UC on UCS

Wanted to make sure everyone was aware to make this change on all Virtualized Unified communications.  This is a known issue with VMware and Linux host.  I have seen this cause very weird issues on a UC deployment.  

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Disable_LRO

Note:

After upgrading the ESXi host to 4.1 or 5.0 and upgrading VMs to VMwareTools to 4.1 or 5.0, you may experience slow TCP performance on VMs running on the 4.1 or 5.0 ESXi host. You can address this situation by disabling Large Receive Offload (LRO) on the ESXi host.

To disable LRO, follow this procedure:

1. Log into the ESXi host or its vCenter with vSphere Client.
2. Select the host > Configuration > Software:Advanced Settings.
3. Select Net and scroll down slightly more than half way.
4. Set the following parameters from 1 to 0:
   • Net.VmxnetSwLROSL
   • Net.Vmxnet3SwLRO
   • Net.Vmxnet3HwLRO
   • Net.Vmxnet2SwLRO
   • Net.Vmxnet2HwLRO
5. Reboot the ESXi host to activate these changes.
   

Your guest VMs should now have normal TCP networking performance.

Cisco TelePresence Video Communication Server (VCS) VM Appliance

Prefer the small footprint and virtualized deployment model?  VCS Control and Expressway appliances are now available as VMWare appliances with the VCS 7.1 code. 

For those interested in the minimum specs and supported configurations, please see the deployment guide.

It is important to note that there are some unsupported features with this initial version of the VM appliance.

1. ESXi 4.1 compatible, but not ESXi 5.  During testing there was a problem related to an LSI RAID card that caused an issue.
2. VMWare fault tolerant mode is not supported because the VCS uses dual cores.  VMotion IS supported.

UC on UCS install video

I was doing some searching and found these great video from Jason Murray on How to install and configure UC on UCS.  He also has a 5 part video series on the BE6k.  Check it out.

Cisco Unified Communications Virtualized

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_in_a_Virtualized_Environment

I have been doing alot with Cisco Unified Communications on the new Cisco UCS servers.  If you are looking at moving in this direction the Doc wiki is the best source for the latest information and specs on running the Cisco applications in a virtual environment.  This is the place to OVA templates as well.