Cisco Expressway / VCS Setup

Introduction

Cisco Expressway (Core/Edge) and Video Communication Server (VCS) are entry points for video and unified communications. It is used to support mobile and remote access, business-to-business and business-to-consumer calls, and firewall traversal.

WXP Collaboration application’s “Data Collector” is a monitoring and analytics tool that allows administrators to gather data from video infrastructure devices. To report availability, capacity, and call quality in, the Data Collector must connect securely to each Expressway or VCS node.

This article explains how to create a minimum-privilege, read-only account on Expressway or VCS. It also explains how to add each device in the Admin Portal of WXP Collaboration application.

Prerequisites

To ensure a successful integration, confirm the following before you begin:

• The WXP Collaboration Data Collector server can reach the device’s fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or IP address over the network.

• A local administrator, read-only service account exists on each video device. (Active Directory accounts are not supported.)

Procedure

To enable monitoring in WXP Collaboration, follow the below steps. Once these steps are completed, WXP Collaboration application can collect statistics and alerts, such as registrations, call volumes, traversal health, and license usage. This data is useful to troubleshoot quickly and plan capacity with confidence.

Step 1: Creating a service account on Cisco Expressway or VCS

1. Sign in to the device with an administrator account.

2. Go to Users > Administrator accounts. The Administrator accounts page is displayed.

3. On the Administrator accounts, click New. An account configuration window is displayed.

4. On the Configuration page:

   1. Name: Enter a service account name.

   2. Access level: Set the permission as “Read-only.”

   3. Login Credentials: Enter and confirm the password.

   4. Web access: Set it to “Yes.”

   5. API Access: Set it to “Yes.”

   6. State: Set the current state to “Enabled.”

5. Select Save. If prompted, confirm with your administrator password.

Note: VCS Active Directory (AD) accounts are not supported. The service account must be a local administrator.

Step 2: Adding Expressway or VCS in WXP Collaboration Application

Prerequisites

• Network access from the WXP Collaboration Data Collector server to the device’s FQDN or IP.

• The local, read-only service account credentials you created earlier.

Adding  the device

1. Sign in to the Admin Portal of WXP Collaboration application.

2. Open Infrastructure, then select New infrastructure.

3. Choose the device type: Select VCS for Expressway Core or VCS Control. Select VCSX for Expressway Edge or VCS Expressway.

4. Enter connection and account details, such as:

• Name: Provide an intuitive name for the account

• Description: Add a clear description. For example, site name or any unique identifier.

• Host Address and port: Hostname or IP address.

• Host Port: By default, Host Port is 443 for HTTPS).

• Login (or Username) and Password for the service account.

• Once completed, click Save.

• After saving, the page shows two buttons: Disabled (at the top) and Validate (at the bottom).

• Click Validate to test the connection from the collector to the device. If validation fails, click Details to review likely causes, such as incorrect credentials or network connectivity issues, in order to fix them.

• Click Disabled to enable monitoring and data collection. The status changes to Enabled.

Note: If you have multiple Expressway or VCS-C/E devices in a cluster, add each device (node) individually—for example, primary and secondary peers. Do not add the logical, clustered “named environment.”

Conclusion

After you create a local, read-only service account and add the device in WXP Collaboration, the Data Collector can monitor Cisco Expressway or VCS for analytics and reporting.

Reference: Cisco Expressway/VCS connection details