Mind the Gap... Between VoIP and Analog

Around five years ago my company made the decision that at some point in the future we would be replacing our phone system with a VoIP system.  As part of that decision we decided that it was no longer smart to run separate voice and data wiring on new projects.  This led us to a problem of how to make the connection between data patch panels and the existing voice 66 blocks.

Unfortunately we didn't go straight to the solution we are using now.  Our first solution was to take voice cross connect wire and terminate it with an 8p8c connector on one end and then punch down the other end to the 66 block.  For one or two links, this solution worked ok, but scaling the solution ended up with a rat's nest of cross connect cables.  

The next solution was basically the same as the first only we using CAT6 patch cables with one 8p8c cut off.  It was easier to keep the cabling neater, but it still didn't scale well as the thicker cables got in the way on the 66 blocks.

Finally we came to the solution that I want to share.  We started buying Panduit 24 port 1 pair voice panels.  These panels have a RJ-21 connector on the back that splits a 25 pair cable into 24 RJ45 jacks with 1 pair connected to pins 4 and 5 of each jack.  When combined with a 25-pair amphenol cable and a prewired 66 block, it makes a very modular and convenient way to bridge the gap between data and analog voice cabling. In this configuration I often put the voice panel with my switches as it serves as a "voice switch" in the rack. 

During the last five years this has served well and I believe that it will also help support our large analog deployment that will remain with our new VoIP system.  Hopefully our trial and error will help someone else out.

How to Waste an Entire Day Troubleshooting One Phone... and Then Fix It in Less Than 5 Seconds

So last week was a short one for me with the combination of the 4th of July holiday and some vacation time.  Unfortunately the last working day ended up being a rather long and frustrating day.  

Around 9am a ticket came in that one of the managers' phones was dead.  Keeping in mind that my phone system is an ancient Rolm/Siemens 9751 system, I started with the assumption of hardware failure.  My first step was to try a known good phone on the line.  Nope, still dead as a door nail.  I also tried changing the line to a different port on the system fearing that the line card could be the problem, but that also failed to change anything.

By this time I was figuring on a cabling issue.  Over the next 4 hours or so I toned and re-terminated the cabling from the phone to the PBX.  Normally this wouldn't take this long, but I kept getting tone to the phone, but the phone still refused to work so I kept repeating and segmenting the process.  Finally I believed that I had isolated the problem as being between the last IDF and the phone jack itself.

At this point in the day, the manager had already left for the day so I had to get the plant engineering director to unlock the office for me.  My plan was to re-terminate the phone jack hoping that there was a short in the wall jack.  The plant engineering director was a bit intrigued by my day of troubleshooting so he stuck around to help me move the desk out of the way.  As we were doing this, he started to trace where the line left the room and noticed that it when through a box on the wall with a switch.  I flipped the switch and bam, the phone worked again.  He explained that he recognized the switch as an old line switch (to switch a single line phone from one line to another) because his father used to work for the phone company.  

So now, that others may learn from my day of troubleshooting, here is what the switch looked like, after I added some labels for the future.  My lesson, expect the unexpected.

Phone Switch

Neuron: Using the ESXi CLI to Fix a VMK0 Mistake

In VMWare ESX, the management traffic for the host is sent to the interface vmk0 which is a virtual interface.  This morning while troubleshooting another vmk* interface because of a vMotion problem, I accidentally changed the dvsPortGroup (VLAN) on vmk0.  As soon as that took effect, the host was not able to be seen by vCenter.  Thankfully the guest VMs continued to run without any failure.  

Now came a chicken and the egg problem.  I needed to change the dvsPortGroup on vmk0 back, but I couldn't access the host using vCenter until vmk0 was back online.  This led me to Google to find a way to accomplish the same thing using the CLI on the individual host.  This article pointed me in the right direction for the commands.

What I ended up doing was the following:

1. Lookup the DVPort number using esxcfg-vmknic -l command.  As you can see below the DVPort currently used by a VMK* interface is easily found in the output.

2. Lookup the DVPort of a free port in the distributed vSwitch (in our case a Nexus 1000V) in the proper port group using vCenter. 

3. Delete the existing vmk* nic by using the command:

esxcfg-vmknic -d -s DVSwitch_name -p DVPort

4. Recreate the vmk* nic by using the command below with the DVPort found in step 2.

esxcfg-vmknic -a -s DVSwitch_name -p DVPort -i IPAddress -n NetMask

At this point I had my vmk0 back with the proper IP and VLAN so I was able to reconnect the host to vCenter and all was well.  The moral of the story is be careful what you're clicking on.

Cisco Live! 2013 Notable Keys to Know!

Cisco Live! is Cisco's annual customer conference.  I try to go as often as possible simply because it's the best training bang for the buck that I've found when it comes to Cisco's technologies.  Each day of the conference is started off with a keynote speech and this year Cisco is going with the following speakers.

First on Monday evening before the conference officially begins will be the Solutions Keynotes.  These keynotes will feature senior Cisco engineering experts speaking about the various product lines and their futures.  

Cisco Chief Executive Officer John Chambers

On Tuesday morning the conference officially begins with Cisco CEO John Chambers giving his annual keynote.  Mr. Chambers is always an engaging speaker and lays out where things have been and where they are going.  This year he will be joined with Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior.  Traditionally Mr. Chambers' key note tends to be heavy with facts and figures in complicated power point slides, but what he says is generally inspiring and interesting in my opinion.  I'm hoping that this year will be less about pandering to the news media and stockholders and more about the customers which make up the majority of the audience.

Cisco Chief Technology Officer Padmasree Warrior

Padmasree usually gets the technology keynote on Tuesday so it will be interesting to see what she will be presenting this year.  She is definitely a visionary when it comes to looking at new technologies.  Unfortunately compared to the Cisco Chief Demonstration Officer Jim Grubb she comes across as rather boring at times.  I'm really hoping that a Jim Grubb demo with Mr. Chambers is still in the works for Monday.

Wednesday has often been my favorite of the Cisco given keynotes.  This keynote is generally the demo of some new technology or a way of integrating existing Cisco technologies in a particular vertical.  This is generally where any big announcements of new products are made.  This year Robert Lloyd, Cisco's President of Development and Sales, will be making his Cisco Live! keynote debut.  To be honest his name wasn't on my radar until I got the information on this keynote so I look forward to seeing what he's like as a speaker.  Especially with the blogosphere buzz about him being a potential successor to long time Cisco CEO John Chambers.

Ok, so finally here is the keynote that everyone is really wondering about.  The Thursday celebrity keynote.  In the past we have been graced by the likes of John Cleese, William Shatner, and last year the Mythbusters Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage.  And this year the celebrity keynote speaker is...

Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson.  He is the founder and chairman of the Virgin Group which includes Virgin Records, Virgin Airlines, and my personal favorite Virgin Galactic.  Virgin Galactic competed in and won the Asari X-Prize to build a craft to ferry three people into space and be able to be returned to space again within 2 weeks.  I am expecting a very good keynote from Sir Richard.

Finally Carlos Dominguez will once again be the host leading us through the conference and the various keynotes.  He has a great stage presence to fire up the crowd every time he gets out there.  Last year I was lucky enough to meet him after one of the keynotes and found him as personable in person as he was on stage.  Keep an eye on his Facebook and Twitter posts as he'll probably be touring Orlando and giving away things prior to Cisco Live!

My Cisco Live! plans for this year are barely in shifting sands, but I'm really hoping to be there again.

$3,000 for Obsolete Paper!

My current project is to replace an older Comdial PBX with a Cisco CallManager Express.  The goal is to expand capacity and features for one of our busier doctor's offices.

When I started unpacking all of the boxes from Cisco I found that my CUCME phone licenses were shipped individually in the typical Cisco licensing cardboard envelope.  At that point my thought was, "crap that's a lot of PAKs to register".  The good news is that none of the envelopes contained PAKs, but the ones for the phones didn't even contain unique licenses.  The paperwork inside those envelopes was generic and included a phone guide for the 7940 and 7960 phones with CUCME 3.0.  Considering that I ordered CUCME 8.6 I would think that these envelopes have been sitting somewhere for a very very long time.

What really irks me about this is that these envelopes have nothing to prove that I purchased the licenses so I really just spent $3,000 on shipping paper from Cisco to me so that I can put it in the trash for them.  Perhaps it's inefficiencies like this that Cisco's leadership could eliminate to make their product pricing more palatable... or at least send me current documentation.

2013 Goals and a Look Back at 2012

Well last year I had grand plans, unfortunately looking back I managed to not get any of them done.  Mainly this came from changing priorities at work that led me down new voice and wireless paths.  I do still plan on getting through the CCNP R&S this year as my CCNA will expire in September unless I renew in some manner.  I did take the ROUTE exam this year and had a well earned fail, but I learned a lot from taking the test.  I know my weaknesses and how to better prepare this time.

So to regurgitate my goals from last year that are being carried over to this year...

• Take and pass the ROUTE exam
• Take and pass the TSHOOT exam
• Take and pass the ARCH exam
• Earn the CCNP R&S and CCDP certifications
• Keep my office more organized (Yes this appears on my annual review annually.)
• Learn Italian (someday I will go back and this time I'll be able to talk to my relatives)
• Figure out how to grow and maintain grass in my back yard without making my dogs use hover boards (I do believe this is an impossible feat.)