Showing posts with label Voip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Voip. Show all posts
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Radianta solutions for CUAE
So last night me, the IT Director, CAO and Hospital IT manager met with the folks from RADIANTA. I have to say I was pretty impressed. These guys are partnered with CISCO to provide some great solutions and enable the CISCO VoIP phones to do some neat tricks they should have been able to do from the start, Such as Paging, Call Back and Notification, Call Recording and even Time Card features!
We had a small demo on the suite containing all these core features, it is called "Beacon Office". Now that Radianta are CISCO partners Cisco will be selling this product now directly and tossing a cut to Radianta for development.
Another great thing about this is since they have a true partnership Cisco TAC will actually support this CUAE as if it was their own.
People were waiting for a long time for CISCO to make use of it's Cisco Unified Application Environment but the wait was just too long and Radianta stepped up to supply this solution that worked so great CISCO thought why invent the wheel when these guys are already rolling?!
Since we already have and use Call Manager this software will work and intergrate with everything we have currently without the purchase of anything additional since we already have the setup.
We are going to implement and install this at our hospital very soon I can't wait to get started and I will keep you posted on all the details !!!
For more info:
www.radianta.com
We had a small demo on the suite containing all these core features, it is called "Beacon Office". Now that Radianta are CISCO partners Cisco will be selling this product now directly and tossing a cut to Radianta for development.
Another great thing about this is since they have a true partnership Cisco TAC will actually support this CUAE as if it was their own.
People were waiting for a long time for CISCO to make use of it's Cisco Unified Application Environment but the wait was just too long and Radianta stepped up to supply this solution that worked so great CISCO thought why invent the wheel when these guys are already rolling?!
Since we already have and use Call Manager this software will work and intergrate with everything we have currently without the purchase of anything additional since we already have the setup.
We are going to implement and install this at our hospital very soon I can't wait to get started and I will keep you posted on all the details !!!
For more info:
www.radianta.com
Thursday, October 23, 2008
How To Setup a Cisco Switch from SCRATCH !!!
We had a new guy start at our work last week and we asked him to setup a Cisco 2960G from scratch. I decided to search the internet real quick and find him a decent guide to help him BESIDES the PDF you can get from Cisco.com because I find those not very useful for setting up switches or routers... Well it turns out I could NOT find a all in 1 basic Cisco Switch setup guide or How To, There was bits and pieces like how to setup vlans here, how to setup trunking on another site but no 1 site had a complete walk through or guide... That's when I knew I would have to write something up something that everyone could understand and reference to whenever they needed to setup a Cisco switch!!! So here we go!!!
Chapter 1: The Differences
There are a few different types of switches. Here are the most common and important things to look for.
a) PoE - "Power Over Ethernet" - PoE can be used with various devices that can be powered over Ethernet. For example a lot of VoIP phones can be powered over Ethernet, What does this mean? This means if you plug your device into the switch with an Ethernet cable such as cat5e cable the device will get power. So if you had a Cisco VoIP phone you would notice there are a couple ports on the back - one if for an AC adapter to give the phone power - that's normally what you see on EVERYTHING electronic is a good old POWER cable and AC power brick.. Well NO MORE!! No need for those power bricks anymore - if you had a PoE switch and you plugged in the phone it would start up and get power over the Ethernet without plugging the phone into the power outlet or supplying any other power source you would normally have to use...
b) G - Gigabit Ethernet - Cisco switches will have a model like, 3560PoE, 2960 and 2960G. The "G" in the model name means the switch is FULL Gigabit, Now does that mean if it has no "G" that the switch is NOT Gigabit, Well that's not always true either because some 10/100 switches still have 2 or 4 ports that are Gigabit. Normally it is used to be an Uplink to another switch to provide faster connection between the two or sometimes the switches will even have fiber connections as well while the other 10/100 ports are for End Users. Some switches have slots where you can pop in cards to fit your needs or as your company grows.
c) IOS - Internetwork Operating System - IOS is a command based interface made by Cisco, This is your bread and butter with almost ALL cisco switches. There different versions of Cisco IOS but for the most part they are still very similar so don't be afraid because most the stuff is the same. Some Cisco siwtches also have an HTTP interface where you can setup and control the switch using a website GUI, For beginners this may feel a lot more comfortable but there is some lack of features and full control that you would have if you were using Cisco IOS, The Cisco Catalyst 500 Express PoE switch is a good example of using HTTP to setup the switch. There tons of commands to remember inside the IOS and it might seem overwhelming at first but once you get comfortable and more familiar with all the commands it really really becomes easy and makes setting up a switch quick and easy once your an expert with IOS.
Next, Chapter 2
How To Setup a Cisco Switch from SCRATCH
Chapter 1: The Differences
There are a few different types of switches. Here are the most common and important things to look for.
a) PoE - "Power Over Ethernet" - PoE can be used with various devices that can be powered over Ethernet. For example a lot of VoIP phones can be powered over Ethernet, What does this mean? This means if you plug your device into the switch with an Ethernet cable such as cat5e cable the device will get power. So if you had a Cisco VoIP phone you would notice there are a couple ports on the back - one if for an AC adapter to give the phone power - that's normally what you see on EVERYTHING electronic is a good old POWER cable and AC power brick.. Well NO MORE!! No need for those power bricks anymore - if you had a PoE switch and you plugged in the phone it would start up and get power over the Ethernet without plugging the phone into the power outlet or supplying any other power source you would normally have to use...
b) G - Gigabit Ethernet - Cisco switches will have a model like, 3560PoE, 2960 and 2960G. The "G" in the model name means the switch is FULL Gigabit, Now does that mean if it has no "G" that the switch is NOT Gigabit, Well that's not always true either because some 10/100 switches still have 2 or 4 ports that are Gigabit. Normally it is used to be an Uplink to another switch to provide faster connection between the two or sometimes the switches will even have fiber connections as well while the other 10/100 ports are for End Users. Some switches have slots where you can pop in cards to fit your needs or as your company grows.
c) IOS - Internetwork Operating System - IOS is a command based interface made by Cisco, This is your bread and butter with almost ALL cisco switches. There different versions of Cisco IOS but for the most part they are still very similar so don't be afraid because most the stuff is the same. Some Cisco siwtches also have an HTTP interface where you can setup and control the switch using a website GUI, For beginners this may feel a lot more comfortable but there is some lack of features and full control that you would have if you were using Cisco IOS, The Cisco Catalyst 500 Express PoE switch is a good example of using HTTP to setup the switch. There tons of commands to remember inside the IOS and it might seem overwhelming at first but once you get comfortable and more familiar with all the commands it really really becomes easy and makes setting up a switch quick and easy once your an expert with IOS.
Next, Chapter 2
Cisco Call Manager Attendant Problem
The Story:
I got a call while I was sleeping early about 6AM. The IT Director was calling to tell me that the operators at the hospital could not log in to the Cisco Attendant. First thing I thought of was the user name and passwords were wrong that is the most common issue when they can not log in. The Cisco Call Attendant reflects off the users Active Directory account - they use their regular domain account to log in but this time that was NOT the issue... The user names and passwords were correct. Turns out the Attendant service needed to be restarted on the Call Manager server, this time it was not just a password problem...
The Problem:
This is a good thing to note because you can also restart other critical services from here as well.. Also when I spoke to cisco they told me secretly it is good practice to restart any services that have been running for over 60 Days. Of course they would not advertise that with their products but thats what they honestly do recommend.
I got a call while I was sleeping early about 6AM. The IT Director was calling to tell me that the operators at the hospital could not log in to the Cisco Attendant. First thing I thought of was the user name and passwords were wrong that is the most common issue when they can not log in. The Cisco Call Attendant reflects off the users Active Directory account - they use their regular domain account to log in but this time that was NOT the issue... The user names and passwords were correct. Turns out the Attendant service needed to be restarted on the Call Manager server, this time it was not just a password problem...
The Problem:
Users can not log in to the Attendant.
Example: PBX (operators) the users there log in to the Attendant to call and organize calls. If they get errors and can NOT login
The Solution:
1) Account Problem :
Reset password. The logins are based off the AD accounts. Sometimes users might have the wrong password, the account could be locked in Active Directory or they might just be trying the wrong user name.
2) The service has failed:
There is a “Cisco Call Manager Attendant Console Server” service inside the call manager. Sometimes this service can fail and will need to be restarted. Here is how to restart it.
Login to call manager http://XXXXXXXXX
Navigate to “Cisco Unified Serviceability” and click GO (top right of the screen)
From the menu go to Tools and “Control Center –Feature Services”
Select server “192.X.X.X” from the drop down menu and click GO
Under “CTI Services” Select the –Cisco CallManager Attendant Console Server- button, scroll down to the bottom of the left screen and click “RESTART”.
This is a good thing to note because you can also restart other critical services from here as well.. Also when I spoke to cisco they told me secretly it is good practice to restart any services that have been running for over 60 Days. Of course they would not advertise that with their products but thats what they honestly do recommend.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
First Post!!!
Hi, This is my new IT Tech Blog.. This blog is going to contain helpful information related to Information Technology, So anything along the lines of networking, software and hardware.
A little about myself.
I am 28 Year old male working in the HEALTH CARE industry. The company I work for owns a Hospital in Long Beach CA also we own various clinics, pharmacy's, private doctor offices and of course our business offices. This being said Me and our team are responsible for roughly 1500 users...
A little about my everyday environment.
We have a WAN connected with Telepacific between our various sites. We have 2 main outs for our Internet split - one is threw Charter and the other is going threw TPAC as well.
We have mostly Windows XP machines for the end users, with a couple windows 2000 machines here and there, NO vista yet for the end users but some of the more PC sabby people have it (with no problems).
All of our routers are Cisco routers now and about 85% of our switches are also cisco. We still have some that have not been replaced yet..
Recently just migrated to Cisco VoIP solution at most of our main sites, We went from an older NORTEL system over to Cisco VoIP and rolled out over 500 IP phones in a week!!! It was a huge project and finally over, Thus we use Cisco Call Manager and Cisco Unity for voicemail.
Also 2 of our sites are using SHORTEL VoIP as an Alternate solution.
For internet and content filtering we use a device called FORTiGATE by a company called FORTiNET. This devices is an all in 1 solution... Content Filtering, Virus Protection, Spam Blocking, FIREWALL, Vpn Connections (SSL & IPsec) and MORE... This product has proved to be extremely good.
Servers... Our servers are Truly a mixed... The majority being Server 2003. We also have a few linux servers, Some IBM AIX unix servers and Windows 2000 Servers (almost gone). We decided to go with the HP series blade servers.. We also have a very nice SAN system by compellent which we have been using to virtualize more and more servers with VMware thus creating more physical resources for us.
We run 2 major web servers with IIS. We have our Intranet website running on a linux box using DEKIwiki. We have a public DNS server to publish our dns. For DHCP we went away from using Windows 2003 server like most companies use and we went with a solution called "Infoblox" This thing runs great and SO fast - it hands out DHCP addresses extremely fast, it is very easy to use and has a nice GUI...
That is just a short note of the things I handle on a daily bases. My hope is to be able to pass on any knowledge that I can from my daily experiences and learning's. There is a lot of tech related help stuff on the Internet but sometimes I find them to not be realist or not explain how something would be in a typical network and frankly sometimes people assume whoever is reading the guide/writeup will understand everything. I know some people are not too tech sabby and some times fall in the role of IT person, I also know that learning something can be tough when people don't start from the basics and explain things, Sometimes people expect you know as much as they do when they explain something and you end up saying WHA?!?!
My goal
To help anyone who needs help or even get some interesting informative feed back on things I post on here. So the beginners can feel free to learn and the advanced people can feel free to post their experience or what their understand may be.
A little about myself.
I am 28 Year old male working in the HEALTH CARE industry. The company I work for owns a Hospital in Long Beach CA also we own various clinics, pharmacy's, private doctor offices and of course our business offices. This being said Me and our team are responsible for roughly 1500 users...
A little about my everyday environment.
We have a WAN connected with Telepacific between our various sites. We have 2 main outs for our Internet split - one is threw Charter and the other is going threw TPAC as well.
We have mostly Windows XP machines for the end users, with a couple windows 2000 machines here and there, NO vista yet for the end users but some of the more PC sabby people have it (with no problems).
All of our routers are Cisco routers now and about 85% of our switches are also cisco. We still have some that have not been replaced yet..
Recently just migrated to Cisco VoIP solution at most of our main sites, We went from an older NORTEL system over to Cisco VoIP and rolled out over 500 IP phones in a week!!! It was a huge project and finally over, Thus we use Cisco Call Manager and Cisco Unity for voicemail.
Also 2 of our sites are using SHORTEL VoIP as an Alternate solution.
For internet and content filtering we use a device called FORTiGATE by a company called FORTiNET. This devices is an all in 1 solution... Content Filtering, Virus Protection, Spam Blocking, FIREWALL, Vpn Connections (SSL & IPsec) and MORE... This product has proved to be extremely good.
Servers... Our servers are Truly a mixed... The majority being Server 2003. We also have a few linux servers, Some IBM AIX unix servers and Windows 2000 Servers (almost gone). We decided to go with the HP series blade servers.. We also have a very nice SAN system by compellent which we have been using to virtualize more and more servers with VMware thus creating more physical resources for us.
We run 2 major web servers with IIS. We have our Intranet website running on a linux box using DEKIwiki. We have a public DNS server to publish our dns. For DHCP we went away from using Windows 2003 server like most companies use and we went with a solution called "Infoblox" This thing runs great and SO fast - it hands out DHCP addresses extremely fast, it is very easy to use and has a nice GUI...
That is just a short note of the things I handle on a daily bases. My hope is to be able to pass on any knowledge that I can from my daily experiences and learning's. There is a lot of tech related help stuff on the Internet but sometimes I find them to not be realist or not explain how something would be in a typical network and frankly sometimes people assume whoever is reading the guide/writeup will understand everything. I know some people are not too tech sabby and some times fall in the role of IT person, I also know that learning something can be tough when people don't start from the basics and explain things, Sometimes people expect you know as much as they do when they explain something and you end up saying WHA?!?!
My goal
To help anyone who needs help or even get some interesting informative feed back on things I post on here. So the beginners can feel free to learn and the advanced people can feel free to post their experience or what their understand may be.
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