A rather remarkable case of the introduction of video conferencing in one industrial enterprise

An industrial enterprise combines several factories, between which quite a lot of traffic flows through its own network, but sometimes external people like government customers need to be connected to VKS sessions.



Initially, the customer had a fairly reliable, but outdated VKS-infrastructure on Thandberg, which it was decided to modernize. Plus, the task was to ensure maximum disaster tolerance in case several factory facilities were suddenly destroyed.

The main integration solution for the project was the Cisco Meeting Server platform. This is software that allows you to combine a large number of participants with various equipment or without it in the framework of virtual meetings. And before, the customer had great difficulties with this.

It was like this:

Problems of the "old" videoconferencing infrastructure

1. Only 6 HD ports on the conference server. This is not enough, but expanding them was more expensive than buying a new CMS with great capabilities.
2. The integration with Lync has broken (in the previous integration scheme, the Cisco VCS Control server was used as a gateway). It needed to be restored, but according to the old scheme, the price of one Lync connection to the conference turned out to be expensive. The introduction of the Cisco Meeting Server allowed us to rebuild integration with Lync and connect “unlimited” Lync users for free.
3. Old Jabber Video for TelePresence clients (formerly Tandberg Movi) are no longer developing. Therefore, it was necessary to replace them with Cisco Jabber or Lync (optional), especially taking into account the reduction in the cost of connecting a Lync subscriber due to integration through CMS.

This is how the infrastructure initially looked:

• multipoint conference server CTP MCU 4501 on 6 HD or 12 SD video ports
• CTP VCS Control internal call control server for 10 simultaneous connections
• CTP VCS Expressway external call management system server for 5 simultaneous connections
• Cisco TMS videoconferencing management system server with the ability to service up to 25 devices and connect up to 25 Cisco Jabber Movi software clients
• CTP VCR 2210 video conferencing session recording server. The video terminal subsystem contained four video terminals equipped with a PTZ camera, microphone, and display and audio tools. The subsystem included: Tandberg C40 - 1 pc.; Tandberg C20 - 3 pcs.

Modernization went smoothly and without snot.

results

On the new infrastructure, the customer can hold 3 conferences at the same time (in terms of the number of licenses purchased) for 64 HD subscribers of any type, including jabbers and links. Plus, if necessary, you can easily increase the number of such conferences.

Who did not want to change the client - stayed on Link. Now you can connect people through a browser to one-time events - these are contractors and guest participants. A virtually unlimited number of connections from Link was added - and in these conferences you can exchange content in both directions without hindrance.

Transferred all hardware servers to virtual ones. Built a fault tolerant network. Gateways are now through different carriers. Different data centers with servers, that is, when the operator crashes or when one of the communication data centers crashes, the system is operational.

The central host of the Cisco Meeting Server is not fault-tolerant because it is one. But if you destroy it, the new routing system will allow you to hold a conference on old equipment (that is, there will be a limit on the number of participants, but in case of network degradation it will be fearless). Plus there are p2p connections in the worst case.

Here is the composition of the main server node:

• two hardware servers for Cisco Business Edition 6000M SVKS software
• Cisco Multiparty Media 410v Multipoint Conference Hardware Server
• existing MCU multipoint conference server hardware
• existing hardware VCR recording server.

The equipment used by Cisco UCS C220

Software is as follows:

• CUCM Call Management Server
• Cisco IM & Presence Instant Messaging Server
• Cisco Meeting Server Multipoint Conference Server
• servers for communication with external networks Cisco Expressway-C and Expressway-E
• Cisco TMS Conference Planning Server

All this is rolled out on virtual machines under VMWare ESXi on the host's physical servers. To organize fault-tolerant server clusters, manufacturer's standard solutions are used.

fault tolerance

Fault tolerance is provided primarily for call management systems in the form of CUCM / IMP, Expressway-C and Expressway-E servers. For multipoint conferences, the fault tolerance is partial - in the event of a failure of the Cisco Meeting Server, some of its functions are taken over by the Cisco TelePresence MCU 4501, and the other part of the functionality (web clients, MS Lync subscribers) disappears before the server is restored. The main hardware components of hardware (power supplies, hard drives) are backed up. All server components of the SVKS (except for the existing MCU and VCR) - software, are installed on virtual machines running VMWare ESXi v5.5 (СMS) or v6.0 (other components).




I hope this was useful to you in case of upgrading your own infrastructure.

References

• What is videoconferencing and why is it needed
• Cisco MS Overview
• Tales of VKS engineers
• About CMS on our website
• My mail for questions: EDmitriev@croc.ru