Running Cisco UC Appliances In Proxmox (i.e., CUCM, CUCS, Expressway, IM&P, CMS, CSR1000v)

Hi,
the 1 core only report is because cisco uses this to get the CPU count:

Code: 
sudo dmidecode | sed -n '/Processor Information/,/Status:/ p' |grep Status | grep -vc 'Unpopulated'

For me this is the amount of sockets and not Cores. So, if you give the system 2 sockets with 1 core each instead of 1 socket with two cores, you get 2 vCPU shown.
I could not see a difference in performance. The second Core is used for sure in both configs.

Oh, before you ask dmidecode always reports 2000 MHz for KVM CPUs - no matter the real freq. seems hardcoded.
Weird, I took the opportunity to test, and now I get the right frequency within proxmox:

1747318609674.png
 
Last edited:
On the issue with us migrating to Q35 and getting dumped to a dracut shell with no disks I managed to fix it by doing surgery on the rootfs (this thread has given me a lot more confidence lmao).

Tl;dr:
  1. Boot live linux environment from CD on the same machine (Arch worked for me)
  2. Mount the various UCOS partitions in the correct places (there is a chance you may need to swap 1 and 2):
    1. Partition 1 on `/mnt`
    2. Partition 2 on `/mnt/partB`
    3. Partition 3 on `/mnt/grub`
    4. Partition 6 on `/mnt/common`
  3. `arch-chroot /mnt` - this is effectively `chroot` with some extra steps built in
  4. `dracut -f --kver KVER` where `KVER` is the latest directory name in `/usr/lib/modules`
  5. `grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg`

Exit and reboot.
 
Last edited:
rhysperry111 said:
On the issue with us migrating to Q35 and getting dumped to a dracut shell with no disks I managed to fix it by doing surgery on the rootfs (this thread has given me a lot more confidence lmao).

Tl;dr:
  1. Boot live linux environment from CD on the same machine (Arch worked for me)
  2. Mount the various UCOS partitions in the correct places:
    1. Partition 1 on `/mnt`
    2. Partition 2 on `/mnt/partB`
    3. Partition 3 on `/mnt/grub`
    4. Partition 4 on `/mnt/common`
  3. `arch-chroot /mnt` - this is effectively `chroot` with some extra steps built in
  4. `dracut -f --kver KVER` where `KVER` is the latest directory name in `/usr/lib/modules`
  5. `grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg`

Exit and reboot.
Click to expand...
I think common is partition 6, 4 is the extended partition "cage" and 5 is swap...
And root and PartB depend on weather the system did a switch version before or not, so you can e.g. look at the timestamps there to see which one is the "current" active root partition.
 
Highman said:
Hi there,

I'd like to share the the info I gathered during my 10+ years now of running my CUCM on KVM (ubuntu before and now proxmox).

If you want to use the included (but not officially supported) KVM scripts:

1) For hardware detection scripts, you need "Cisco/hssi/server_implementation/KVM/QEMU/shared/bin/api_implementation.sh". There is a "api_implementation.sh.proposed" which after a rename didn't work for me. So I took the one from RHEV (from Cisco/hssi/server_implementation/KVM/RHEV/shared/bin/api_implementation.sh") and copied it to "Cisco/hssi/server_implementation/KVM/QEMU/shared/bin/api_implementation.sh".

2) I configured the VM with 10GB of RAM as suggested by Cisco Virtualization guidelines. The hwdetect.sh from cisco needs dmidetect to report RAM in MB and not GB. If you configure 10240 MB RAM in proxmox (10GB) it reports 10 GB - which throws an error. If you make it 10000 MB, it works.

3) For the hardware support scripts you have to change the file "Cisco/install/conf/callmanager_product.conf".
There's a "<server_models>" section and it contains this line:

Code: 
VAL,   VMware,     *,      *,    *,    110,     *,      *,    0,      *

The VMware must be changed to "*", so that it is like this:
Code: 
VAL,        *,     *,      *,    *,    110,     *,      *,    0,      *

Do not use TAB, use spaces.


I also found a way how to fool the hardware-detect scripts by Cisco and let them think it's running in a VMWare VM. This way, there's no need to modify the stock ISO.

In Proxmox, create a VM with the following settings:
- BIOS (not UEFI),
- machine type q35 (didn verify if the old i440fx would also work, but q35 is newer/better)
- virtio SCSI controller for best performance and the harddisk as scsi0 - NOT virtio0
- in options in Proxmox, go to the SMBIOS settings (type1) and set Manufacturer to VMware and Version to 6.100:
View attachment 85330

Then you can install as usual and will be able to make it through setup:
View attachment 85332

I've integrated qemu guest tools, but that is another story, write me if interested...
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for the tip! On the qemu guest tools, how did you get it install? Did you end up getting root level access to UCOS and then install the guest agent package manually?
 
isakmp said:
Thank you so much for the tip! On the qemu guest tools, how did you get it install? Did you end up getting root level access to UCOS and then install the guest agent package manually?
Click to expand...
That is possible, but I went another way (and edited the CUCM15 ISO file):

1) in the file "Cisco/hssi/server_implementation/VMWARE/shared/bin/install_pool.meta" scoll down and modify as follows:

before:
Code: 
100    pre-reboot    migrateVMwareTools.sh
200    post-reboot   platform-scsi-watchdog-1.0.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm
after:
Code: 
100    pre-reboot    migrateVMwareTools.sh
101    pre-reboot    qemu-guest-agent-6.2.0-53.module_el8.10.0+3906+b8f20084.2.x86_64.rpm
200    post-reboot   platform-scsi-watchdog-1.0.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm

2) download AlmaLinux Qemu-Guest-Tools into the folder "/Cisco/hssi/install_pool" on the DVD.

Code: 
wget https://rpmfind.net/linux/almalinux/8.10/AppStream/x86_64/os/Packages/qemu-guest-agent-6.2.0-53.module_el8.10.0+3906+b8f20084.2.x86_64.rpm

3) enjoy ;)

This way, the installer takes care and installs the qemu-guest tools for you.
 
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Highman said:
That is possible, but I went another way (and edited the CUCM15 ISO file):

1) in the file "Cisco/hssi/server_implementation/VMWARE/shared/bin/install_pool.meta" scoll down and modify as follows:

before:
Code: 
100    pre-reboot    migrateVMwareTools.sh
200    post-reboot   platform-scsi-watchdog-1.0.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm
after:
Code: 
100    pre-reboot    migrateVMwareTools.sh
101    pre-reboot    qemu-guest-agent-6.2.0-53.module_el8.10.0+3906+b8f20084.2.x86_64.rpm
200    post-reboot   platform-scsi-watchdog-1.0.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm

2) download AlmaLinux Qemu-Guest-Tools into the folder "/Cisco/hssi/install_pool" on the DVD.

Code: 
wget https://rpmfind.net/linux/almalinux/8.10/AppStream/x86_64/os/Packages/qemu-guest-agent-6.2.0-53.module_el8.10.0+3906+b8f20084.2.x86_64.rpm

3) enjoy ;)

This way, the installer takes care and installs the qemu-guest tools for you.
Click to expand...
Learned alot!!! Thank you for tip!
 
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