CUCM 8.5.1 Install and upgrade Facts

As you may be aware that CUCM 8.5.1 was launched sometime in late December 2010. It was eagerly awaited by everyone in cisco world for the simple fact that some of the previous versions of CUCM could not be upgraded to 8.x ( example CUCM 7.1.5)
Throughout the weekend i was totally after it and finally managed to upgrade.

I wanted to share some of the facts that i found while working on it.

1. CUCM 8.5.1 is suported on VMware but a DVD installation of this software is not supported on VM so the only option is to get a iso file and store it in local datastore or somewhere on network and then install. It took me lot of time to realise this ( this is documented in CUCM VMware comnpatibility guide)

2. Fact # 2 : CUCM 8.5.1 download from Cisco.com ( it comes in 3 signature files which you will have merge into a single file ) is not a bootable file ( be awere its documented in release notes of 8.5.1 that its bootable file but it is not ) so you will probably have to install 8.0.3 ( which is a bootable ...very interesting ) and then upgrade to CUCM 8.5.1

3. Fact # 3 is CUCM 8.0.3 and several other versions of CUCM ( i think few version in 7.x
) in cisco download are bootable files and can be used for fresh install or upgrades. I read somewhere that cisco is now moving in this direction and coming uploads on cisco download will most likely be bootable only. Not sure whey they mis documented this for 8.5.1


4. Fact # 4 when upgrading from 8.0.3 to 8.5.1 the amount of time to upgrade per server is nearly 3 hrs, while doing the upgrade i almost lost the patience at one place ( because there was no console messages on screen for almost 1 hr) but patience finally paid off..heheheh

5. fact CUPS software on Cisco download is not a bootable version, get it from Cisco PUT.

Its too late and time to go to bed, i will keep posting the info as it comes.

Any questions pls leave a message and i will try to reply

I wanted to add another valuable piece of information specially for VM deployments.

When generating license file do not use MAC mentioned under OS admin page Network MAC. Use CLI command " show status " to get the MAC and use that MAC to generate license file.

It took Licensing in Cisco and TAC to figure this out and was very frustrating..hope this will help!