UCCX.Net Team,

I am proud to announce that as of January 19, 2010, I have successfully completed the Cisco CCIE Voice lab at Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina, becoming CCIE Voice #25853.  Below is a video showing you my home lab setup, and also a story on how I studied and completed the lab. 

I began studying for the exam over two years ago in 2007 and have been deploying Cisco Voice for over 6 years.  Over the course of the last two years I/my employer have spent roughly $17k for equipment, preparation materials, travel, and the cost of 6 attempts to pass the lab at $1500 per attempt.  Now some might be laughing while reading this saying why did it take 6 attempts, I took 3 attempts on the old version 2 CCIE blueprint and 3 on the new version 3 blueprint. 

I actually built a fully working three site Cisco IP Telephony distributed architecture deployment in my lab at home.  The lab consisted of the following equipment:

I had a HP DL380 G6 Server with 32Gig of Ram, Quad Core processor(s), running into a Storage Area Network with 6 Terabytes of storage.  This server was running VMWare ESX 4, which I used to build all of my Cisco UC Applications into.  I chose to use this setup for one specific reason, Snapshots!  As any good Voice engineer will tell you it takes about 2 hours to install a green CUCM Server from scratch, and that is on a good day!  So to have the ability to configure a CUCM Server and rollback to a virgin state was invaluable. 

At my main headquarters site I had a 2811 router with a VWIC2-1MFT-T1 and a WIC-1DSU-T1v2 providing a PRI interface for testing digital telephony and a frame relay circuit for WAN connectivity.  Not my first choice for a WAN technology but it is what is on the blueprint.  I also had a Catalyst 3560 PoE switch with a smorgus board of IP Phones including 7960, 7942, 7965, and 7941's.  I chose this to be able to fully test End-to-End SIP Trunking from the carrier all the way to the phones.  I had redundant CUCM 7.1(3) Servers, a Cisco Unity Connection 7.x Server, Unified Contact Center Express 7.x, and Cisco Unified Presense 7.x server all virtualized into to the ESX Server.  I also virtualized a Windows XP box to have for testing various applications such as Cisco Agent and Supervisor Desktops, Cisco Unified Presense Client, and Secure CRT running SSH profiles for all appliance servers and access to all routers and switches. I also configured an ASA 5505 for remote VPN based access.  This was especially handy for me when I was traveling for work, or wanted to test such things as ASA Phone Proxy, etc.  Having a dedicated lab and the ability to take your time and test was what really made the difference.  I am all for various online rental companies such as Proctor Labs etc, but I always felt rushed since they sell 8 hour blocks. 

My first remote branch office had a Cisco 2801 router running a HWIC-4ESW module which provided four integrated switch ports.  If you have ever had the joy of configuring an ESW module you may have scratched your head for a bit, as it is trunked for voice VLAN access.  The branch router was configured with SRST for survivability and had 2 IP Phones including a 7965 and 7960.  Again I wanted to test multiple SIP configurations.  SIP Dial rules are needed on any Cisco Gen 1 phone, which is a good thing to know due to the large numbers of these phones in existence today.  A VWIC and WIC card provided carrier connections to the HQ site via PRI and Frame Relay.  I chose to test both MLPPP and FRF.12 QoS schemes on these remote routers. 

My second remote branch office was a Cisco 2811 router running a CUE ( Cisco Unity Express ) module for local branch voicemail capability.  The CUE module was actually integrated with the CUCM server using JTAPI.  For those who have never had the joy of configuring CUE for CUCM I would suggest googling it, you may find a good whitepaper on the subject.  Again a VWIC and WIC provided Digital PRI and Frame Relay capability to the branch.  I also used this branch to test the latest CUCME 7.x code and re-configured the CUE module for connectivity to a Call Manager Express router.  CUCME 7.x provides a plethora of additional features such as "octo-line" capability where you can have 8 calls per line on an IP Phone. 

Perhaps the hardest part of my journey was having to turn my hat backwards late one night and actually design and build "The Cloud".  I had all the equipment for the branches and the headquarters site but I had no idea how to build a working PSTN PRI Simulator or a Frame Relay switch.  This provided me HOURS of frustration.  I purchased a 3725 router off of eBay for a Frame Switch and learned very quickly that I dislike frame relay a great deal.  I will have to give thanks to one of my mentors, Steve Foy, who showed me how to actually achieve this task. 

Also, I purchased a Cisco 2801 and loaded it up with PVDM's, a 2 port VWIC, and a single VWIC to terminate all of my PRI's into the PSTN router. I built a second CUCM Cluster running on a differnet subnet to provide the "brains" of the PSTN PRI Simulator.  The hardest part of my journey was learning to program that call manager to act as a Verizon PSTN switch.  I had to become quite adapt at Gateway Calling Search Spaces, Translation profiles and patterns, and ANI and DNIS Transformation Patterns which are a new concept in CUCM 6,7, and soon to be 8. 

<?xml:namespace prefix ="" o ns ="" "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> Having to master the global dial plan concept which was talked about at Networkers 2009 was perhaps the most difficult part of the journey, as it requires you to take a step back from how many engineer's traditionally configure a LINE/DEVICE approach in CUCM.  Realizing how to use Partitions and CSS's to your advantage and only needing a handful of route patterns matching global E.164 formatted numbers was exciting.  Calling and Called Party Transformations are perhaps the most under-utilized concept in any Linux based CUCM server.  The magic that ties this all together is the Local Route List/Group and Device Mobility.   

In closing, I cherish my CCIE Voice number, it was a career changing day for me to receive that number, as it means I am an expert in my field.  And if you don't agree then I urge you to take the test and see for yourself.   

Alex Hannah

CCIE Voice #25853    

CCIE Verification Tool: http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/ccie/employers/index.html

My CCIE is listed under William Hannah, my first name.