There are just a few tricks to getting a Vocera Telephony Server put together right on the first try, but there are often problems. Here is what we need to do:
1) Get the right server
2) Get the right riser
3) Get the right card
4) Setup the card correctly
5) Load the right driver
The trick to meeting schedules and budgets is doing them all right the FIRST time!
Get the right server
Looking up the server requirements for the VTS shows it's not a power hungry box. Take a look at the last page of this DOCUMENT.
Ah but the catch is that little note about checking www.dialogic.com that's where you find out that a Dialogic card is almost a foot long and wont fit in many server chassis. Why take a look at an analog board next to a Dell 1950:
Crappy photo, I know, but notice how both risers are only half as long as needed for this card! I will eventually leak out all of my biases on this blog and I will start now: I love HP and a DL380 is a great chassis. Just take a look at THIS SERVER.
Get the right riser
Once we have a server that will hold the card, we need to make sure we have the correct slot time for the card to go into. Here is where the question comes up... I dread this.
First off, go educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Local_Bus
The most important part boils down to this "... Later revisions of PCI added new features and performance improvements, including a 66 MHz 3.3 V standard and 133 MHz PCI-X, and the adaptation of PCI signaling to other form factors. Both PCI-X 1.0b and PCI-X 2.0 are backward compatible with some PCI standards. With the introduction of the serial PCI Express standard in 2004, motherboard manufacturers have included progressively fewer PCI expansion slots in favor of the new standard."
OK so current servers ship with PCI-E slots, and prior to 4.1 Vocera only supported a PCI versions of Dialogic cards that could be used in a PCI or PCI-X slots. I am going to get personal again, I like the old PCI cards because they have a long history of working well for Vocera. All I need to do is ADD THIS RISER to my DL380 and my server is ready to go!
Get the right Dialogic card
If we have made it this far we are bound for success! This question is an easy one, analog or digital?
If we need analog/copper lines to integrate to our PBX we need the ANALOG CARD.
But I hope everyone is going the digital route, if you go basic T1 or ISDN PRI you will need the DIGITAL CARD.
Either way it's that simple if you picked the PCI/PCI-X style of riser card.
Setup the card correctly
Basically this part is for your partner to configure, there is one thing that should be done to the card before it goes into the server.
Load the right driver
The first time Windows boots up after this card is inserted a little wizard will pop up and offer to ruin your life, just cancel out of it. It is CRITICAL that you let your partner install the correct driver, getting the wrong driver out of the system is far harder than it should be.
Conclusion
I will go over analog pinouts and some aspects particular to ISDN PRI and integrations sometime in the near future, but I need to get home to a good macro lens so I can get a few good close ups of the wires and connectors.
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