An IP phone is a physical instrument that acts as a telephone that uses Voice over IP technology. In the VoIP environment, the medium used to transmit the telephone service are the cables of the computer network. An IP phone can transmit audio-only information, or video and audio information.

The VoIP Management Suite supports IP phones for these vendors: Avaya, Cisco, and Nortel.

For example, below image illustrates an example of a VoIP deployment that uses a Cisco Call Manager cluster.

A VoIP deployment may contain many hardware entities, including call servers and media servers, media gateways, media modules, circuit packs, telephones including speakerphones, and Ethernet switches. Some host servers, such as the call server providing the call manager service, contain applications for database management, device initialization, device control, voice mail, and software conferencing. While other host servers, called dedicated servers, run only a single application.

Figure 1. Single-site deployment discovered by VoIP Availability Manager—example

In VoIP Availability Manager topology, an IP phone is:

  • Associated with its physical switch port

  • A member of a logical IP phone group

    IP Phone Scenario image illustrates IP phones that are members of a logical IP phone group. IP phones are associated with a call agent using RegisteredTo relationships. Conversely, the call agent is associated with IP phones using RegisteredFrom relationships.

    In IP Phone Scebario image, IP phone A is registered to a call agent. Depending on the vendor, a call agent can be an Avaya Converged Call Manager, a Cisco Call Manager, or a Nortel Signaling Server.

    An IP phone is also associated with a port on a switch using the ConnectedPort relationship. The port is associated with the IP phone using the ConnectsPhone relationship.

    A logical IP phone group corresponds to:

  • A configuration for Avaya. The IP phones configured to register to a specific converged call manager are treated as an IP phone group. The phone-related information is stored in G3 MIB tables. During the VoIP Availability Manager discovery, the information is accessed using SNMP.

  • A device pool for Cisco. The Cisco system administrator assigns IP phones to device pools. The phone-related information is stored in Cisco-CCME-MIB and Cisco-CCM-MIB tables. During the VoIP Availability Manager discovery, the information is accessed using SNMP and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

  • A zone for Nortel. The Nortel system administrator defines zones of managed IP phones. The phone-related information is stored in a Nortel signaling server and call server. During the VoIP Availability Manager discovery, the information is accessed using Nortel CLI commands.

    Figure 2. IP phone scenario

    VoIP Availability Manager discovers, monitors, and performs root-cause analysis on VoIP-enabled devices like IP phones, logical components like IP phone groups, and services like media servers.

    The following are analysis examples:

  • When a network segment fails, the IP phones in the segment are unavailable to make and receive phone calls. Their RegistrationStatus attribute changes to the Unregistered value.

    As a result, the VoIP Availability Manager generates Unregistered events for the individual IP phones and a RegistrationExceptions aggregate for the phone group. The events and aggregate appear as notifications in the Global Console. To view the component notifications of an aggregate, open the Notification Properties dialog box.

  • For an IP phone group, when the percentage of IP phones with an unregistered status exceeds the UnregisteredThreshold threshold, the VoIP Availability Manager generates an Impacted aggregate consisting of a Degraded event. The aggregate appears in the Global Console.

  • If the switch port is down, the VoIP Availability Manager generates an Unregistered event for the IP phone.

    VMware Smart Assurance VoIP Availability Manager User Guide provides more information about the events that are generated for phone and voice mailbox monitoring.

    Note:

    The discovery of IP phones and voice mailboxes needs to be enabled during configuration. By default, discovery for these devices and services is not enabled. Modify the parameters in the BASEDIR/smarts/conf/voip/voip.conf file, as described in the VMware Smart Assurance VoIP Availability Manager Configuration Guide.