This is Nice! 1

[mitelman]

Well, it's nice to finally see an area dedicated to Mitel. Bring on the talk!

 

[chrisstyles]

Hey there all.

I requested this forum as I couldn't find anywhere on the net that deals with Mitel except Mitels own site and you have to be an accredited engineer to access that.

I am dealing with a pretty big 3300 icp cluster so would appreciate talking to anyone out there that is doing the same.

What is everyones overall impression of Mitel kit? I know the SX2000 has been around since the dark ages and is supposed to be a solid bit of kit, but the 3300 is a different animal. Clustered it seems a bit flakey with its sync between OPS manager.

Keep up the posting, otherwise I look like a right idiot!!



Chris Styles

NT4/2000 MCSE

 

[mitelman]

How big of a cluster are you talking about? I find it interesting that you say it is a bit flakey with Opsman. We haven't had any big problems as far as I know. We have 1 client that has a cluster of 9, 5 2k's and 4 3300's. Never have probs with opsman syncing the 3300's.

I have been working on Mitel product for 10 years now and am certified on nearly all their product that has been current in the that time.

Simon

 

[chrisstyles]

Hey Mitelman.

It's a three controller cluster with 550 extensions operating with full resilience. The "flakey" part comes when users are moved between controllers, to support group pickup. If you move the user, you have to cycle them through the controllers.

Take user A. He is on controller 1 and resilient to controller 2. I need to move him to controller 2 to be able to pick up calls from other users. So I use the Move user function and He gets removed from Controller 1 but 2 says that the user already exists so can't be created.

At this point the DB's report thay are out of sync. If I move the user to controller 3 first and make him redundent on his origional controller (1) it works, Then I can move him to his final destination.

During these moves the user getts logged off which is a bit of a bummer.

Also simple things like name changes don't get replicated properly unless you do a couple of sync's.

Other interesting things like setting a user up, doing a sync, logging the user on, doing a sync and then finding the users phone rebooted and is again waiting for a pin are somewhat annoying but there you go.

Don't get me wrong though I love the system. We are just about to deploy Your Assistant version 3, don't suppose you have any knowledge of this product?

Also in the pipeline is the bit of Opsman to connect to our active directory (that should be interesting) and the 6500.

Chris Styles

NT4/2000 MCSE

 

[mitelman]

Chris, I am not up to speed with the resiliancy package, but from how I have seen it work it could be a pain, so I can't help you much there. As for the syching to get the names right, it is normal to for it to be done a couple times.

For example, if you have two switches A and B. When a sync happens opsman goes to pbx A and looks for changes, if it finds one it updates its directory and then moves on the PBX B. It propagates the change for PBX so that B is updated, but it may also find a change in B that has to go to A. It records the change, but will not go to deliver that change until the next sync, because it already looked at both switches. That's just the way it works, kinda a dumb.

As for YA 3, we have not installed any yet, but will be soon. We like the new structure as it is a better way of keeping track of how many are out there. The big drawbacks are for us is the fact hat you require a server now, which sucks for upgrades. Also if the server goes down your clients no longer work.

Simon

 

[chrisstyles]

Thanks for that Simon,

I'll let you know how the YA installtion goes. Do you know if you still have to specify which controller the licenses are going on. Now that it's server based I would have thought not, but the reseller is instisting which is a bit of a bummer. At least I won't have to create 300 + individual exe files!

Chris Styles

NT4/2000 MCSE

 

[mitelman]

I haven't done the course yet, been too busy os I don't know aboutthe requirements for deployment.

 

[gphone]

Your OPS Man application seems a little cloogy. I'm not that familiar with the resilency option when using OPS Man but I would take this up with Mitel or your vendor and see what patches they may have. Just sounds wrong, usually thier products are much more stable.

You may also be aware they are changing OPS Man to Enterprise Manager in the OPS Man Rel. 7. Not exactly sure what will be gained there, yet, but we should all know soon.

I've seen the active directory with OPS Man work, its pretty cool.

 

[chrisstyles]

Thanks for this.

I will prod out maintainer about the New Ops man Release, see what if anything they say. If you use the move user command and make their main controller that of which they are currently resilient to, the operation fails as the controller already has that MAC address associated to a set.

You have to move the users main controller to another controller and then back onto the target controller. A pain but it does seem to work.

Upgraded controllers to 4.1.9.5 things seem a bit more stable.

I am also going to look into the AD integration but I think this may be too late now we have done the origional programming.

Chris Styles

NT4/2000 MCSE

 

[MitelLurker]

Mitelman you are incorrect on your assumption about the YA server and if it goes down the clients will no longer be operational. The server is there for licensing options only. If you are running YA and it goes down then you will continue to run as normal.

Also, everyone has this misconception about the word SERVER in regards to the YA server. It is labelled server only because you should have it running all the time so that new clients can load their profiles as they logon. YA server actually runs off of win2k professional and above. It does not require 2k server or 2003 server to run.

Hope this clears up some of the questions for you.

 

[mitelman]

MitelLurker,

my comments about the server and upgrades were in regrads to those customers who have release 2.x now. If they want to upgrade they have to provide another machine to act as server. Mitel is not doing so well when it comes to how they control their apps as they should actually use the 3300 to authenticate the YA's. They are getting really good at putting cost back on the customers.

So if the server goes offline and the YA's will still operate what is the point of having it? I still haven't done the course, I'll get my answer then.

Simon

 

[chrisstyles]

Hi All, Just to make my points known.

The main problem I have with YA is the following.

1. I have a clustered solution, not all users have YA, only about 300. Quite often we have to move users between controllers to solve the pickup group issue. We cannot however move their YA Licenses as these appear to be one time set per sys id.

2. You have to build 300 seperate exe files, hardcoded with the controller information. As I don't have a rule of thumb about what extensions reside on what controller (see point 1) thats a shed load of work to deploy.

So The only reson I could see for the server would be to control licenses and hopefully do away with problem 1 and possible 2. However I can't really get an answer to this from our reseller.

The only thing they have made known is that before we deploy the YA3 upgrade we will have to put our remaining YA 2 licenses on the third cluster element. ?????????

Chris Styles

NT4/2000 MCSE

 

[Chatbox]

Chris,
You mentioned a 6500 'in the pipe'. I don't think Mitel sells 6500 these days, it is a Unified Messaging Server 6700 if I remember correctly? 6700 would do nicely with your AD, but is 6500 Applications Sever a dodo?

Basically, we bought it for Nuance voice recognition platform (in fact, 3300ICP was opted for because of the 6500 with Nuance engine and a basic autoattendant application off the shelf, plus a possibility of developing VoiceXML applications with Enterprise Voice Portal.

Two years on, I still can't find a V-Builder development tool for it. Does anybody play or know who does with Vxml applications on Nuance platform?

Thanks
Richard

 

[chrisstyles]

It was called the 6500 at the time of the quote, but I guess technology has moved on. We are due to have YA 3 installed today as a first step with a Unified Messaging platform to go in afterwards.

I would be interested to hear what you are supposed to be able to do with the VXML stuff. Might have a use for it.

I can ask some questions to our reseller who will go direct to Mitel if that would help you Chatbox.

Chris Styles

NT4/2000 MCSE

 

[Chatbox]

As it was shipped 2 years ago, 6500 server had a basic autoattendant application pre-installed. It allows users to dial e.g. 0 and hear 'Who would you like to call?', then say a name and a surname of a person, or a department, to call by name. It also had a basic voice veryfication - damn good recognition of voice pattern! It had a Nuance v.7 voice recognition engine and Text-To-Speach synthesizer, and Oracle 9 database for all directory entries, so-called Speech Objects etc.

With Enterprise Voice Portal option, 6500 would allow you to place IVR applications written in vxml and jsp/asp. Basically, a caller accesses the root of such application and is presented with a menu (in voice, either pre-recorded or synthesized) and replies with a choise in voice (or DTMF). Further down the road, one may consider applications for manufacturing and logistics environment (to pull an operator away from the terminal and use voice to interact with the computer application - the latter can give the operator instructions of what to do etc.) Also wide spread are banking, paying the bill, informational and booking applications.

OK that was not a salesman bit. Other off the shelf platforms exist, like IBM Websphere speech server, Intel was working on something similar.

A good place to start with vxml is

http://cafe.bevocal.com

Richard