Polycom, Inc. 43
Set Up the Provisioning Server
This section provides instructions for setting up your system with a provisioning server. If you are new to
this process, it is important to read every section in this section.
This section focuses on one particular way that the Polycom
®
CX5500 Software and the required external
systems might initially be installed and configured in your network.
Set Up the Provisioning Server consists of the following sections:
● Why Use a Provisioning Server?
● Provisioning Server Security Notes
● Set up an FTP Server as Your Provisioning Server
● Download Polycom CX5500 Software Files to the Provisioning Server
● Deploy and Update the CX5500 System with a Provisioning Server
● Upgrade Polycom UC Software
Why Use a Provisioning Server?
Read this section if you have never set up a provisioning server before.
Polycom strongly recommends that you use a provisioning server to install and maintain your Polycom
phones. You can set up a provisioning server on the local LAN or anywhere on the Internet. A
provisioning server maximizes the flexibility you have when installing, configuring, upgrading, and
maintaining the phones, and enables you to store configuration, log, directory, and override files on the
server. If you allow the phone write access to your provisioning server, the phone can use the server to
upload all of the file types and store administrator and user settings. The phone is designed such that if it
cannot locate a provisioning server when it boots up, it will operate with internally saved parameters. This
is useful when the provisioning server is not available.
Web Info: Registering Standalone Polycom Phones
If you want to register a single CX5500 system, see the Polycom Web Configuration Utility User
Guide.
You can configure multiple (redundant) provisioning servers—one logical server with multiple
addresses—by mapping the provisioning server DNS name to multiple IP addresses. The default number
of provisioning servers is one and the maximum number is eight. For more information on the protocol
used, see Supported Provisioning Protocols.
If you set up multiple provisioning servers, you must be able to reach all of the provisioning servers with
the same protocol and the contents on each provisioning server must be identical. The parameters
described in Provisioning Server Menu can be used to configure the number of times each server will be
tried for a file transfer and also how long to wait between each attempt. You can configure the maximum
number of servers to be tried. For more information, contact your Certified Polycom Reseller.