CUCM On Premise + CUCM Cloud supported?

[Jonathan Galvez]

Hi team,

unfortunately, I could not find the answer in the Cisco docs. I have a customer who wants to add a new location to the on-premises Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM). The new location is quite large, and I want to install a new CUCM node. They are planning to move everything to the cloud, so they do not want to invest in new hardware and prefer to install the new node directly in the cloud.

My question is: Is this scenario supported? I mean, having some nodes on-premises and one in the cloud (either Cisco or elsewhere)?

Kindly send me a link to this documentation.

Many thanks,

Jonathan

[b.winter]

If you meet all the requirements for Cluster over WAN and all the requirements for virtualizing the VM in the cloud, and you have a solution on how to connect the nodes, there shouldn't be a problem:.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/srnd/collab12/collab12/models.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/uc_system/virtualization/cisco-collaboration-virtualization.html

[Roger Kallberg]

In theory I would say that yes this is correct, but in reality there are likely not that many options to actually achieve this as the only to me known cloud CM offering around these days are Webex Calling Dedicated Instance, ie CM that runs on Cisco Data Centers, and that does not from what I know include the option to run a node that is part of the on-prem CM system landscape.

[Ashish Patel]

See

https://help.webex.com/en-us/article/nwb8iyx/How-to-Activate-Enhanced-Survivability
But this is NOT for full time deployment this Is only for when there is a failure to the Webex Calling Dedicated Instance.
Thanks
ashish

[Roger Kallberg]

I know about Enhanced Survivability Node, but that doesn’t fit what the OP is asking for as he wants to deploy a CM node in a cloud DC that is part of a on-prem cluster. That’s not what a DI ESN is used for.

[b.winter]

But you could host the VM's at any datacenter provider of your choice, nobody says, that you need to use "Cisco" as the DC provider.

[Roger Kallberg]

True as long as that cloud DC has VMware ESXi as no other virtualization offer is applicable.

[b.winter]

That's true, that's why I wrote "... requirements for virtualizing ..."

[Simran S]

There are a few variables here... Firstly, if this is just a new location then how big is it really in terms of endpoints ? Have you done the calculation to see if these new endpoints can be accommodated on the already existing cluster ?

As far as having a mixture of nodes between on-prem & cloud is concerned, that will not be ideal especially from TAC support point of view. Technically, you can do it as long as the network components are in place. You can spin off a Subscriber VM in the cloud and have it communicate with on-prem Publisher. I haven't seen that being actually implemented and I am very sure that such sort of deployment will not be supported by TAC. The other solution is Webex DI deployment which involves setting up an entire cluster in Cisco hosted DC. You can use that if the objective was to have an independent environment for this new location & then connect it to the on-prem cluster over SIP trunk to enable calling across both clusters but that doesn't seem to be your case. 

If the objective is specifically to have just one node in the cloud while keeping the rest of the nodes including Publisher on-prem then as far as my understanding goes, it's not possible/supported/recommended.

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/uc_system/virtualization/cisco-collaboration-infrastructure.html#Compatibility

If the customer doesn't want to invest in a new UCS hardware just for this location & there is no way to accommodate new location on the already existing cluster then you can check if there are any non-Cisco servers available in your environment which are in Cisco's compatibility list & work on VMware ESXi. You can use that to spin off the new node... otherwise the options are limited.