Author: neotek2017

when i was younger and living with my older sister – she put a physical phone lock onto the phone dial so it couldnt be used , such as the one below

This meant that the phone was unusable to make calls – you could receive calls fine . Since i was quite smitten with a girl that i wanted to call i observed that when the lock was off and i could make a call, when you dialed a 3 you would hear like 3 connections as the analogue swicthing units connected for a 3

This was exactly the same sound as you would hear when you lifted the reciever and the circuit to the telco was esatblished , if you lifted the reciver and pushed down the swicth that let the phone know you was off hook you can hear the dialling – so if you wanted to dial a sequence of numbers you could just tap them out on the phone and then you would get connected

later on in my career when i worked for a telco the analog guys used to have these swicthing units on thier desks ( like the ones below)

they where platinum tipped and so quite valuble, it was the noise of these connecting that i heard all those years ago ,when you depressed the off hook button on the phone the voltage changes went across the local loop to the exchange , where the stowgers would register the voltage change as a signalling attempt

fast forward to my latest issue – i have an audiocodes M800 gateway with a SIP trunk connection to a carrier , if i dial through the trunk to the M800 and then forward the extension to the CC where we have to enter some DTMF – the CC could not hear the tones

teams with optimisation do not play nice with e164 addressing – that is to say for the teams direct optimisation to work we need a e164 adress for hosts that in the site subnet

i am a bit pressed for time – but this is the problem when you deploy the e1 you may size it for growth and get it wrong- resulting in maybe some PBX based routing and some internal extensions which dont immediatly translate into a true e164 address

but how do you find them and know you got them the first way would be a simple extension count if you got more endpoints than DDIs in your e1 circuit then a PBX designer has got clever with the dial plan

The phone number mask trick

This allows you to make a call from an internal number by using a mask that is in the public DDI range. This means the E1 circuit will accept it but you cannot ring it back but you could use an IVR to redirect to the internal range for inbound

best way to tackle this is with some SQL

run sql select dnorpattern, d.description, e164mask, tkpatternusage from devicenumplanmap inner join numplan on fknumplan=numplan.pkid join device d on fkdevice = d.pkid where e164mask= “+52867711XXXX”

choose your mask against Publice DDI ranges if you got extensions in this range that dont trannslate

The SBC outbound source trick

This just makes the manipulation for the public range at the SBC

its doing the same thing we are normalising to a public number – this would be good for contact centre routing instead of making them non dialable by some other means

Testing Direct Media optimisation

For direct media optimisation to work we need ;

• subnet , to punch the media to from the internal sip interface to the site E1
• It aslo must see VPN addresses as a site address
• Calls from the public internet are external calls
• The WebRTC element must work for both
• The media must be encypted
• Call forwarding and other re directions must be supported
• we got to able to transfer
• we got to eb able to hold snd retrieve
• Internal IP streams flow via Internal SBC sip interfaces
• External IP streams flow via external SBC SIP interfaces

so in its way this defines a test list

Dump SBCs in the environment

Get-CsOnlinePSTNGateway is going to dump all the PSTN gateways – which are configured to allow the internet reach voice networks – they are a list of SBC SIP interfaces

The site E1 SBC looks like this

Identity : mybiz.com
InboundTeamsNumberTranslationRules : {}
InboundPstnNumberTranslationRules : {}
OutboundTeamsNumberTranslationRules : {}
OutboundPstnNumberTranslationRules : {}
Fqdn : mybiz.com
SipSignalingPort : 5067
FailoverTimeSeconds : 10
ForwardCallHistory : True
ForwardPai : False
SendSipOptions : True
MaxConcurrentSessions : 1000
Enabled : True
MediaBypass : True
GatewaySiteId : Gateway ID
GatewaySiteLbrEnabled : False
GatewayLbrEnabledUserOverride : False
FailoverResponseCodes : 408,503,504
PidfLoSupported : False
MediaRelayRoutingLocationOverride :
ProxySbc : Teams Voice proxy
BypassMode : Always
Description :

when you configure a test account

RunspaceId : 56be03ea-2ddc-4f15-be4c-5b40a051b355
Identity : [email protected]
SipAddress : sip:[email protected]
ServiceNumber :
TollFreeServiceNumber :
ConferenceId : 0
BridgeId : 4bb5ceda-d994-4121-a671-44d92ffda798
BridgeName : Conference Bridge
Tenant : ceb177bf-013b-49ab-8a9c-4abce32afc1e
AllowPstnOnlyMeetings : False
AllowTollFreeDialIn : False
LeaderPin : *

UserPrincipalName : [email protected]
HostedVoiceMail : True
EnterpriseVoiceEnabled : True
OnPremLineURI : tel:+78126482513
OnlineVoiceRoutingPolicy : 402-Tosno-Users
TeamsCallingPolicy : AllowCalling

Troubleshooting Inbound DMO at the SBC

There are a few global truths – if we have an M800 with with an E1 – than that is the resource we want to control at a site based SBC – i mean we could by means of manipulating call number masks and ARM ( brain ) maybe exit via one SBC and enter by another – this is acceptable in the SBC verse and i will test this later but here we want to control what the site based E1 can do via the SBC – so before we brought a SIP interface into the SBC – this would of meant we manipulate in the Brain – and its slave army of SBC’s but if we need to manaipulate we can do it in the gateway

when we have a telephony resource in a gateway we can punch media through to the e1 via the SBC to GW interface that i think got mentioned in the m800 set up thread

the GW to SBC interface passes back the ISDN signalling back to the SBC when the communication has to go the other way the IP group for GW2SBC is shown below

The IP group looks like

One of the most imortant settings here is the used by routing server setting (ARM) without this it wont work

classified by proxy this feels like a control

whats is classification ?

Classification is the process in which the AudioCodes gateway or SBC uses to associate the source of a SIP dialog request with a IP Group. By associating the source of the call with a defined IP Group entity, the SBC can then use this association to determine how the call will be processed. The classification rules cannot only be used to define the source of the SIP request for routing/manipulation purposes, but it canalso be used to block unwanted call attempts.

How does AudioCodes classify incoming calls?

AudioCodes uses three stages when attempting to classify an incoming SIP dialog request.

1. The first stage is to attempt to classify the SIP dialog by first comparing if the source of the
   request already exists in the device’s registration database.
2. If the device is not found in the AOR/registration database, the source can then be compared
   against the defined IP Address/ports used in the ProxySets table. If the source is found to be a match with
   one of the defined ProxySet entries, the call will be then associated with the source IPGroup which uses
   that ProxySet. This option can be enabled through the “Classify by Proxy Set” definition found in the
   IPGroup table definition.
3. Finally, if the call does not match either the registration database or the definitions in the
   ProxySet table, the AudioCodes device will attempt to match the source by comparing the SIP request
   with the criteria defined in the Classification Table.
   

Are some classification options better than others?

For security purposes, it is recommended to use the Classification rules as defined in the Classification
Table, as the Classification Rules allows the user to define additional SIP message characteristics that can be used to increase the strictness and security of the classification process. Classifying the SIP request source by the Proxy Set is allowed but is only recommended if the IP address of the IP Group is unknown or is configured with a FQDN.

SIP interfaces

covered in other parts of the blog but i am going to do a quick primer here

the Internal SIP is the GW application and the SBC interface is for the SBC (application type)

the proxy set and IP groups defines the signalling interfaces and ports needed to go from GW to SBC and SBC back to GW to punch the media back to the E1

Though the actual properties of an interface is defined in the profile , if there are tweaks to be made to get something to work the profile seesm to be the place

ARM basically controls the profile back to the regional and the GW controls the E1

IP profiles are quite meaty configs Regional ARM profile

SBC signalling ARM profile regional

so whats the Profile for the GW interface look like

so whats the profile for the gateway look like ?

The first difference is that it isnt created by the routing server

Gateway Profile SBC signalling M800

under the profiles this defines what gets translated from the SBC interface to the gateway

Desiging DMO SBC routing environments

This comes down to good IP management i mean , the bible is here

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/direct-routing-media-optimization-configure

the first big takeaway is this

External trusted IPs are the Internet external IPs of the enterprise network. These IP’s are the IP addresses used by Microsoft Teams clients when they connect to Microsoft 365. You need to add these external IPs for each site where you have users using Local Media Optimization.

so this should be an easy check by using a get instead

Get-CsTenantTrustedIPAddress

what you get is a list of

Identity : 10.0.0.2
MaskBits : 32
Description : Site Description
IPAddress : 10.0.0.2

Identity : 65.26.78.98
MaskBits : 32
Description : site description
IPAddress : 65.26.78.98

basically we got to see a PSTN event – in this architcture we invite the reginonal but any 200OK has got to point back to the M800 SBC to GW interface

Also worth mentioning that this is for a hybrid environment where we have a regional SIP trunk per region where we interwork with a PBX

when we have a fully migrated user – there wouldnt be an invite to the regional

let see what the PSTN say

I am currently trying to solve a call forward issue in a SIP cloud all call forward or SIP redirection call flows have two legs

1. The inbound Invite to the forwarded SIP endpoint
2. The outbound Invite with a Diversion header

Where we must cross an SBC we have number plan dependencies – SIP trunk providers will only accept diversion headers in a specific number format, which also must be part of the extension range for the device

If you stray from the defined number plan -you may get a reject from the SIP trunk provider this is going to be in the format in one of the following headers in the outbound invite

1.Diversion header format and some screening indications

2.P asserted identity PAI

3.Remote party ID with some screening indications

its important to realize that its a single call flow with two legs -that stay up – like all cloud UC offerings there is a web API call in the midst of the SIP signaling

The call flow is a bit of a shell game the headers swap values to make the call forward work and the way the architecture is such that the inbound and outbound invites are processed on separate SBC both legs have got to stay in state for the forward to work

1. MSP Invites the SBC
2. SBC makes an API call to ARM
3. SBC sends invite to IP PBX

At this point the IP PBX is building the outbound invite with the diversion header which will invite the SBC again which in turn makes another API call which will then get the SBC to invite back to the MSP

The 180 that gets generated is actually from the call forward via the 2nd leg

The inbound invite doesn’t need a registered endpoint the CUCM is going to generate the new outbound invite because of the existence of the diversion header , the software will build the invite basically to the call forward and send the diversion header back to the MSP trunk

The remote party here in this outbound invite is the original inbound invite calling party we send this back to the MSP so it can connect the calls

Inbound invite

after the ARM API

Outbound invite

This is where we see how the SIP UA has modified the inbound invite

the invite is shown below – the SBC is using a delayed offer for SDP the diversion header itself isn’t really used since its just a redirect flag but MSP use it to control SIP redirection

after the ARM API

when it all goes wrong

This is an example of a call forward that doesn’t work when something has changed in the configuration

inbound invite

but remember that these two legs set each other up so there are two possibilities here

• There is something about the invite that is getting forbidden hence if this is the case all we would need to analyze is the f5 invite from both flows to see the differences
• The forbidden is being triggered by the outbound invite with the diversion header and extra fields and this proxies back to the inbound invite so the 403 in the outbound just proxies back to the 403 in the inbound leg

outbound invite

For this failure we need to investigate why the MSP rejects with Forbidden

MSP database routing

MSP will authenticate calls depending on what is configured in their routing database. We also need to make a few definitions about the number formats

MSP has stated that routing database authenticate is based on 2 points

1. Diversion header is presented – should be +CCxxx or private number configured on the MSP side
2. From header should be +CCxxx or private number configured on the MSP side

so in the case for the above extension 6404 has a call forward to 447795642799 the diversion header is shown below

“Rolf Thomas” (sip:[email protected]);reason=unconditional;counter=1;screen=yes;privacy=off

534-6404 is the private number of 44-156478-6404 so the call is authenticated from the site

so in the case of the failure seen at RNX 660 the PNP was not configured on the OBS side , so we where sending the diversion header in the right format

Compute basics

Compute is a measure of the computational power to fulfill your workload , EC2 allows you to acquire compute via images or virtual servers called instances

Instance types

The instance type defines the virtual hardware supporting the EC2 instance , they vary in the following dimensions

• vCPU
• Memmory
• Storage ( size and type)
• Network performance

The instance types are optimized as below

Enhanced networking

Some instance types support enhanced networking for greater network performance , it reduces the impact of virtualization on networking by enabling a capability called single root I/O virtualization SR-IOV , this gives more packets per second , less latency this will be picked up in VPC

AMI

The amazon machine image AMI is similar to an VM . OVA template , in as such it is a software definition at launch it defines

OS and configuration

Initial state and patching

Application and system software

There are four sources of AMI’s

• Published by AWS
• AWS marketplace
• Generated from existing licenses generate an image from an existing EC2 container
• Uploaded virtual servers use AWS VM import export service ,raw,VHD ,VMDK and OVA

Addressing an instance

There are several ways an instance can be addressed

• Public DNS name when you launch an instance AWS creates a public DNS name and cannot be specified by the enterprise
• Public IP the launched instance will have a public IP address from a pool reserved by AWS, it only persists while the instance is running
• Elastic IP is an address that you can reserve and use for your instance from a pool.It is a public IP address , which persists until the customer releases it and is not tied to the instance 

Initial access

EC2 uses public key cryptography to encrypt and decrypt login information

Virtual firewall protection

AWS controls traffic in and out of the instance via a virtual firewall called a security group , which allow you to control traffic based on

Below are the security group attributes

• Port
• Protocol
• source/destination identifies the far end of the communication , can be identified by CIDR block x.x.x.x/subnet or a security group

Security groups have different abilities based on their association with VPC or with EC2

every instance must have at least one security group, but can have more

A security group is a default deny that is to say it will not allow any traffic that is not explicitly defined by a security group rule

In a case of multiple security groups , the aggregate of the groups is the rule , so if you allow RDP from x.x.x.x and HTTP from 0.0.0.0/0 in two different rules , than the EC2 instance will get both RDP traffic and HTTP traffic

A security group is a stateful firewall , so that ports can fix up, they are applied at the instance level rather than the perimeter  

Instance lifecycle

One of the benefits of AWS Ec2 is the ability to bootstrap , that is the ability to run code when the instance is launched

One of the parameters when an instance is launched is a string value called UserData , this string is passed to the OS at launch to be executed as part of the launch , on linux this can be part of a shell script, on windows this can be a powershell script it can do the following

• Apply a patch
• Enrol a directory service
• Install application software

VM import /export

This allows you to import virtual machines from your enterprise ,you cannot export an AMI

Instance metadata

You can use instance metadata to control your instance , you can make a callto the OS without making a call to the AWS API , an HTTP call to http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/ will return the top node of the metadata tree ,some of the attributes are shown below

• Security group ids associated with the  the instance
• Instance id
• Instance type
• AMI used to launch the instance

There is a lot more ! see documentation

Managing instances

When the number of instances starts to climb you can use tags to manage them , as you can with other AWS services , you apply ten tags per instance. Monitoring instances is done via Amazon cloud watch.

Pricing instances

You are charged for EC2 instances while they are in a running state, but the amount you are charged depends on the following 3 pricing options

If AWS needs to terminate they will send a two minute termination warning

Architectures with different pricing models -EXAM !!!!!

So depending on the need you can have different pricing models per architecture

Website that does Christmas foods gets 20,000 hits per day in December , but at other times gets only 5000 hits per day so you could go on demand pricing for December , but then use reserved instances pricing  off peak

Tenancy options

the following tenancy options can help a client achieve security and compliance goals

Shared tenancy

This is the default tenancy model for all EC2 instances , so this basically means that in the AWS data center your sharing a blade with other customers

Dedicated instances

dedicated instances run on hardware that is dedicated to a single customer

Dedicated host

the physical server is dedicated to the instance, this can help meet licensing requirements . This differs from dedicated instances which can launch on any hardware dedicated to the account

Placement groups

A placement group is a logical grouping of  instances within an availability zone , so chatty applications that need to talk to each other can do so with low latency 10 Gbps  network, remember to exploit this you need to choose an instance type that supports advanced networking

Instance stores

provide temporary block storage for your instance , is physically attached to your server and is ideal for storing data that changes frequently . The keys aspect of instance stores is that they are temporary data in the instance store is lost when

1. underlying disk drive fails
2. the instance stops (data persists on reboot)
3. instance terminates

Elastic block store

The limited persistence of block stores means that they are ill suited for more durable workloads, to get around this problem AWS uses Elastic Block Store , whose volume is automatically replicated within its availability zone . Multiple block stores can be added to an instance

Types of EBS volumes

There are several different types

Magnetic volumes

these have the lowest performance , and the lowest cost , they range in size from 1 GB to 1 TB and average 100 IOPS , but can burst to hundreds of IOPS  they are best used for

• work loads where data is accessed infrequently
• sequential reads
• low cost is required

they are billed on size of disk not what is stored on them

General purpose SSD

Suitable for a wide range of work loads , they size from 1 GB to 16 GB and provided 3 IOPS per GB provisioned which is capped at 10,000 IOPS, so a 1 TB volume will provide 3,000 IOPS , a 5 TB volume wont give you 15000 IOPS because of the cap.They are suited for a wide range of work loads such as

• system boot volumes
• small to medium sized databases
• development and test environments

Provisioned IOPS SSD

Designed to meet the needs of I/O intensive work loads , such as database workloads , they are the most expensive work load , they range in size from 4 GB to 16 GB .You can stripe multiple volumes together in a RAID 0 configuration, pricing is based on the size of the volume and the IOPS reserved. they can provide 20000 IOPS  and are suitable for

• Critical business applications
• large database work loads

Protecting Data

When working with instances you need to be able to perform back up and recovery of EBS volumes via snap shots. They can be taken in the following ways

• AWS management console
• Through the CLI
• Through the API
• a schedule of regular snap shots

snapshot is stored on system S3 , hence you need to use the EBS console to manipulate them

Creating a volume from a snapshot

to use the snap shot you create a volume from the snap shot , when you do this the volume is created immediately

Recovering Volumes

Since EBS volumes persist after an instance fails , it is straight forward to detach the volume and attach it to another instance so that the data can be retrieved.

Encryption volumes

when you launch an encrypted volume , amazon uses the KMS ( key management system) to handle the key management via industry standard AES-256 algorithm.  The encryption happens on the servers where the volumes are attached

Summary

•  To launch an instance you must specify an AMI which defines the virtual hardware , memory  vCPU etc
• spot instances are best for work loads that can tolerate interruption, reserved instances are are best for long term compute needs, on demand instances provide flexible platforms that can scale to need
• on demand instances can be used to scale up a web application running on reserved instances in response to a traffic spike.
•  Enhanced networking  enables you to get higher through put , lower jitter and latency
•  –via public IPv4, elastic IP or public DNS
• Data in an instance store is lost when the instance is stopped or terminated , though of course would survive an OS reboot
• On demand instances require no up front commitment , and can be launched at any time  and are billed by the hour .Reserved instances require an upfront commitment .Spot instances are launched when your bid price exceeds the spot price, spot instances will run until the spot price exceeds your bid price , in which case you get a 2 minute warning .
• Every instance type is rated for low medium or high , or 10 Gbps network performance, with larger instance types being rated higher , some instance types are network enhanced.
• Metadata is information about an instance , such as instance ID , instance type , and security group, available over HTTP.
• Security groups are virtual firewalls that control traffic in and out of your EC2 instance, they deny by default , and you can specify traffic direction , port protocol and destination address via CIDR block, they are stateful meaning that an outgoing rule will allow response without a corresponding incoming rule.
• Magnetic volumes provide an average performance of 100 IOPS and can be provisioned up-to 1 TB.They are good for cold and infrequently accessed data .General purpose SSD volumes provide 3 IOPS / GB up to 10,000 IOPS , with smaller volumes able to burst 3000 IOPS . They can be provisioned up to 16 TB
• Any volume type can bee encrypted at launch , encryption is built on AWS KMS and is transparent to attached instances
• snapshots provide a point in time backup of an EBS volume and is stored in S3 , subsequent backups are incremental and they only store deltas

Back in the day it used to be difficult to remote control phones , usually that phone would have to have a CTI layer and you would have to use JTAPI or a java telephony API to send 3rd party call control messages to control

but since phones have become web servers in their own right we can exploit HTTP verbs to control the phone

the set up for this is shown below

Basically we are going to set 2 settings

Action URI Allow IP list – to leave it wide open we can set this to “any”  or we can define a sub net here

CSTA Control – set this to enable this is basically ACD protocol speak

once this is set than the phone will go down for a reboot

once it has come back you can issue something like this for the phone

https://192.168.5.201/servlet?key=number=07590983600&outgoing_uri=033333333.

When you send this the browser will use the GET verb to send

for the first time you send the get the phone will display a message that say do you want to allow remote control , but it only does this the first time , for subsequent requests this will no longer be presented

you can also do a screen grab

https://192.168.5.201/screencapture

so this will provide support function with a useful tool in being able to generate outbound calls from site

This blog covers how to create a UCCE environment hosted on the AWS free tier and is broken down into 3 different stages shown below. I am not building this with a production hat on rather a proof of concept hat on , so the configuration here is not  best practice but will get you to Proof of concept quickly.

1. staging of ICM v 11.0 on EC2 instances in a simplexed architecture within a single availability zone .
2. staging of ICM v11.0 on EC2 instances with duplexed architecture within a single availability zone
3. staging of ICM v11.0 on EC2 instances with duplexed architecture using two different availability zones

This blog covers the 1st stage which is an ICM v 11 core built as a simplexed progger.

The software platform to be virtualized is an AD integrated windows 2012 R2 / SQL 2014 network (64 bit)

Windows 2012 R2 AD 101

We are  going to use the Amazon free tier to create a primary domain controller / EC2 instance To do this boot the Win 2012 R2 AMI native and connect to it via RDP. Then promote the server to a PDC via the server manager . 2012 Have wrapped it into the server manager page  , i built this a few weeks ago so i dont have any slides ,  it is simple though and pretty much vanilla .The domain i created was corp.ucce. Then created an account that  can be used to log the UCCE server into corp.ucce prior to staging of the ICM software .(set this password to do not expire)

AWS configuration for UCCE member Server

log into your EC2 and launch the 2012 R2 AMI , and accept all the defaults for now, you should end up with an EBS based instance

Below is the other type of storage the “instance” backed store , see its ephemeral that means that after you have turned the instance off , your data disappears

 

Increasing storage of ec2 instance work-around

We have to change  the size of the disk from 30GB to at least 60 GB , since 30 GB drive wont be able to support the Cisco ICM v11.0 software and the MS SQL 2014 environment. You cant do this at the provision storage page of the instance , when you first boot the AMI since it invalidates your free tier and it wont spin, but you can use the following work around to get yourself a bigger disk on the free tier via the elastic  Block storage application .

Elastic block storage modify volume

in the elastic block storage console select the volume for the instance you just created and select action , and then modify this will then spawn the box below

then change to 60 GB disk and select modify this should then spawn the following

what a nice message from the Amazon engineers , so you will have to log into the instance after and then use disk tools to grab the extra space , if you monitor elastic block storage you will see the volume optimizing. We need to let this process complete before rebooting the instance and then reformatting the drive

Increasing volume on 2012 R2 Host (UCCE member server)

Log into your instance using the public IPV4 address of the instance you just created , you will use the root Administrator account for this (dont forget to put your rule into the security group for RDP access )

The head for the computer management snap in and select Disk management you should see the same GUI as shown below;

So you can see that we got the extra 30 GB via elastic block storage , even with the free tier restriction 😉 then right click on the C drive and select to extend the volume this should then spawn the confirmation below

Windows 2012 R2  DNS configuration  for UCCE

so while we have an RDP session open to our EC2 UCCE server we may as well promote this into the AD domain we created earlier . Currently this server sits in an work group.To get the UCCE server to pick up its domain controller , the easiest way is to point the DNS of the server to the private IP address of the PDC. After this Pinging corp.ucce should resolve the private IP address of the PDC.

the change i made was here

Promoting UCCE server to corp.ucce Domain

Using the windows 2012 server manager on the UCCE member server select the work group hyperlink  and then promote to the domain corp.ucce

If the DNS resolves this should pick up the private IP address of the domain controller , you should then ask to be authenticated use the account details you created in the AD 101 section and you should be able to add the  domain after a reboot .

RDP to UCCE / EC2  @ corp.ucce

Use the credentials from AD 101 section when you need to log into the UCCE member server and of course use the public IPV4 address for the RDP session ,  or else your domain manager software (part of UCCE) will not find the corp.ucce domain.

Then the server manager should say your a member of corp.ucce

Exectute ICM software via S3

i used an S3 storage to store all the software i would need for the build , in this way i could browse the software i would need from the member server , and take advantage of the 1.4 mega bits per second that you tend to get within an availability zone. Also the other cool thing about windows 2012 is that it allows you to  mount direct from the .ISO

so run the ICM base software first by running setup.exe in the folder highlighted. The setup should complete without incident and produce the GUI below

reboot the instance as suggested .

Running the UCCE Domain controller Applet

After the reboot connect to the EC2 instance via RDP. On the desktop now there should be a folder called , unified CCE tools , from this folder run the domain manager , this will use the PDC to bring down the OU structure of the domain to the nUCCE server

Staging the SQL server on nUCCE / ec2

Browse to the bucket where your SQL 2014  ISO is stored on S3 from nUCCE/EC2 instance and mount the ISO , then run the setup .exe and you should see GUI below

dont worry about the planning link for now but select the installation link and select the New SQL Server link, we are also going to use the evaluation version of SQL , which will give us 180 days worth, this can then be extended for another 180 , pretty much accept all defaults until;we get to the feature selection.

select the options shown , though for the build to complete we need to add the .NET framework 3.5 service pack 1 is required , this can be activated on the member server as a role, without doing this you will hit the issue below

Adding .NET role to nUCCE / ec2 via 2012 role manager

using the server manager app , underneath the manage key , then select the .net Microsoft framework

then after selecting next the install should progress as shown below

close the application after the the .NET feature has been installed. Then you should be able to re run the setup and pass the test. At the instance screen set below follow accept the default SQL instance 

At the server configuration tab make the SQL services run under the NT AUTHORITY SYSTEM account and make all start up types automatic

then under the collation tab make the following changes and click apply

Then under the database engine  configuration page choose mixed mode , a password for the SQL SA account and add current user and administrator user

then we are ready to install

then reboot the nUCCE instance in ec2 dashboard. I have breezed through the setup for SQL contact center a bit , but if you want a much more in depth view of the setup follow the link below

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cust_contact/contact_center/icm_enterprise/icm_enterprise_9_0_1/installation/guide/UCCE_BK_S5AE1622_00_staging-guide/CCMP_BK_S5AE1622_00_staging-guide_chapter_01011.html

Create a snap shot via Elastic block storage

Now is a good time to take a snap shot of the nUCCE /ec2 server , since it has fresh AD, WIN 2012 , SQL 2014 and the basic ICM install software , but the final app has not been built yet and there is no contact center state , to create a snap shot follow the steps below

go to elastic block storage via the management console and select the volume ID for the nUCCE server right click and create snapshot , then under the snap shot you should see the back up created

SQL post install tweaks

This is the final stages of hosting the ICM part of a UCCE  architecture on AWS , but we have to make the following tweaks in SQL config so we can get all the contact center components to build correctly  .

using the SQL server configuration manager , for the client protocols move the named pipes above TCP/IP.Then under the SQL server network configuration enable Named Pipes.

Building the UCCE Components

On the desktop of the nUCCE server there should now be a unified ucce web set up short cut on the desktop which you can use to build the components it will take you to the web page below

https://localhost/setup/login.action

login using the credentials of the account we set up in AD 101. This tools allows us to build the following ucce components

1.  ICR intelligent call router
2. Logger
3. Admin workstation

These 3 component create the “brain” of the UCCE call center which allows you to make call routing decisions  , in real time against a contact center state .

Adding the nUCCE instance

The first thing we need to add is an instance , which is basically the idea of a customer and assign an integer as shown below, the link to this is under the instance management tab in the left hand frame

Adding the nUCCE Logger

Add the logger under the logger tab except the defaults here

and except the defaults at the next tab

the host name of the server gets filled in by default and this resolves to the private address of the EC2 eg

Then at the next tab enable the outbound option , this later will be used to make outgoing SIP calls from nUCCE

Adding the nUCCE Router

We are going to basically follow the same process here to add the router , so on your desktop click the unified CCE web setup icon as before , use the credentials for your domain user and then from the left hand side click Router , accept the defaults shown below

Basically select side A and select Simplex and then click next;

As before the private of your EC2 instance resolves to  the private IP address , this can be resolved via a ping.

This will match with what is on your EC2 instance desktop and Ec2 dashboard

and via your EC2 dashboard

at the next router install page enable 4 x PG ‘s as below

The PGs essentially provide us with a CTI interface to integrate third parties to.

Hopefully we can use lambda via connect to make a routing decision in cisco , hence the reason for enabling database routing option in the router. At the next screen accept the defaults for QoS , since essentially we are simplexed these will have no effect

Why did my private address for my EC2 instance change ?

That completes the build of the nUCCE Router. The more eagle eyed amongst you will see that the hostname changed between the router installation and the logger installation . This is only because i managed to kill my original install and had to re-stage , but the main point to take away is that in simplex , within a single availability zone for your EC2 instance ,  we are going to run all the services via a single private IP address , so your hostname will be the name provided by AWS when you launch the AMI

Building the nUCCE admin workstation.

Now that we have built the routing core within AWS , we need to build the administration interface so we can configure nUCCE / AWS . This basically follows the same steps as before , logging into the web interface on the desktop of your EC2 instance and then taking the following configuration options.

then select the options below

then finally as below

since there is no duplex in this architecture , we dont need a secondary site , but since it’s a required item we can just use a placeholder of secondary to satisfy the install .

The network interfaces for the AW is defined as below

again we are going to use the hostname of our EC2 instance which resolves to the private address EC2 instance.

Summary

That basically concludes the build , what we have done is implement the core intelligence of the Cisco UCCE v 11.01  product over AWS.

if you click the unified CCE service control applet on the EC2 desktop  you should see the services built as below

dont worry about the PG / CG and dialer nodes (you will have the router , logger and distributor nodes) , i will blog the build of these components in a later blog , where we will use them to pass calls between connect and UCCE.

If you have any questions , or need help or assistance in building your own UCCE v 11.0 sandbox over AWS please dont hesitate to reach out to me on [email protected].