Cisco Systems OL-14619-01 Network Infrastructure Requirements, Availability of Network Resources

C H A P T E R 3

Network Infrastructure Requirements

See the following sections:

•Availability of Network Resources, page 3-1

•Using Firewalls with Cisco Unity, page 3-3

•Sizing and Scaling Cisco Unity Servers, page 3-3

•Audio Codecs, page 3-5

Availability of Network Resources

The following network resources must be available at all times and in close physical proximity to Cisco Unity (over a local area network, not a wide area network), or Cisco Unity functionality will be impaired:

•All name resolution hosts used by standard Windows networks, including DNS hosts. See the “Name Resolution” section on page 3-1.

•Domain controllers that provide authentication for the Cisco Unity service accounts. Windows global catalog servers are also necessary if Cisco Unity services Exchange. See the “Domain Controller Access and Availability” section on page 3-2.

•Message store servers. Each message store server on which Cisco Unity subscribers are homed must be accessible to Cisco Unity. See the “Availability of Message Store Servers” section on page 3-2.

•Active Directory or the Domino directory. See the applicable chapter in this guide:

–Designing a Cisco Unity System with Exchange as the Message Store

–Designing a Cisco Unity System with Domino as the Message Store

Name Resolution

Cisco Unity must be able to find the servers it interacts with by resolving the names of those servers to IP addresses, unless the Cisco Unity server is not connected with the network. For example, Cisco Unity can send messages from outside callers to the message store server on which the mailbox of the recipient is homed only if Cisco Unity can find that message store server. Name resolution is also used when:

•A subscriber uses the Cisco Unity telephone user interface (TUI) to listen to messages or send messages to other subscribers. Name resolution is used by Cisco Unity whenever a process requires the Unity application to execute commands that leave the Cisco Unity server and access information across the network to the mailbox stores where subscriber mailboxes are located.

Design Guide for Cisco Unity Release 5.x

OL-14619-01 3-1