Saturday, August 29, 2009

Map a UC appliance as a network drive

Remember the "good old days" of CCM 4.x? You can do almost everything on the box. Because it's in fact a Windows 2000 box. However, this brings security and supportability issues.

With the introduction of Linux-based Unified Communication appliance (CUCM 5.x), Cisco locked down the box. You can only access the box via admin web page or a tailored command line.

One of the inconveniences is to review log files. On the old-school CCM 4.x, you may just view the logs in C:\Program Files\Cisco\Trace. On the new UC appliance, you'll have to use RTMT (RealTime Monitoring Tool). This is especially annoying if you're testing your system. For each test, you'll have to download a new set of logs to your computer. (though you may use 'Remote Browse' in RTMT, its function is very limited)

What if we can go back to the "good old days" and view the file system just like a Windows drive?

Take a look at the screenshot below. It's a CUCM 6.1.4 mapped to my Windows XP laptop. You can read/write files on CUCM just like a local hard drive. For those people who are not a fan of VI, you may use your favorite editor (such as Notepad++/UltraEdit). And you may use any Windows tools, such as Windows search, WinGrep, WinZip, etc. How's that? :)


To achieve this, you need two things: a root account on CUCM and a software who can map a SFTP server to a network drive (such as sFTPdrive).

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8 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 31, 2009 at 1:53 PM

    Ok but how do you get a root account on a UCM? I thought you had to run a utility that created a key that you sent to TAC and that allowed them to get in at the root level

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  2. Michael LuoAugust 31, 2009 at 5:07 PM

    First of all, the account TAC get in with is NOT root account. It's "remote support" account. A "remote support" account does not have full access of a root account.

    Second, as to how to get root account, use google or take a look at my other blogs.

    Thanks!

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  3. balamSeptember 8, 2009 at 11:57 AM

    Ok Michael, any good reason to do it?

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  4. Michael LuoSeptember 8, 2009 at 12:12 PM

    That's a good question. How do you normally get the trace from a CUCM appliance (5.x/6.x/7.x)? How quickly you can get the trace off the server?

    Michael

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  5. balamSeptember 11, 2009 at 12:20 PM

    I see your point, RTMT is quite annoying to be honest ;).

    ReplyDelete
  6. ucwiscoSeptember 16, 2009 at 10:15 AM

    I cant find the blog post on the root account. This would be super useful. Trying to find a log file SMTP on CER.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Michael LuoSeptember 16, 2009 at 4:17 PM

    Take a look at http://htluo.blogspot.com/2009/07/cisco-software-on-vmware.html. It's at the end of the page.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AhmadSeptember 23, 2009 at 6:01 PM

    Michael,

    Your book is oriented towards CUPS6 .There has been modification in CUPS 7 GUI especially sections relating to MOC Integration, and few others have been changed(w.r.t GUI).Will you update it as per new CUPS release?

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete

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