A necessary starting point in the discussion is agreeing that a VoIP should provide better performance and reliability than the traditional PBX that it replaces, and doing that means not cutting corners. When there is a problem with power in the building, a traditional PBX will continue to power the phones for at least a few minutes, and more if there is a good size UPS connected to the PBX in the phone room. The VoIP phone system should have that same capability, which means that IP phones should not be powered by plugging them into wall power but should instead be powered by the Ethernet cable that also connects them to the network, and that the Local Area Network (LAN) switches that power the phones have large enough UPS’s of the right type to power all the phones connected to them. PoE switches are also used to power phones, security cameras, wireless access points, and security systems, which makes it even more important to get the power planning correct!

Regular LAN switches that do not provide PoE use about 50 Watts of power. 24 and 48 port PoE switches can use anywhere from 400 to 1200 Watts of power, depending on the model and on the devices plugged into their ports. Most IP phones use around 8 Watts of power, so it is common for a 48 port PoE switch to be rated at around 400 Watts. As IP phones add video cameras and screens to them, the power requirements go up to about 16 Watts per phone. If less than half of the 48 switch ports are going to be used for powered devices, then a 400 Watt switch is fine, but if it is a dense deployment, more powerful switches should be used.

LAN switches are usually powered by 120 Volt AC power from regular wall outlets. This AC power is converted to DC power in the switch as efficiently as possible, and is usually split out into 3, 5, 12, and 48 Volt busses. The 48 Volts DC is what is used to power the VoIP phones. Because Ethernet can be extended to 100 meters, or about 300 feet, the PoE specification requires that there is enough power at the end of the Ethernet run to power a device. DC power is safer than but not as efficient as AC power, and over a long thin cable run there is a loss of voltage and a loss of power. For example, if 48 VDC is supplied at the switch, then at the end of 100 meters of Cat 5e cable the voltage will have dropped to about 41 VDC. The IEEE 802.3af specification requires a minimum voltage of 44 volts at the output of the switch, which means the device that uses DC power provided by PoE expects no less than 37 VDC. If the AC power supplied to the LAN switch was a constant 120 VAC, then there would be no problem, but that is not always the case.

Electricity supplied to a building can vary quite a bit. There are three main types of UPS’s: Offline, Line-Interactive, and Online. They each use different technology to accomplish the result of providing power to the devices that are plugged into them, but go about it in different ways. The problem with some of the technologies is that if the voltage to the LAN switch drops below a certain value like 110VAC, the DC power provided by PoE to the phones at the end of the longer Ethernet cabling runs will drop below 37 VDC, and the phones will either reboot or just act buggy.

• Offline UPS‘s pass the wall power directly from the input to the output, until the wall power drops below a certain value, for example 107 VAC. At that point an internal switch flips and the output power is provided from a battery and inverter. This works reasonably well in a loss of power situation, although the power drop will cause remote phones to reboot right when they are needed the most.
• Line-Interactive UPS‘s will compensate for wall power voltage fluctuations by using a transformer to modify the AC voltage. For example, if the wall power drops to 113 VAC, the UPS will transform the AC voltage up to 123 VAC. It can do this until the wall power drops too low to provide enough current for rated power, at which point it switches over to battery power just like the offline UPS.
• Online UPS‘s are set up differently because they do not use a switch to change over to a battery. Instead the AC power is converted to DC, then the DC is converted back to AC. The full time double conversion requires more expensive components, but it gives some significant advantages. The first is that the output voltage is always 120 VAC with constant frequency of 60 Hz. The second is that additional batteries can be easily added to the DC bus, allowing the UPS to provide backup power for hours at rated load.

Online UPS’s are the right kind of UPS’s to use when LAN switches with PoE are used to power phones and other network connected devices because they provide reliable power at the proper voltage and frequency. And because the double conversion system is always in use, when there is a loss of AC wall power, there is no additional strain on the UPS and it keeps functioning reliably. Offline and line-interactive UPS’s put a different system into use right when it is needed the most, and there is possibility of the internal switch and battery system failing when put under sudden stress.

UPS’s are not expensive compared to the rest of a VoIP system, but unless they are budgeted for during the planning process they tend to be overlooked. When the UPS planning is done for the access closets, it is also important to make sure there is enough electrical power to the closets. A typical 20 Amp dedicated circuit at 120 VAC can provide about 2400 Watts of power, which sounds like a lot, if the circuit is truly dedicated to the closet. But if you are planning on putting more than five 400W switches in a closet, there is a good chance that the power to the closet has to be upgraded as well.

A single UPS can usually provide 5-15 minutes of power at full load. If the disaster plan requires that PoE powered equipment be operable for longer than that, battery packs should be added to the UPS.

Finally, batteries on UPS’s wear out and will need to be replaced every 3 to 5 years. If it is not part of the disaster preparation plan to manually check every switch closed for UPS’s that have warning lights for failed batteries, it would be prudent to connect the UPS’s to the network and monitor them with power monitoring software.

Adcap recommends Liebert UPS’s by Emerson Network Power. A list of available Liebert Online UPS‘s and pricing is available at VoIP UPS.

Author: Rolf Versluis

Posted at Adcap Tech Tips

In order to successfully complete this procedure, you must know your Cisco.com account name and password, as well as the Cisco Services contract number you wish to add.  If you are not yet registered on Cisco.com with a username and password you must complete that process first.  If you do not know your Smartnet contract number(s), you can generally obtain them from your Cisco reseller.

Associating your Cisco.com id to your contract numbers:

•  Navigate to http://www.cisco.com and log In using your Cisco.com account:

• One you have logged-in, select the Account menu option on the top-right part of the main Cisco.com landing page:

•  At the account screen, click on “Go Now” below in Profile Manager section:

• At the Cisco.com Profile Manager Screen, Select “Additional Access” tab:

• Under “Additional Access” tab, Select “Add Service Contract numbers to profile for support access” link:

•  When prompted, enter contract number(s) you would like to associate to your Cisco.com account.  If you want to add multiple contract numbers at once, separate them with commas as in the below example.  When done, click the “Submit” button:

After “Submit” has been processed on a valid contract number(s), you will see a result screen similar to the below:

The request will be processed by Cisco services staff and you will receive a confirmation via email within the specified time-frame (typically less than six hours) that the association has been done!

Author: Alex Obeso

Posted at Adcap Tech Tips

The Evolution of the Datacenter:

Are You Prepared for 10G?

(10G Datacenter Operations with Nexus Switches)

 

Presented by:

Adcap Solution Architect,

Steve Norton

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

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.