Virtual CUBE

Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) has been traditionally supported as an installation on physical routerssuch as Cisco Aggregation Services Router Series (ASR) and Cisco Integration Services Router Series (ISR).From Cisco IOS XE 3.15S release onwards, the CUBE feature set is supported on the Cisco CSR 1000VSeries Cloud Services Routers (Cisco CSR 1000V) in a virtualized form factor. Virtual CUBE (vCUBE)enables the traditional CUBE features set to be deployed in cloud-based data center deployments.

• Feature Information for Virtual CUBE, page 1

• Prerequisites for Virtual CUBE, page 2

• Features Supported with Virtual CUBE , page 3

• Restrictions, page 3

• Information about Virtual CUBE Support on Cisco CSR 1000V Series Routers, page 4

• Installation, page 7

• How to Enable Virtual CUBE on Cisco CSR 1000V Series Router , page 8

• Troubleshooting Virtual CUBE Support, page 8

Feature Information for Virtual CUBEThe following table provides release information about the feature or features described in this module. Thistable lists only the software release that introduced support for a given feature in a given software releasetrain. Unless noted otherwise, subsequent releases of that software release train also support that feature.

Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and Cisco software image support.To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to www.cisco.com/go/cfn. An account on Cisco.com is not required.

Table 1: Feature Information for Virtual CUBE Support

Feature InformationReleasesFeature Name

Provides support for virtual CUBEon Cisco Cloud Services Router,Cisco CSR 1000V Series.

Cisco IOS XE Release 3.15SVirtual CUBE Feature Support

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Prerequisites for Virtual CUBEVirtual CUBE has the following prerequisites:

Hardware• The Virtual CUBE (vCUBE) feature set is bundled as part of the Cisco CSR 1000V Series and issupported on VMware's ESXi hypervisor and Cisco UCS servers. For more information on the CiscoCSR1000V series and their supported ESXi versions, see chapter Installing the Cisco CSR 1000v inVMware ESXi Environments.

Following table provides details on the Cisco UCS hardware and VMware ESXi hypervisor versioncombinations as well as vCPU and memory requirements.

Table 2: Virtual CUBE Hardware and Hypervisor Support

Virtual CUBE Form FactorHypervisorCisco UCS

Flow-ThroughSessions

Memory (GB)CPU

7202.51ESXi 5.5.0

ESXi 5.5.0

ESXi 5.1.0

UCSC-Base-M2-C460

UCSC-C220-M3S

UCSC-C220-M3S90041

288044

324084

•We recommend that you to disable hyper threading while configuring Virtual CUBE on Cisco UCS.For more information on the best practices for setting BIOS parameters for performance, see BIOSSettings.

• A minimum of two network interfaces are required for configuring Virtual CUBE.

Software• Obtain the relevant license for the Cisco CSR 1000V router. For details on the licensing package support,see Licensing Package Support , on page 7.

• Install the appropriate Cisco IOS image on the Cisco CSR 1000V router and configure a working VoIPnetwork. For details on installation, see Installation, on page 7.

For details on the ESXi hypervisor support, see the section on Hardware, on page 2.

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Virtual CUBEPrerequisites for Virtual CUBE

Features Supported with Virtual CUBEVirtual CUBE supports most of the features available in CUBE. Any feature that manages the media planeis not expected to work in the Cisco CSR 1000V router. The following features are not supported in virtualCUBE:

• All DSP based features

◦Codec Transcoding, Transrating

◦DTMF interworking

◦Call Progress Analysis (CPA)

◦Noise Reduction (NR), Acoustic Shock Protection (ASP), and Audio Gain

• Limited Voice Class Codec (VCC) support

◦Codec supported on peer leg will be included in offer. Other codecs will be filtered out.

• IOS Gatekeeper

• H.323 Interworking

• IOS based Hardware MTP

RestrictionsAll caveats, restrictions, and limitations of Cisco ASR IOS-XE 3.15 Release are applicable to virtual CUBE.

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Virtual CUBEFeatures Supported with Virtual CUBE

Information about Virtual CUBE Support on Cisco CSR 1000VSeries Routers

High AvailabilityVirtual CUBE uses Redundancy Group infrastructure for HA. HA is between two virtual CUBECSR instancesrunning on either the same host or across different hosts connected through a switch. Geographic statefulswitchover is not supported.

Figure 1: Virtual CUBE High Availability

On the Cisco CSR 1000V, box-to-box redundancy option uses the Redundancy Group (RG) Infrastructure toform an Active and Standby pair of routers. The Active and Standby pair share the same virtual IP address(VIP) and continually exchange status messages. Virtual CUBE session information is check-pointed acrossthe Active and Standby pair of routers enabling the Standby router to take over all Virtual CUBE call processingresponsibilities if the Active router should go out of service. Standby router sends and receives allredundancy-related traffic (protocol packets, configuration data, keepalives, and peer status). Calls in thetransient state at the time of failover are disconnected.

Introduction of CSR 1000V Network Interfaces for HA Interaction

Cisco CSR 1000V can run on the VMware ESXi hypervisor. To do this, install the Cisco CSR 1000V .isofile on your host and manually create the virtual machine (VM) using your hypervisor software. VMwareESXi runs on servers with x86-based CPUs. You can use the same hypervisor to run several VMs. The ESXihost is connected to a port on the physical switch. In this environment, VMware ESXi provides the virtual

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Virtual CUBEInformation about Virtual CUBE Support on Cisco CSR 1000V Series Routers

switch (vSwitch) functionality where it routes traffic internally between virtual machines and link to externalnetworks.

Figure 2: vNICs Mapped to Cisco CSR 1000V Router Interfaces

Stateful Switchover for Virtual CUBE

Stateful switchover (SSO) occurs when the Cisco CSR 1000V Active router crashes and reload happens. Aswitchover from the active to the standby router occurs when the active Route Processor fails, or when thekeepalive messages between the active and standby router is lost. In a usual scenario, the Standby router sendsRG Infra keepalive message to the Active router and expects an acknowledgment within 100 msec as per the

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Virtual CUBEHigh Availability

default timer. If there is no acknowledgment of keepalive within 100 msec, the Standby router immediatelysends a message to the Active router to check the HA status. If there is no keepalive message response, theStandby router declares the Active router (it goes into reload state) is dead and assumes the role of the Activerouter.

Key Considerations for Deploying HA on Virtual CUBE

The following are some of the key points to consider while deploying a Virtual CUBE instance in HA modeon the Cisco CSR 1000V router:

• Virtual CUBE stateful switchover will only occur due to software failures—The Active router reloadsduring when the Cisco CSR 1000V crashes due to software faults. When a software fault causes theactive router to go to the reload state, the Standby router assumes the role of the new Active router.

• Virtual CUBE tracks only the next vSwitch interface—Virtual CUBE HA supports tracking of theinterface link status. It does not support any other tracking objects. In the case of virtual CUBE, theinterface is always connected to the hypervisor's vSwitch. The interface link status of the Virtual CUBEshows that it is up even when the physical link of the server is down as the vSwitch link is still active.It may be possible to configure the hypervisor vSwitch to propagate the physical link status to the VirtualCUBE interface. Here, the interface tracking will correctly reflect status of the physical interface. Referto the software documentation of the hypervisor you are using.

• High Availability Connectivity using vSwitch Redundancy—It is recommended to use vSwitchredundancy as suggested by the Cisco CSR 1000V reference documents. See Cisco CSR 1000V SeriesCloud Services Router Software Configuration Guide.

In a scenario where the physical switch is down, this results in both the Active and Standby routersbecoming the active router. Here, the Active router is still up and running whereas the Standby routerassumes that the Active router has gone down as it does not receive any keepalive messages or peerinformation from the Active router. Hence, the Standby Router also turns to the Active router. ThoughVirtual CUBE continues to maintain existing calls and also receive new calls while both routers areactive, HA checkpointing fails.

• Virtual CUBE does not track uplink failures—Switches that are used to connect non-networking enddevices or LAN should not be tracked to determine uplink failures. Basically, switches used in theaggregation layers is not tracked.

Implementation of High Availability is same for the physical CUBE and Virtual CUBE on IOS XE platforms.For more information on High Availability, see CUBE High Availability Overview.

Configuration Example for High Availability on Virtual CUBE

Configuration on both the Virtual CUBEs must have identical physical configuration and must be running onthe same type of platform and the IOS XE version. Anytime a platform is reloaded in a Virtual CUBE highavailability implementation, it always boots up as the standby router.Router> enableRouter# configure terminalredundancymode noneapplication redundancygroup 1name voice-b2bhapriority 100 failover threshold 75control GigabitEthernet 0/0/2 protocol 1data GigabitEthernet 0/0/2timers delay 30 reload 60

voice service voipmode border-elementallow-connections sip to sip

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Virtual CUBEHigh Availability

redundancy-group 1!ip rtcp report interval 3000!gatewaymedia-inactivity-criteria alltimer receive-rtcp 5timer receive-rtp 86400

MediaVirtual CUBEmedia performance is dependent on the underlying VM platform consistently providing packetswitching latency of less than 5 ms. Latency and jitter values observed on a virtual CUBE are same as thevalues obtained on CUBE running on a hardware platform with recommended hardware configuration andidentical software configuration, under the same network conditions.

For more information on how to calculate the performance requirements, see Voice Quality Monitoring.

Licensing Package SupportVirtual CUBE is enabled with the APPX and AX license packages. The AX license package provides accessto all features supported in virtual CUBE.When the license is installed, the virtual CUBE related CLI commandssuch as voice and dial-peer configurations are visible. Also, relevant CUBE processes are instantiated.

The following table details the license package support for a virtual CUBE.

ThroughputFeaturesCSR PackageVirtual CUBE SessionLicense

session count * (signaling+ media bandwidth)

No TLS / SRTP supportAPPXSame CUBE LicensingSKUs as CiscoASR 1000Series All vCUBE featuresAX

For detailed information on licensing, see Cisco CSR 1000V Series Cloud Services Router ConfigurationGuide.

InstallationVirtual CUBE can be installed in two ways:

• Install using an OVA file

• Install using an ISO image

Installation using OVA FileThe following file type is used to install virtual CUBE on Cisco UCS:

• .ova

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Virtual CUBEMedia

You can use the OVA file included in the Cisco CSR 1000V router software image package to install virtualCUBE. The file is used for deploying the OVA template on the VM (in TAR format).

Explicit subscription of CPUs and Memory is required while deploying OVA provided by Cisco CSR1000V.

Note

For details on how to perform the deployment, see Cisco CSR 1000V Series Cloud Services Router SoftwareConfiguration Guide.

Installation using ISO ImageThe following file type is used to install virtual CUBE on Cisco UCS:

• .iso

You can use the .iso file to install virtual CUBE. This file is used for installing the software image on the VM(requires manually creating the VM).

For details on how to perform the installation, see Cisco CSR 1000V Series Cloud Services Router SoftwareConfiguration Guide.

How to Enable Virtual CUBE on Cisco CSR 1000V Series RouterFor details on the steps to enable virtual CUBE on a CSR 1000V router, see Enabling the CUBE Applicationon a Device.

Troubleshooting Virtual CUBE SupportTo troubleshoot virtual CUBE, follow the same procedure as that of Cisco ASR routers. This includes crashfile decoding, decoding traceback, and so on. For more details, see http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/routers/asr-1000-series-aggregation-services-routers/109723-asr-crash.html .

To troubleshoot Virtual Machine (VM) issues, see Cisco CSR 1000V Series Cloud Services Router SoftwareConfiguration Guide

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Virtual CUBEInstallation using ISO Image