Cisco Cisco Prime Unified Service Monitor 9.0 Information Guide
Q&A
© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 1 of 4
Cisco Unified Service Monitor 2.3
Q.
What is Cisco
®
Unified Service Monitor (USM)?
A.
Cisco Unified Service Monitor is part of the Cisco Unified Communications Management Suite. It provides a low-
cost, reliable method of monitoring and evaluating the quality of voice in Cisco Unified Communications
Solutions. It continuously monitors active calls supported by the Cisco Unified Communications System and
provides near real-time notification when the voice quality of a call, represented as end-user experience
expressed by a Mean Opinion Score (MOS), fails to meet a user-defined quality threshold. It also provides a
variety of reports that characterize the user experience as measured by the system and provide details on the
endpoints that are most affected due to voice quality alerts. In addition to call quality analysis, Cisco Unified
Service Monitor can perform call classification based on dial plan for each cluster that is managed using Cisco
Unified Service Monitor. Cisco Unified Service Monitor provides system-defined call types and also allows users
to create user-defined call types to correctly classify the calls. The filter–based, on-demand reports for call detail
records (CDRs) provide further visibility into various call details needed for analysis or reporting.
Q.
What are the components of Cisco Unified Service Monitor?
A.
The Cisco Unified Service Monitor voice quality solution consists of central Cisco Unified Service Monitor
software and Cisco 1040 Sensor hardware.
The Cisco Unified Service Monitor application software operates on a Windows Server 2003 platform and
receives voice quality information from Cisco 1040 Sensors, Cisco Network Analysis Module (NAM), and Cisco
Unified Communications Manager 4.2 or later systems. Users can configure MOS thresholds on a per codec
basis; alerts are sent to an upstream application such as Cisco Unified Operations Manager when a MOS
threshold is violated. Cisco Unified Service Monitor allows users to understand the service quality experience at
a system level through Cisco Voice Transmission Quality (VTQ) support and in real time through the Cisco 1040
Sensors and NAM.
Q.
What are the key benefits of Cisco Unified Service Monitor?
●
Supports the latest releases of Cisco Unified Communications Solution components
●
Provides real-time alerting and reporting on call quality metrics
●
Uses call metrics from Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco NAM, Cisco 1040 Sensors
●
Correlates call detail records and NAM/1040 call reports for enhanced analysis
●
Provides the ability to pinpoint the network segment causing call quality degradation
●
Provides configurable thresholds based on MOS, codec, endpoints, Communications Manager, and sensors
●
Call classification based on dial plan per cluster
●
System- and user-defined call types
●
Rich filter-based, on-demand call type (CDR) reports
●
Virtualization:
◦
Higher scale will reduce the number of Service Monitor server platforms for large enterprise customers.
◦
Two virtual instances of Service Monitor, each scaling up to 45,000 phones on a single server, reduce the
number of hardware platforms.
●
Integrates with the Cisco Unified Operations Manager service quality alert dashboard
●
Integrates with Cisco Unified Service Statistics Manager long-term reporting and trending functions