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Where to start with monitoring call manager

Hi, I would like to start monitoring Cisco call manager with my Solarwinds products. At present we have NPM 11.5.3, NCM 7.4.1, SAM 6.2.3 and VNQM 4.2.3 installed. My guess is that each of the 4 modules I've mentioned can do something in terms of monitoring/reporting on call manager.

Would anybody like to provide me with an example of how they are using the above mentioned modules to  monitor/report call mgr.?

Here's the versions of call mgr I will be adding to Solarwinds...8.6, 8.0, 10.5, 9.1

I'm not too familiar with call mgr, though I am sure I'll be getting ore familiar soon!

Any help, pointers, starting points appreciated

  • The Solarwinds modules you have work great with Cisco callmanagers.  With NPM, you get the up/down status, response time(per your local network), and other SNMP statistics such as network interface bandwidth utilization, CPU/Mem(may not be on callmanagers, don't remember, but in theory you get it in NPM), and other basic SNMP statistics such as operating system, vendor, and machine type. 

    With VNQM, if your particular CUCM support CDR/CMR(which they should), you can monitor the call performance metrics found within the CDR of every VoIP call to keep track of VoIP network health and maintain voice quality efficiencies.

    Cisco CallManager Support capability in VNQM provides the ability to search, filter, and display call detail records (CDRs) to aid in troubleshooting.  So in other words, you get the success/failure status, jitter, latency, packet loss metrics for every single call.  You can also configure VoIP ip sla operations(synthetic/fake voice traffic) in your call paths between Cisco switches that support ip sla, and with that you get the latency, jitter, rtt, and packet loss for those paths.

    Check out the fully functional Orion Demo site.  Solarwinds has a demo site that is running against their devices:  http://oriondemo.solarwinds.com/Orion/Voip/Summary.aspx?Tab=VoIP

    SAM has a CallManager application template(s) which consist of multiple SNMP monitors such as number of unregistered phones, unresponsive phones, etc.  See below:

    thwack_cucm.PNG

    NCM, in theory, you can back up the configs and push scripts/changes to networking devices.  I have never used callmanagers with NCM, so I am not 100% sure you can use it in NCM.

  • Thanks @Parker_robinson for a very helpful answer, I'll have a look at each of the points you made and let you know how I got on. Appreciate the input!!

  • I also used a Call Manager template in SAM at my last job.  That collected additional stats about the Call Managers itself like when gateways fell offline, number of phones, when the number of phones changes over x amount, and some other things.