Cisco: "CME Upgrade" -- by Alan Visnyai

Alan has been kind enough to share his experience in an CallManager Express upgrade he went through.  Very good guest posting by Alan Visnyai.  -Shane Killen

CME upgrade: by Alan Visnyai

I wanted to update you on the UC520 upgrade.  No licensing issues were encountered.  From what I gathered, the licensing for the UC500-series only deals with number of users/features, not the version of software that's loaded.

I did encounter a couple of speed bumps (as usual), which I will share later in this message.  Just to recap, the system was upgraded from CME 7.0.0/CUE 3.2.1/IOS uc500-advipservicesk9-mz.124-20.T2 to CME 8.1/CUE 8.0.6/IOS uc500-advipservicesk9-mz.151-2.T4.

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OS Description  Cisco Internetwork Operating System
Cisco IOS (tm) UC500
Cisco IOS Software  UC500-ADVIPSERVICESK9-M
Software Version  15.1(2)T4 / CME 8.1
Feature Package  IP|IPv6|BGP|IS-IS|FIREWALL|VOICE|PLUS|QoS|HA|NAT|3DES|MPLS|VPN|SSH|IPSE
GUI Version  8.0.0.0 (Compatible with IOS 12.5(1)XA)
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UC500-CUE# sh soft pack

Installed Packages:

 - Installer (Installer application) (8.0.6.0)
 - Thirdparty (Service Engine Thirdparty Code) (8.0.6)
 - Bootloader (Primary) (Service Engine Bootloader) (1.0.3)
 - Infrastructure (Service Engine Infrastructure) (8.0.6)
 - Global (Global manifest) (8.0.6)
 - Service Engine license (License for the Service Engine) (2.1.2.0)
 - Auto Attendant (Service Engine Telephony Infrastructure) (8.0.6)
 - Voice Mail (Voicemail application) (8.0.6)
 - Bootloader (Secondary) (Service Engine Bootloader) (1.0.3.0)
 - Core (Service Engine OS Core) (8.0.6)
 - GPL Infrastructure (Service Engine GPL Infrastructure) (8.0.6)

Installed Plug-ins:

 - CUE Voicemail Language Support (Languages global pack) (8.0.6)
 - CUE Voicemail US English (English language pack) (8.0.6)

UC500-CUE# sh soft ver
Cisco Unity Express version (8.0.6)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport Copyright (c) 1986-2010 by Cisco Systems, Inc.

Components:

 - CUE Voicemail Language Support version  8.0.6

UC500-CUE#
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I connected a card reader to my PC and copied the IOS and CME files directly to the CF card.  (I've encountered issues in the past where, for some reason, when the router read the CF, it changed the case of some filenames and directories, and since case is important, it would break certain features.  Thought I'd try it anyhow.)
I downloaded the CUE upgrade files to the CUE, just to save time during the actual upgrade process.
After inserting the CF card in the UC520 and rebooting, my VLAN interfaces showed in an up/down state.  After some head-scratching and a quick Internet search, discovered that the VLANs were not there (forgot that vlan.dat needed to reside on the CF; I copied it from the nvram of the system, but did not copy it to the CF).  Once the VLANs were created, traffic flowed.
The CME GUI did not work.  Ended up the gui folder was renamed to GUI.  After renaming the folder from GUI to gui, I was able to access the GUI login screen, but the drop-down menu items did not work.  The sn folder contained flash files that controlled the menus, and that folder was renamed SN.  After doing the rename "game" again, the CME GUI worked (and was pretty responsive).
I was able to perform a direct upgrade of CUE and retain the existing saved messages, trees, etc.  For some reason, I could not upgrade from the files I (at least thought) downloaded to the CUE.  No worries, I just configured FTP on my laptop and had CUE read the files from there and perform the upgrade.  It took 15-20 minutes from the start of the upgrade until it came on-line.  The 8.0 CUE GUI looked very different than the 3.2.1 version (the new format fits the Small Business GUI theme, and it seemed to work well).  The upgrade retained all of the saved voice messages, AA tree, etc.
Configuring CME to serve the correct phone firmware has always been trial-and-error for me.  I discovered that the version of 7941/7961 and 7975 firmware provided with the package was too new for the phones.  Had to perform a 2-step upgrade. (The 524G and 7921 phones upgraded in one step.)

Hopefully my experience will help others.  -- Alan Visnyai