3cx / ESXi / Plug and Play Yealink

[dhogg]

Hi all,

I'm looking to invest in 3cx to provide for our group telecommunications needs. I've been testing it extensively using a DrayTEL SIP trunk (2 channel) and we're satisfied it is the right solution for us. (initially around 107 heads, moving on to the rest of the group sites as time goes on)

I've been testing in on one of our auxiliary ESXi hosts that is used primarily for development. It's a PowerEdge 2970 I upgraded to have 2x AMD Opteron 2435 6 core CPUs, 32GB of RAM and a number of 1TB 7200rpm SAS drives. Anyway - everything works perfectly.

Recently I binned the old install (lots of testing/messy config) and installed a fresh 2012 R2 VM on our primary vCenter/hosts. The system works well, however Plug and Play SIP connectivity no longer works. The 3cx Windows app doesn't appear in the console for provisioning nor does my Yealink T20P test handset.

I moved the VM to the second of the primary hosts, still everything except PnP works fine. I then figured, OK I'll move it back to the test environment and to ensure minimal variables I installed a fresh 2012 R2 VM with 3cx then restored our new config. Still no PnP?! Eventually I moved it back to the original server it ran on (the 2970 mentioned above) and et voila - PnP config working again.

A few points:

* DHCP options are not in use for 3cx, never have been
* The configuration of network adapters across these servers is the same, no changes to the default ESXi network config
* The two primary hosts and other aux host are Intel Xeon based systems, all Dell PowerEdge (1x R520 and 2x 2950)
* If manually provisioned, the Yealink handset works fine regardless of where the server is
* All hosts connect through the same default config (with RSTP on) HP gigabit switch
* The server logs are blank as the PnP component doesn't output anything to do with provisioning, hence why I haven't attached them

I installed 3cx Phone System on my own Windows 7 Pro workstation, dumped the config into it and it worked perfectly including the Plug and Play component of SIP.

I'm completely lost for ideas - has anyone encountered this issue? I can't have a phone system that is dependent on a single host and whilst I acknowledge this is nothing to do with 3cx, I do need resolution before I can deploy the system.

* Host 1
Intel Xeon E5-2430 x2 (6 core @ 2.2GHz), 96GB RAM, Dell ESXi 5.1

* Host 2
Intel Xeon E5420 x2 (4 core @ 2.5GHz), 32GB RAM, Dell ESXi 5.1

* Aux Host 1 ( that works )
AMD Opteron 2435 x2 (6 core @ 2.6GHz), 32GB RAM, ESXi 5.5

* Aux Host 2
Intel Xeon x1 (2 cores @ 3GHz), 16GB RAM, ESXi 5.5


Thanks for any help provided.

Regards
David

 

[dhogg]

Update - I migrated the VM to yet another host (PowerEdge T410 this time) with the latest version of ESXi and whilst everything except PnP works - the softphones/Yealink aren't appearing in the list for provisioning.

 

[dhogg]

Just updated VMware Tools on the VM whilst running on the T410.. looks promising. Will report back.

 

[lneblett]

An interesting issue, one that I have not encountered. However, a few comments -

1. LLDP is used, firewall issues? Any VLANS? Service running? Any variance in ports on the HP switch between working and non-working ports used to connect the various hosts? Multicast turned off? It should be allowed.
2. Were the phones factory reset before trying to connect to the new hosts? Was/Is LLDP enabled on the phones? You may need to try it both ways depending on how the Network is set.
3. Firmware version? Possible update?
3. Multiple NICs on the hosts? Try with one and see first, then enable the others.

There are a number of posts on the forum having to do with issues seemingly similar to your experience. I have merely posted what kind of situations they encountered as food for thought. You focused on the systems, but never really addressed the network, yet you seem (I think correctly) to think that it is related to the network.

Do a forum search for HP switch, Yealink discovery, etc. You will see a number of posts regarding some of the same issues and perhaps one will be the answer.

 

[dhogg]

Hi lneblett,

1) No VLANs. Tried moving ports around, no effect.
2) Yeah, factory reset
3) Most recent applied to the test handset before the issue occurred
4) Yes and no, a mix with no impact on the results when I disabled the secondary adapters

I have resolved the issue now. By updating ESXi to the most recent version (5.5 update 2) and ensuring the latest VMware Tools was running, the Plug and Play feature now works on any of the hosts (I've migrated the test PBX around the different hosts throughout today to test).

An odd issue I'm not sure why it was resolved, but I'll take it!

Thanks for the help!