Sunday December 9, 2007

So far, so bad.

This is the big weekend. We are migrating the network at the hospital from Extreme data switches to Cisco Data switches. We figured that it would take an hour to migrate the first location. 2 hours later we were still struggling to get the phone system to boot up. After about 6 restarts, it finally came up almost three hours into the project. So, then we started on the main building.

We have an Avaya S8500 system with an ESS that is supposed to provide failover capability. We moved our entire server room over onto the Cisco network with very minor bobbles and then went to move the phone system over. Not only did it NOT fail over to the ESS, when the server came up it couldn't find its IPSI or MedPro or CLAN cards. After 3 hours on the phone with non-english-speaking Avaya techs (from India, I presume) at $180/30 minutes and NO progress, we finally moved the phone system back to an Extreme standalone switch and then jumpered that into the new network, and the system finally came up. Got home at 4 AM this morning.

We are going to move on to other phases of the project and leave the phone system jumpered thru the Extreme switch for now, and then try Monday to get in touch with support engineers that speak english and know Cisco Networks and Avaya Phones and see if we can come up with a solution. One good point: The network is NOTICEABLY faster on the Cisco switches. One other point: we know that the Avaya phone system does NOT fail over under all circumstances. We paid lots of money for a new phone system that was supposed to be better and more reliable and more flexible than our old Definity G3 duplicated xsystem, and we have none of the above.

Maybe our next upgrade will be to a Cisco phone system.

Gas: 2.73 this morning. Temp: -24F when I got home at 4 AM. Don't talk to me about global warming unless you are willing to stand outside in t-shirt and shorts for 30 minutes. After that I might listen.