this device head and shoulders above any other tablet in the marketplace is the rock solid implementation of the Cisco phone and the Cisco TelePresence video. All those applications combined together have made this my first choice for the device that I reach for in my bag when I need to get things done.

Rolf Versluis

Savvy consumers are used to looking behind the free offer to see if there is a catch. No catch, but at the end of the day, we are hoping that you will buy something from us – after we have demonstrated that there is good business value to do so, of course.

One way is to work with customers that already know they have to buy something and get it going on their system. With those customers, we work to find out what the underlying requirements are, make recommendations based on our experience, and try to get them the best system that works for their needs at the best price. An example of this is for a server upgrade – in many situations, Cisco UCS servers provide the best business value, and we have experienced engineers that are able to show why that is.

Another is to introduce a relatively new technology, demonstrate how it works, and work through the numbers to show how it can save money. An example of this is the SIP trunking conversions we have done for customers since 2006. The technology works, and it can save organizations money on their monthly telecom bills, enough in some cases to pay for a voice and network upgrade. Other new technologies that can do this are Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Private Cloud deployments.

So, what can you get from Adcap for free? Here are some things:

1. A really good steak at Flemings. This is where we host most of our lunch seminars where we discuss new techology.
2. Unique technical training at our Geeknicks. This is our series of four hour technical deep dives where our design and deployment engineers show advanced configuration and troubleshooting techniques that we usually reserve for paid consulting engagements.
3. Network assessments. For certain organizations, Cisco funds an assessment and analysis by RISC Networks. The deliverable is a report analyzing actual utilization and highlights potential issues.
4. Datacenter assessments. This is similar to the network assessment, but focuses on servers, storage, and core networking.
5. IP voice and video design by a Cisco Voice CCIE. As part of our sales process, organizations may get upgrade designs at no cost from Michael Cavanaugh, CiscoPress author and experienced Solution Architect.
6. Server, storage, virtualization, security, wireless designs. Also as part of our sales process, organizations may get an upgrade design based on best practices and current industry recommendations from one of the Solution Architects on our team.
7. Network Security checkup on Internet connection. Adcap has a pool of Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls we use to check all traffic in and out of an organization’s Internet connection. All traffic is analyzed, and a comprehensive report is produced from the one-week engagement. The amount of malware typically identified is astonishing.
8. Budget numbers for your next project. Many times we work with customers to try to fit a design into a budget. It is better to get a design from us first, then use that to create a budget.
9. Advice on your next technology purchase. Before you cut that next purchase order, give us a call! We love staying up to date on the latest technology, and are always happy to give our opinion on what you are about to get.
10. Quick pricing from our online store. Sometimes you just need to check a quick price. We have full access to leading technology distributors, and have set our online store pricing low for the technologies we specialize in.
11. Opportunity to support a local business. Adcap is owned by Christine Versluis, who grew up in Georgia. Our headquarters is in Alpharetta, Georgia. We invest in the local community, support local charities, and employ fifty people in Georgia. Buy local!

Take advantage of the things that Adcap does to get the word out about how to make technology work for you in your business. The biggest Information Technology trends currently happening are Voice Over IP phone systems with SIP trunking, High Definition Desktop Video for Collaboration, Private cloud deployments using virtualization and automation, and desktop virtualization. Adcap has design, deployment, and support experts available for all these solutions.

That’s what we can do for you!

Explanation of Architecture

Hospitality Company

Summary

Brief Video Explaining How Cisco UCS is Different from Other Blade Servers

Cisco has created a comprehensive Collaboration system that will help the employees of an organization work more effectively with each other, and also their customers, suppliers, and partners. The elements of the toolkit build on the existing Cisco voice, video, and conferencing systems that many companies already have deployed and include Cisco Jabber, Webex, Quad, and Virtual eXperience Infrastructure (VXI). These are the types of technologies that companies are investing in to increase the efficiency of their current workforce, because it is faster and more effective to invest in technology than to hire and train new employees.

Collaboration is currently a big buzzword in business because better collaboration enables organizations be more competitive, agile, and creative. Effective collaboration moves projects forward faster, allows for rapid response to competitive action, and fosters customer engagement. What it means in the real world is that there are now multiple ways of communicating information between people that removes the usual lag time and allows consensus building and decision making quicker.

Some of the current tools available for collaboration but not yet widely deployed are Wikis, SharePoint, Presence, Instant Messaging, Document Sharing, Mobile Devices, Webex, and Desktop HD Video Conferencing. These are of course in addition to the existing and widespread phone systems, conference calls, voicemail, group calendaring and email. Companies are finding the legacy systems limiting, and are rapidly deploying new collaboration tools that are available to stay competitive. The even newer systems from Cisco that are now available are taking collaboration to a new level.

Cisco Jabber is the updated version and unification of three existing Cisco desktop clients. The existing Cisco Unified Personal Communicator desktop client maintains a customized list of internal users and monitors their presence, provides an instant messaging system, controls a desktop phone, and can act as a standalone voice and video endpoint. The existing Webex Connect adds on to those capabilities with document sharing and presence federation, allowing for presence status tracking outside the organization. And the existing Movi client provides High Definition video conferencing on the desktop with a unique low loss codec that provides excellent video quality over even degraded network connections. The next version of Cisco Jabber, due in early 2012, will combine all those capabilities and run on Windows, Mac, Linux, Apple iOS, and Android.

There is some dissatisfaction with email because of the lengthy communication lag, and the siloing of the information. It would be much better to have a person answer a question once then have the answer available for everyone else to find when they need it. People want something like Facebook in the workplace. Cisco Quad is an application that helps move communications away from email and towards business class social networks that are similar to Twitter and Facebook, but with security controls to prevent competitors from learning the information while also protecting private information as mandated by privacy and security protocols. Cisco’s Quad application is designed to allow companies to build internal social networking systems, and is part of Cisco’s overall Collaboration system development.

Cisco VXI is a set of clients and technology that enable organization to deploy desktop voice and video conferencing in a Virtual Desktop environment. This is more important than it seems at first glance, because the combination of datacenter consolidation into public or private cloud architectures, desktop virtualization, and desktop video ends up potentially sending massive amounts of network traffic over wide are network links, saturating them and causing poor application performance, bad video quality, and unusable voice over IP calls. VXI splits the voice and video traffic out of the virtual desktop stream, allowing the voice and video traffic to be sent directly where it needs to go, and also permitting the network to prioritize voice and video appropriately along the way. The Cisco VXI technology is deceptively simple, and right now it is a small quantity of Cisco branded WYSE clients with a special Cisco software build, as well as the Cisco CIUS secure enterprise tablet.

Cisco Webex is the cloud service that pulls everything together and lets employees use the advanced collaboration technologies when mobile as well as when they are in the office. Cisco Jabber, the Cisco Unified Communications system, and Cisco Quad all connect to Webex. These technologies work best when they are operated on a data network that is well managed, optimized for voice and video, secure, provides power to endpoints over the data cabling, and is fully integrated with the wireless data networks as well. Coincidentally, Cisco is the market leader in routers, switches, and wireless systems that do just that.

Cisco is putting together the workplace collaboration system of the future. When deployed on the solid foundation of a secure wired and wireless data network with voice and video prioritization, a reliable VoIP telephone system, advanced video conferencing, and the best in class hosted conferencing service, the new collaboration tools from Cisco will help businesses to be more agile and responsive, and will get the information to the people that need it quickly. Cisco Jabber, Webex, Quad, and VXI are technologies that you are going to be hearing a lot more about in the years to come.