Multi-CMS-cluster support: Now available on VQ Conference Manager 

Most organizations using Cisco Meeting Server (CMS) deploy multiple physical CMSes in clusters to meet scale, capacity, or resilience needs. Many take this a step further, deploying multiple clusters to amplify these benefits. 

If this applies to you, we’ve got some exciting news: VQ Conference Manager now supports multi-CMS-cluster deployments. 

To understand why this is a big deal, let’s outline the main reasons for deploying multiple CMS clusters. 

Why operate multiple CMS clusters? 

Geographically distributed workforces 

If you have teams spread across the globe, you want your conferencing infrastructure as close to them as possible. As well as reducing overall network requirements, lower roundtrip times improve performance, resulting in better meeting experiences. 

Security separation 

Most public and private sector organizations will have different security levels associated with different meetings. For ringfencing purposes, you may choose to have one CMS cluster for top secret, another for secret, and a third for unclassified – or whatever security banding is relevant to you. 

Service level separation 

A third scenario is to separate meetings based on the level of service required. One set of infrastructure may be reserved for your highest-importance meetings. This might have additional resilience and high-availability built in, and a capacity buffer to ensure performance is never compromised. 

Alongside this, you may have a second cluster that hosts all your users’ self-service meetings, with lower SLAs. 

Expanding to multi-cluster support 

Previously, anyone using VQ Conference Manager to operate multiple CMS clusters would have needed one production implementation of our software per cluster. But as of version 4.8, a single VQ Conference Manager implementation can oversee multiple CMS clusters. We’ll initially support up to six clusters, with plans to expand this in the future. 

This will unlock a variety of benefits for organizations running (or considering) more than one CMS cluster – including reduced licensing requirements. 

Lower operational overhead 

Cutting the number of VQ Conference Manager deployments will reduce operational overheads by providing a ‘single pane of glass’ through which administrators and operators can run your service. 

For administrators, advantages include: 

• Reduction in the number of VQ Conference Manager installations to support and update 

• One place to configure the service across all clusters 

• Consolidated analytics for improved observability 

Operators, meanwhile, can manage calls hosted on any cluster via a single screen. 

Improved audio meeting experiences 

If you’re running – or looking to run – multiple CMS clusters to serve geographically distributed workforces, VQ Conference Manager’s new capabilities enhance meeting experiences for audio* calls. 

CMS already replicates virtual meeting spaces across all nodes within a cluster, but not between clusters. This means that where a meeting is hosted on one cluster, participants must all connect individually to that cluster, even if you have another that’s geographically closer to them. This can result in network congestion and/or latency that impacts call quality. 

VQ Conference Manager’s multi-cluster support addresses this for audio meetings, by replicating meeting spaces across all your clusters. These virtual meeting rooms will now match throughout your environment, including their settings, URLs, and passcodes. 

When a conference starts, participants are automatically routed to the space on their local cluster, and VQ Conference Manager sets up the necessary cascade links to merge the spaces into a single meeting. This results in shorter roundtrip times and reduced network load, meaning better meeting experiences. 

Enhanced audio meeting resilience 

By distributing audio* meetings across multiple clusters, VQ Conference Manager also improves the resilience of your service. Without our multi-cluster support, if the host cluster goes down, everyone in that meeting is disconnected. 

Now, even if clusters become unavailable, meetings will persist on your other clusters. Participants connected to the still-running clusters will remain in the call, while those connected to the failed cluster(s) will be able to dial back in and be routed to one of the still-operational clusters. 

Get started today by arranging your demo 

Support for multiple CMS clusters is one of a number of enhancements launched in VQ Conference Manager 4.8. To discuss your needs or arrange a demo, please contact our Sales team on sales@vqcomms.com. 

And find out what else is new in version 4.8 in our new release blog. 

* If you’re wondering why these benefits are audio-only, that’s because CMS doesn’t support cascade links for video.