Introduction to Dedicated Instance (DI)
Without disrupting your business, you can move your calling and unified communications to the cloud. With features and integrations comparable to or superior to those of your on-premises systems and greater control over upgrades and integrations, it provides a cutting-edge user experience.
The DI add-on for Webex Calling includes:
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager
- Cisco Unified IM and Presence
- Cisco Unified Unity Connection
- Cisco Expressway
- Cisco Emergency Responder (Americas region only)
- Cisco Session Management Edition (SME) - based on approval from Cisco
Extended ROI – Dedicated Instance supports the same voice and video endpoints as the associated UC Manager release, eliminating the requirement to refresh all customer endpoints when migrating to the cloud and extending the ROI of these assets.
Basic Inter-Op – Dedicated Instance is integrated with Webex Calling for call routing through the Webex platform. Customers can distribute users across Dedicated Instance and Webex Calling and adjust over time to address their cloud calling business requirements.
Customer administrators who split users across platforms will experience different features. The calling features aren’t harmonized between Dedicated Instance and Webex Calling. For example, Webex Calling users can’t be part of a hunt group on Dedicated Instance.
Simple Migration Path
Dedicated Instance for Webex Calling provides a simplified cloud migration path from legacy PBX and on-premises Unified Communications Manager systems.
Dedicated Instance alleviates the pain points associated with enterprise calling migrations to the cloud:
- No Disruptions – Dedicated Instance has the same features, functionality, user experience, and integration options supported by Unified Communications Manager deployed on-premises, including Jabber and Webex App support. This creates a frictionless migration to the cloud with no end-user or administrator training required for existing Unified Communications Manager customers. Dedicated Instances can be trunked to third-party PBXs, allowing new Cisco customers a flexible migration schedule.
- Customization – A dedicated private instance for every customer allows for a highly customizable cloud deployment, a unique differentiator from other cloud calling offers in the market. Dedicated Instance’s open APIs enable deep third-party application integrations allowing customers to build a calling environment that supports unique business workflows.
- Uncompromised Security – With Dedicated Instance, customer admins can access all the Unified Communications Manager security features for Endpoints and UC applications like encrypted media, secure SRST, and secure OTT registration using MRA.
In addition, customer admins have access to important physical security features like Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) for site connectivity in the event network links go down and Cisco Emergency Responder and Nomadic E911 to ensure employees can be located by emergency responders when in the office or in a hybrid mode of work.
Availability
The Dedicated Instance service is available worldwide and can be purchased as an add-on for Webex Calling Flex Plan 3.0 in particular nations.
The same level of localization as our on-premise Unified Communications Manager is supported by Dedicated Instance. It has clients in more than 30 languages, a self-care portal available in 50 languages, and phone and gateway tones available in 82 countries.
Benefits
Customers of Unified Communications Manager who are already on-premises can take advantage of the following significant advantages when migrating to the cloud using Dedicated Instance:
- Dedicated Calling application instance in Webex Data Centers.
- Customizable Calling platform.
- Flexible, quickly scalable architecture.
- Familiar user experience, reducing the need for employee retraining.
- Unified client for calling, messaging, meetings, and team collaboration that is usable across all device types.
- Compatibility with Cisco’s full portfolio of phones, gateways, and video devices.
- Integrates with Webex meetings, messaging, and calling as part of the Webex suite, enabling an amazing end-to-end customer experience.
Backup of UC Applications
Cisco backs up all UC applications deployed in Dedicated Instance every evening. The latest 4 acceptable backups are saved in the data center. The backups are password protected and will only be used to restore the UC application during disaster recovery.
In the event of a major hardware failure, if the entire cluster is down, the cluster can be reinstalled, and the data will be restored from the DRS backup taken daily. Depending on the size of the database and the components that you choose to restore, the system can be restored to the last known good backup.
This is not a change backout strategy, and administrators will not have access to these backups.
Base configuration in Control Hub
In Base configuration, the Dedicated Instance Webex Calling configuration in the Control Hub, which includes the Unified Communication application, is detailed at a high level.
Base configuration includes configuration details about the Dedicated Instance for Webex Calling System Configuration (Dedicated Instance) that is built for a customer which includes Unified Communications (UC) applications:
- Cisco Unified Communication Manager (Unified CM).
- Cisco Unified Instant Message and Presence (IM&P).
- Cisco Unified Unity Connection (CUCxN) and
- Cisco Emergency Responder (CER).
- Edge components (Cisco Expressways).
Cisco Configured Components
Cisco configures multiple components in the Customer’s Dedicated Instance UC applications. For these components to be easily identifiable, Cisco inserts an “x” at the beginning of the component's name. This x prefix alerts partners to a Cisco-configured name that administrators should not modify or delete. This format is also used for Cisco’s Operational monitoring/readiness of the Dedicated Instance UC applications.
Administrators should not modify or delete any of the following unless the Dedicated Instance document explicitly mentions changing a customer-specific configuration in the SIP trunks:
- Region entries associated with resources in the Datacenter (DC), i.e., Conference bridges, SIP trunks, etc.
- Device pool entries that are associated with devices in Cisco’s Data Center.
- Security configurations as required
- Credential policy configuration
- SIP security profile configuration
- Cisco configured SIP Trunks for various services integration, i.e., RedSky, Inter-op trunk to Webex Calling Multi-tenant, etc.
- Cisco configures two CDR destinations in Unified CM to monitor the application and provide analytics in Control Hub for administrators.
Control Hub Webex Calling
Network and security requirements
DNS Requirements
For Dedicated Instance, Cisco provides the FQDN for the service in each region with the following format <customer>.<region>.wxc-di.webex.com for example, xyz.amer.wxc-di.webex.com.
The administrator provides the ‘customer’ value as part of the First Time Setup Wizard (FTSW).
DNS records for this FQDN must be resolvable from the customer’s internal DNS server to support on-premise devices connecting to the Dedicated Instance. To facilitate resolution, the admin needs to configure a Conditional Forwarder, for this FQDN, on their DNS server pointing to the Dedicated Instance DNS service. The Dedicated Instance DNS service is regional and can be reached, via the peering to Dedicated Instance, using the following IP addresses mentioned in the below table.
The ping option is disabled for the above mentioned DNS server IPS addresses for security reasons.
Once the conditional forwarding is in place, devices will be able to register to the Dedicated Instance from the customer's internal network via the peering links. Conditional forwarding is not required for registration via Mobile and Remote Access (MRA), as all the required external DNS records to facilitate MRA will be pre-provisioned by Cisco.
When using the Webex application as your calling soft client on Dedicated Instance, a UC Manager Profile needs to be configured in Control Hub for each region’s Voice Service Domain (VSD).
Port Numbers and Protocols
The following tables describe the ports and protocols that are supported in Dedicated Instance. Ports that are used for a given customer depend on the Customer’s deployment and solution. Protocols depend on the customer’s preference (SCCP vs. SIP), existing on-premises devices, and what level of security to determine which ports are to be used in each deployment.
Dedicated Instance doesn't allow Network Address Translation (NAT) between endpoints and Unified CM as some of the call flow features won't work.
The ports available for customers - between the Customer on-premises and Dedicated Instance are shown below. All the ports listed below are for customer traffic traversing the peering links.
SNMP port is supported only for CER functionality and not for any other third-party monitoring tools.
Cisco reserves ports in the range of 5063 to 5080 for other cloud integrations.
Partner or customer administrators are recommended to refrain from using these ports in their configurations.
{{Dedicated Instance-table-2="/compontents"}}
Dedicated Instance - OTT Ports
Customers and Partners can use the following port for Mobile and Remote Access (MRA) setup:
Dedicated Instance - UCCX Ports
Customers and Partners can use the following list of ports for configuring UCCX.
Control Hub - Webex Calling
|
Component |
Cisco Assigned Name |
Details |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Location Services → Calling → Location |
|
Location is mandatory for activation of Interop SIP trunk between Webex Calling and Dedicated Instance.
|
||
|
SIP Trunk Services → Calling → Call Routing → Trunk |
|
SIP trunk one to each Dedicated Instance datacenter within a region is configured for basic interop between Webex Calling
|
||
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Route Group Services → Calling → Call Routing → Route Group |
|
Route Groups are configured with the Interop SIP trunks and administrator can easily configure or link their custom Dial Plan |
