ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
Standard methods for deploying ShoreTel Systems the “Fluid Way”
9/18/2012
Fluid Networks
Erroll Marchais and Eric Fox
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Table of Contents
Overview ................................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Policy ................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Procedure ............................................................................................................................................................................ 2
Standard .............................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Guideline ............................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Pre-Sales Methodology ........................................................................................................................................................... 3
Needs Analysis .................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Engineering Standards ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Quoting Standards .............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Deployment............................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Planning............................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Pre-Build Phase ................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Engineering Pre-Build...................................................................................................................................................... 6
Provisioning ................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Installation ........................................................................................................................................................................ 10
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
Overview
This SOP is designed to spec out the Standard Operating Procedures which Fluid Networks employs when selling,
installing and supporting the ShoreTel premise phone system. This documentation is not intended as a replacement for
the Manufacturer User and Administrative Guides. In many cases this SOP document might reference information that
is available only in the Manufacturer documentation but may not be elaborated upon here. That is by design and the
intent is that you would reference that information as appropriate to ensure you are staying within the parameters of
our SOP’s. This document’s scope is most concerned with maintaining the best practices and standards Fluid Networks
has developed through experience in relation to working with the ShoreTel product.
While referencing the information in this document please note that the name of the various components of the
document is very important and carry with them varying levels of enforcement. Here is a quick table to help you
understand the relative importance of each component:
Policy
Procedure
Standard
Guideline
Refers to a component whose adherence is absolute. Any deviation from a policy must
be approved by a Manager. Without approval, deviation can lead to disciplinary action.
Refers to a component that is intended to be followed as stated with little variation. A
procedure may call guidelines which can then be interpreted as necessary. Procedures
may also require that you reference outside information in order to determine the best
course of action. Deviation from an established procedure must be shown to be justified
or disciplinary action may be necessary.
Refers to a component that has been determined to be “best practice” and should be
followed whenever necessary. Any deviation from a standard must be made or
approved by an engineer. A manager can override a standard practice or deviation as
necessary.
Refers to a component that has some intrinsic flexibility in its implementation where
there might be some variation from one project to another. A Guideline helps the
reader to determine the best course of action based on the best known information.
You may be required to show how you used the guidelines to come to a specific
conclusion if it is determined later that your conclusion was not the best course of
action.
If you find any component of this document to be inaccurate or inadequate, please report that to the executive team so it may be
addressed.
Recognizing that a good client experience starts with a complete and accurate assessment of the client needs and
proper setting of expectations, we will begin with the sales process.
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
Pre-Sales Methodology
A walk through the things to look for during the sales process to ensure a smooth process from Sales to installation.
Needs Analysis
Matt – probably best to contribute here.
Engineering Standards
These standards are to be followed in every instance and all quotes should reflect the baseline standards specified here.
Any deviation from these standards must be run through the network engineer in order to ensure any side-effects are
properly accounted for and minimized. These standards do not stand alone but are intended to go hand-in-hand with
standards developed in related SOP’s from complimentary technologies (ConnectWise, Carrier Services, Infrastructure
planning, etc). Proper quality control demands we recognize and implement standards at all levels of our workflow.
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Phones will run on their own voice VLAN, separate from the data network so in every instance, use manageable
POE switches.
We always prefer to provide and program the network switches.
ShoreTel server at HQ should do DHCP on the voice VLAN and will have option 156 configured with appropriate
information in order to auto-provision the phones (more information on Option 156).
DHCP on the data VLAN will need to have DCHP option 156 created to auto-provision phones that are newly
added to the network.
Phones will be tagging their traffic to the voice VLAN per the VLAN ID setting in DHCP option 156.
o This allows PC’s to be plugged into the phone but still run on the Data VLAN separately.
At least one layer 3 switch is required at the HQ site to perform routing to the voice VLAN.
o Refer to current ShoreTel Parts lists or Network Engineer for acceptable switch to use in this role.
o We prefer the layer3 switch do the inter-VLAN routing because it is both faster AND it is not dependent
on firewall configuration to work. In many environments, the client manages their own firewall so can
add a level of complexity and unaccountability if we rely on the firewall to perform the routing to the
VLAN at the HQ site.
Multi-site installations have some unique considerations:
o Branch office installations can have a firewall/router setup on the Voice VLAN directly do the routing
since all voice communications will go through the firewall/router on its way to HQ. Since we are
already dependent on that device for voice to function the HQ Layer3 switch rule doesn’t apply here.
o They should have appropriate QoS in place to guard phone traffic between sites.
o Voice traffic should not travel over the same tunnel as data traffic as there is little way you can prioritize
it unless your broadband provider supports DiffServ prioritization and you have a firewall/router that
can tag voice traffic specifically on a tunnel with a higher prioritization.
o Optimum multi-site configuration for voice QoS is MPLS or similar technology or separate path for
dedicated voice.
o Each site will have its own unique voice IP subnet.
o Branch sites will require DHCP services which can support option 156 provisioning for the phones on
both the voice and data VLAN’s. This is typically done by the firewall, however, you will need to ensure
that the proposed firewall is capable of this seemingly mundane thing or else you will have major issues
getting your branch offices to work properly.
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
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Mobility services, SSL gateway and other outside-to-inside service availability may have significant prequalifications on order to ensure they are going to work. Please run any proposal by engineering to ensure
quality control on this.
HQ server includes RAID 1 integrated and must be paired with an external USB hard drive. The pricing, etc is in
the Sales KB article that has latest server specs.
Quoting Standards
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Quotes start in Quosal using Best Practices developed under the Quosal SOP
o Shoretel Quote Template? Need to figure this out for Quosal quoting.
Once a quote is started in Quosal, any contribution from Engineering or others can be made directly within
Quosal in order to avoid back and forth email communications and repeat work.
o Just email the engineer with the Quosal quote number and the nature of your requirement so he/she
can contribute to the quote directly.
Use ShoreTel Server specs updated in this Sales KB article to quote the server price.
Deployment
The deployment is broken into four distinct Phases. These are Planning, Pre-Build, Installation and Post-Installation.
Planning
Planning and initial project build will be done by the Project Manager. This role might be performed by the Sales Rep or
by someone else who has received the appropriate information from the Rep and has taken ownership of the
implementation of the project.
During the planning phase, the Project Manager will follow this procedure in order to lay the groundwork for a
successful project execution:
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Create Project in ConnectWise.
o Import quote from Quosal as an Opportunity and convert to a Project
o Apply the ShoreTel Project Template to the project
o Attach any relevant documentation to the project at the top level this would include:
 Carrier orders and provisioning information
 Signed quote(s)
 Install and provisioning documentation
 Licensing information, etc.
o Different sites need to be articulated as separate phases and/or separate tickets.
 Make sure the site address information is accurate for each respective site. If the site is not
setup in ConnectWise, do so now and assign to the tickets. This is very important information as
it communicates to the Installers and purchasers where they are to go or ship items as
necessary. Forgetting to do this will most definitely result in parts or people showing up in the
wrong place!
o Pay particular attention to your “financial” tab and products tab to ensure you labor billing rate and
budget numbers are accurate.
o Make sure you specify Down payment to be applied only to this project.
Process Down payment invoice against the project and email out with “Due on Receipt” terms.
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
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Order carrier services (as applicable).
o Ensure carrier service delivery tickets exist in the project for each service to be delivered.
o Ensure that as delivery dates are known, you update the ticket with date/time and assign to “unassigned
resource” to ensure that these dates are visible on the project board.
o Schedule appropriate install resources on the ticket for installation and turn up. Create other tickets in
the project as necessary to properly manage this process.
o Attach any provisioning information to the project Documents tab.
Order Products.
o Product needs to be specified on an actual “ordering” ticket to ensure that it appears in the purchasing
screen properly.
o Once ready to order, assign a task to the purchase manager to order the items on the ticket and set the
ticket status to “ready to order”.
o The purchase manager will be able to create PO’s based on the products here and you can go back to
this ticket to look at the products to check on their status if you wish to see if your parts have been
received or not.
Assign resources per known schedule and service deliveries.
o Who is the Project Manager?
o Who is the Engineer?
o Who is the Provisioner?
o Who is the Installer?
o Where you have hard dates and deadlines, you must schedule the resource as well.
Collect information required for Engineering pre-build from the client and attach to the engineering pre-build
ticket.
o Need to know what the current Data network architecture is (IP Network, subnet, default gateway)
o If we are replacing routers and firewall, we need access to them in order to reverse engineer their
configurations and properly provision the new hardware.
 Add this information to the ticket along with instructions on how to access the firewall
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
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Pre-Build Phase
The purpose of the pre-build is to present a working ShoreTel
system to the Installer so they can adequately perform their tasks
onsite without issue. The pre-build should always be done in the
lab and the relationship between the components to be installed
should be setup as close to what their production relationship will
be as possible. Where you have multiple switches, connect them
the way they are to be connected. If we are not providing a router
or firewall, use a lab device to “pretend” to be that device as it
might exist in the production environment so as to verify that all
components are able to communicate to the places they need to
communicate to.
Typically, you will not have access to PRI or analog trunks during
the pre-build. That is ok. Primary concern here is that LAN
connectivity is established and all ShoreTel components are
attached and communicating.
What You’ll Need:
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Standard Serial Cable
Cisco console cable for Cisco
switches
Broadband router (if client isn’t
purchasing one as part of the
project)
Monitor, keyboard and mouse
Laptop computer
Label maker
Patch cables from stock that can be
kept with the components for
installation.
ShoreTel Installation documentation
Current GA load of the ShoreTel
Software
You might employ one of the ShoreTel phones during pre-build
phase to test DHCP settings for voice and data VLAN’s as well as to
ensure the phone is able to register and function as expected (TFTP loads, find switch, etc.)
Pre-build of the ShoreTel system is broken into two separate stages. Engineering and Provisioning:
Engineering Pre-Build
Engineering Pre-Build stage is performed by the Network Engineer assigned to the project. The goal of the Engineering
Pre-Build is to ensure all components are talking to one another (network is setup correctly) and the ShoreTel System
has been made available in VIT. At that time, the Engineering Pre-build is done and the project moves on to the
Provisioning Pre-Build stage.
This Procedures contains within it some room for variation. Use common sense, known best practices and consult
appropriate outside documentation as necessary.
During the Engineering Pre-Build, the network engineer will perform the following procedure:
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
1. Setup all items in a lab where you have internet access
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
a. Multiple sites can be setup separately as long as
IP assignment guidelines for ShoreTel
you recognize that inter-site routing is yet to be
Installation
tested as part of the project and take necessary
steps to ensure when the installation phase comes
Fluid Standard Voice IP scheme is:
to be that there will not be a communications issue
between sites.
- 172.20.x.x/24
Create diagram of components (for larger installation).
- Third octet generally refers to the site
a. Smaller installations can rely on CW configs alone
number (.1, .2, .3, etc)
as long as general guidelines are being followed
- Last Octet is standardized based on the
with nothing “special”.
role of the device.
Assign IP addresses at the Data and Voice network level as
HQ Server
172.20.1.10/24
applicable. Always ensuring your IP scheme will not conflict
HQ ShoreGear
172.20.1.20-30/24
with anything existing in the client environment today.
Switches
a. Take into consideration remote sites and home
HQ Voice Network
172.20.1.1
networks as possible when evaluating this because
default Gateway
it stands to reason that the client may want remote
Voice DHCP scope
172.20.1.100-250
IP phones in these networks and we do not want to
If a secondary
172.20.1.254
router
exists
allocate IP space that will force us to change the
Layer 3 switch data x.x.x.254/x (as
architecture post-install to accommodate that.
VLAN IP
available)
Create config’s in ConnectWise for primary components
like server, switches, firewalls and routers indicating IP’s
and access information.
a. Determine the passcode you will be using for all these components. Standard telnet passcode is
600650. Standard enable and administrative user passcode is usually customer abbreviation followed by
600650; EX: SurePath would be sp600650. You might introduce a capital and Exclamation to fit with
more complex password requirements too so SurePath would be Sp600650! Instead. Either is
acceptable.
Label components with management IP’s and name (per your diagram for larger installs)
Configure Network Switch(s)
a. Voice VLAN2 is standard
b. Public VLAN3 is standard
c. IP the network switch on VLAN 1 AND VLAN 2 if it is a Layer3 switch. IP only on VLAN 2 if it is a layer 2
switch. LABEL, LABEL, LABEL!
d. Start from the top port on the switch and allocate port programming down in the following order as
they apply:
i. Switch uplinks (assuming non-stackable switch – Should be trunked 802.1Q, native Data VLAN1
standard)
ii. Router uplinks (for dedicated WAN infrastructure environments)
iii. Broadband carrier uplink(s) (assign as “access” to the public VLAN 3 standard)
iv. Firewall WAN (Assign “access” to public VLAN 3 standard)
v. Firewall LAN (Assign “access” to Data VLAN 1 standard)
vi. Voice Devices (Assign “access” to Voice VLAN 2 standard)
vii. Access Data devices (Assign “Access” to Voice VLAN 1 standard)
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
viii. Voice/Data universal trunked ports (Assign as 802.1q trunk with Voice VLAN 2 and native VLAN 1
standard)
7. Configure Firewall (use temp router/firewall if new firewall is not being purchased)
a. Setup LAN side of the firewall to mimic the client’s LAN IP scheme. Should be the same internal IP as the
clients LAN default Gateway.
b. Ensure you can get access to the internet through the firewall in order to enable access to the system
for the next stage.
c. Setup DHCP for the Data network and specify Option 156 for phone auto-provisioning (see KB article for
more information).
8. Setup the ShoreTel Server
a. Plug the ST Server’s LAN port into a Voice Only port on the switch.
b. IP the server per the IP guidelines above.
i. Note: if you are lab’ing the ST server in Fluid Corporate offices, you’ll need to manually specify
DNS server at 10.111.222.41, .42 in order to ensure that the VIT agent will be able to register
with connect.visible-it.com from behind our firewall. MAKE SURE YOU CHANGE DNS TO 8.8.8.8
AND 8.8.4.4 WHEN THE SERVER IS INSTALLED OR IT WILL FAIL TO GET ONLINE.
c. Verify the server can get online.
d. Rename the server to better match its role within the customer network. EX: CUSTY-ST-SRV-1
e. Change the administrator passcode to match the passcode you developed earlier.
f. Go to http://connect.visible-it.com/dl.asp to install the VIT server agent.
i. Ping Erroll or Eric to create a container in VIT for this server if one doesn’t already exist.
ii. Move the server to the new or existing container.
g. Go to https://support.shoretel.com and login to the support site (click here for login information) to
download the latest General Release version of the ST software. DO NOT USE RELEASE CANDIDATES!
h. You’ll also want to download the install/admin guide so you can reference the pre-installation checklist
for your version of ShoreTel.
i. Follow the pre-installation checklist to get the server pre-requisites done (have to install DHCP, DNS, IIS,
FTP, ASP roles, etc.)
j. Make sure you setup FTP to allow anonymous connections.
k. Install the ShoreTel Software.
l. You’ll need to configure DHCP services on the ST server to adequately assign IP addresses to the phones
on VLAN 2. You’ll want to reference the KB article regarding Option 156 because it gives general
guidelines on setting up these parameters on a Windows server.
i. DHCP must be configured before moving onto the next step as the ST switches will abide by the
TFTP server information, etc in order to find and register with the HQ server.
9. Add the ST switch(s) into ShoreWare Director for the HQ site.
i. You won’t be able to add switches for other sites until you have a working network to those
sites of course. Many times we don’t add them during the pre-build phase, we simply leave
them configured and ready to install then leave them to the installer to add them into the “live”
system at time of installation.
b. Access the server via VIT and double click on the ShoreTel icon on the desktop.
c. Login as “admin”, passcode “changeme”
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
d. You’ll have to go through the initial registration. Make sure you specify cs@fluidnets.com as the
technical contact, then fill in the customer information for the rest and send it off. This begins the
process of obtaining the system license key which is keyed to the server’s MAC address.
e. Once you have landed in Director, goto Platform Hardware | Voice Switches | Primary and select the
switch type in the drop down at the top box and click “Go”.
f. Type a name for the switch in the Name field
i. Standard naming convention usually indicates site, switch type and switch number. For
instance, the first SG50 switch at the HQ site would be named HQ-SG50-1
g. Description can be more informative as necessary
h. Click “find switch”
i. If your DHCP programming is good and the switch registered with the HQ SoftSwitch, then you
ought to see your switch listed there with its MAC address. Select it and it will populate the
MAC address field for you.
i. Click Save now to add the switch.
10. Configure ShoreGear Switch(s) with Static IP address
Older ST switch boot code will support
a. Newest switch boot code does not have the config menu
Static IP config via the serial console port.
on the serial console port so in order to configure a
You can try setting the IP this way if you
static IP address on the ST switch, you must first enable
want. Serial requirements are:
Telnet on the switch:
i. On the HQ server goto C:\Program
19200 bps, 8 data bits, no parity, one
Files\Shoreline Communications\ShoreWare
stop bit, no handshake
Server>
You’ll get a menu, from there you can
ii. Type ipbxctl -telneton IP Address (where IP
disable DHCP and proceed to enter the
Address is the IP address that the switch is using
information following the guidelines to the
from DHCP).
left.
iii. The password, when requested, is ShoreTel
(case sensitive)
b. Now, using a telnet client from the HQ server, telnet to
the IP address of the switch
c. If you are prompted for credentials use username “anonymous” and passcode “ShoreTel” (case
sensitive). Go down the main menu and specify the appropriate information:
i. Turn off dynamic IP and have it use static IP address (critical to do this step first)
ii. IP address: standard is 172.20.1.20 (for the first switch, then go up from there)
iii. Subnet Mask: standard is 255.255.255.0
iv. Gateway: standard is 172.20.1.1
v. Server: standard is 172.20.1.10 (or whatever you assigned to the ShoreTel Server in step 8.b)
vi. Save and restart the SG Switch.
11. Add the Voice Networks to the IP Phone Address Map
a. Go to IP Phones | IP Phone Address Map and click New
b. In the “new” box, you’ll enter the starting and ending IP address of the HQ site and click “add”
i. This tells the ST system that if a phone requests service with an IP address in that range, it
belongs to the HQ site so assign it to a switch resident in that site.
12. Now you are ready to plug a phone in and make sure it goes through the process of:
a. getting an IP address from the firewall on VLAN1
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ShoreTel System Deployment and Management
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
Reconfiguring network
Rebooting
Getting an IP address from the ShoreTel Server on VLAN 2
Contacting FTP server
Downloading config and then coming up as “anonymous”
i. That means the phone has registered with the switch and is waiting to be assigned to a user.
ii. You ought to get dialtone if you hit the speaker button.
13. Final step is to plug the external hard drive into the server and setup the backup system.
a. Use Windows backup to take weekly backups of the server to the external drive.
b. Setup drive as a dedicated backup volume when asked by Windows Backup.
c. You can get more information on backing up the ST server by referencing the support site.
Provisioning
Installation
Installation is broken into three different stages. Network Upgrade, Carrier Services Delivery/Testing and Phone System
Installation.
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