SARK V4.0.1 Provisioning

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Overview

SARK has an extensive and extensible provisioning system capable of automatically provisioning most popular phones types. From release 4.0.1, the provisioning system is HTTP only (no TFTP or FTP) and capable of provisioning both local and remote phones. The system synthesizes each provisioning stream at the point it is requested by the phone. SARK supports both DHCP and SIP multicast (PnP) endpoint notification. In the 5.0.0 release the following phone types are supported

• Aastra - all models
• CiscoSPA - all phone models (not the ATA's)
• Cisco MultiPlatform 77XX and 88XX series - all models
• Panasonic KX-UT series - all models
• Panasonic KX-HDV series - all models
• Panasonic KX-TGP500/550 DECT units
• Polycom - all models
• Snom - all models
• Vtech VSP range - all models
• Yealink - all models (firmware V70 or higher)

Provisioning with DHCP

You can provision any of the supported phones using DHCP to tell the phone where the SARK provisioning server is located. You can use any DHCP service which supports the setting of DHCP options. SARK itself has an on-board DHCP server which you can use if the customer site does not have an existing DHCP server. Most phones request DHCP Option 66 but some require a different option to be set (see your manufacturer's documentation and the table in the provisioning matrix below).

Provisioning with SIP multicast (PnP)

SARK supports Multicast provisioning. This allows SARK to asynchronously tell a SIP phone where its provisioning file is located without the need to modify the existing DHCP server, or even to run the SARK unit at a static IP address (although we recommend you do). A SARK listener task will respond to SIP broadcast packets from SIP devices requesting provisioning information. The only limitation is that multicast works within one network hop so the phones must be in the same subnet as the SARK box. If SARK already has a definition in its database for the device making the request then it will respond with a URI from which the device may retrieve its provisioning data. This is very similar in principle to Option 66 being served by a DHCP server except that no DHCP setup is required. You can run multiple PnP enabled SARK servers in the same subnet. Each SARK Multicast listener will only reply to those phones which it "owns" (i.e. are defined to it).

Multicast provisioning is turned on by default in SARK but you can turn it off in Globals panel if you don't wish to use it. It can happily co-exist with other forms of provisioning so it is recommended that you leave it turned on. The following phone types are supported

• Panasonic KX-UT series - all models
• Panasonic KX-HDV series - all models
• Snom - all models
• Yealink - all models
• Vtech - All models

Snom, Yealink and Panasonic KX-UT/HDV phones all have multicast provisioning enabled "out-of-the-box" so there is no need to do anything with the phones before you use this method. You can simply define the extension to the PBX, un-box the phone, plug it in and begin making calls.

Manually setting the phone to provision from SARK

You can manually enter the provisioning server url using the phone browser. The url you enter is the same as the ones shown in the table below.

Provisioning Matrix

The table below shows the URLs required by each of the supported manufacturers and whether the phone is PnP capable.

Manufacturer	url	DHCP Option	PnP capable?	check-sync1	Always2
Aastra	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning	66	NO	Reboot	NO
CiscoSPA	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning/$MAU	66	NO	Reboot	NO
CiscoMP	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning/$MAU	66	NO	Reboot	NO
Panasonic KX-UT	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning?mac={mac}	66	YES	In-flight	YES
Panasonic KX-HDV	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning?mac={mac}	66	YES	In-flight	YES
Panasonic KX-TG(DECT)	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning?mac={mac}	66	NO	In-flight	YES
Polycom	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning	66	NO	Reboot	NO
Snom	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning?mac={mac}	66	YES	In-flight	NO
Vtech	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning	66	YES	Reboot	NO
Yealink	http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning	66	YES	Reboot	NO

1. check-sync; If a device is marked "In-flight", it means you can make some minor changes, for example a BLF lamp change, in the SARK browser, and push them to the phone without the phone restarting. Snom and Panasonic are both good at this, the patest Polycom formwares are also pretty good. Most other manufacturers' phones will reboot on any re-provision.
2. Always; By default, SARK will only send the SIP registration UID and password details to a phone the first time it asks for its provisioning data. This is a useful security feature, particularly if you intend to provision remote phones, because it minimises the number of times you send a SIP password over the network. Unfortunately some phones (notably Panasonic) cannot cope with this and they need to have their UID/password sent on every re-provision. For these devices you can set the "Auth" flag to "Always" in the SARK extensions panel.

Zero touch provisoning (ZTP)

ZTP is a hugely productive feature you can use when you have a lot of phones to roll out and configure in a short period of time. It runs in conjunction with PnP. On its own, PnP will only provision phones you've already defined to SARK. ZTP, on the other hand, can create entirely new extension entries in the database and automatically provision phones it hasn't seen before. When ZTP is enabled, you can simply unpack a phone, connect it to the network and power it up. It will come up and be ready to make calls. For security reasons, you should only run ZTP during initial system installation or when you have new phones to roll-out. The remainder of the time it should be switched off.

Turn on/off ZTP in the "Services" tab in Globals panel.

The following phones can be configured with ZTP

• Panasonic KX-UT series - all models¹
• Panasonic KX-HDV series - all models²
• Snom - all models
• Vtech - all models³
• Yealink - all models

1. Panasonic KX-UT's are a little odd in their use of PnP. Whereas Snom and Yealink will always attempt a PnP request, KX-UT's only seem to ever do it once. Thereafter they will simply continue to use the originally loaded web provisioning address. To force them to do another PnP request it seems you have to factory reset them. A factory reset on a Panasonic takes an age to complete so we would suggest you do it just before you go to lunch. The fact that they use PnP at all is not documented in the Panasonic KX-UT admin guide and we only found it by chance while running a trace on a phone.
2. Panasonic KX-HDV's handle multicast extremely well. Unlike the UT's, they will always send multicast requests whenever they reboot and also when you send them a notify to check-sync.
3. Vtech have released a range of SIP phones and we recently put them through the approval process for SARK. They are similar to the Yealink units in many ways and the provisioning language is similar. All the phones in the range are capable of multicast provisioning.

Discovery and Adoption

SARK V5 supports discovery and adoption. The Discover tab in End-points will search the local subnet for phones and display them. If a phone is already defined as an extension the extension number will be shown in the report. If the phone is an orphan, an ADOPT button can be clicked to define an extension entry for it in Endpoints.