How Do I Set Up Voicemail Pro Failover on Server Edition

Setting up voicemail failover on a Linux based Voicemail Pro, is pretty straightforward. Just like setting up an SCN trunk, pointing to each IPO, you need to point the Voicemail Pro’s to each other. With Server Edition, we only have 2 options for Voicemail Pro, Centralized and Backup. If an all IP500 SCN, we could also do Distributed. So, lets configure a Server Edition Failover.

In the examples below, Our Primary Server is 10.129.131.22 and our Secondary Server is 10.129.131.23.

First, I like to log into the Backup voicemail.

In Voicemail Pro client, go to: File>Preferences>General

Make sure that the MAPI tab is not checked.

In the SMTP Sender tab, you may see your voicemail to email settings. When adding the SMTP service to talk to the other VM Pro server, those settings must be on the top line.

Click the green + sign

Mail Domain = 10.129.131.23 (IP of the Server)

Mail Server = 10.129.131.22 (IP of the Other Server)

Port = Must be 25

Identifier = vmpro@10.129.131.22 (vmpro@IPof other server)

Remember, that if you added the new SMTP Provider, and it didn’t appear on the top line, that you will need to highlight it, then click on the UP ARROW in the upper right corner to get it to the top. Click OK, and you will be notified that the changes will not take effect until you restart services.

On the SMTP Receiver tab put in the IP address of the server you are on, in our case 10.129.131.23.

Press OKand you are done.

Log into web control to stop and re-start Voicemail Pro services.

Now log out of the VM Pro client, and log in to the Primary VM Pro, in our case 10.129.131.22.

Repeat the steps from above, changing the IP addresses to match the correct server….

Click the green + sign

Mail Domain = 10.129.131.22 (IP of the Server)

Mail Server = 10.129.131.22 (IP of the Server)

Port = Must be 25

Identifier = vmpro@10.129.131.23 (vmpro@IPof other server)

On the SMTP Receiver tab put in the IP address of the server you are on, in our case 10.129.131.22.

Press OK and you are done.

Log into web control to stop and re-start Voicemail Pro services.

You are done. To test the connection, you can log into either servers web manager, and under LOGS>VIEW, select Voicemail from the dropdown, and scroll down the log a bit. You should see MAILBOXES, and a count from the Primary Server. Also, a few lines below you will see “SYNC Status:….”. If you logged into the Secondary Server, it would say SLAVEand the IP of the Primary Server. In our case SLAVE: 10.129.131.22…. See below….

Also, you will notice that the General tab of Preferences is Grayed out, in the Voicemail Pro client. If not right away, after the 2 servers have synced up, it will be.

Also, you can go into the client under the list of users, and see all the mailboxes from the Primary.

After even more time, you will be able to log into the client and pull down the call flows from the Primary Server.

Now that we have fail-over set up, we need to address the Fail-back strategy. This does need to have a tiny bit of thought, as there are pros and cons to each option. The options are:

Manual Failback (Default)
– The system administrator initiates the failback operation.

Graceful Failback
– The backup server initiates the failback operation, immediately after all the active voicemail calls on the backup server come to an end.

Automatic Failback
– The backup server initiates the failback operation immediately after the specified timeout period or after all the active voicemail calls on the backup server come to an end, whichever occurs first.

The Cons – With Graceful, if you have a busy call center, you may not have idle voicemail ports to allow the failback to happen. With Automatic, there is a chance that callers are going to get cut off.

So choose your option, and log into the Voicemail Pro client. Under FILE select Failback Operation.

Click OK, and we are finally done…..

IF you are using voice-mail to email, we need to now make some more entries to allow for the voicemail to email to send out.  See this post for more information.

This would be the same for a UCM as well in a Backup/Failover scenario.  Adding multiple distributed voicemail systems will change the settings a bit.  I may write that at a later date.