collabcowboy.net
Cluster monitoring and certificate lifecycle for Cisco UC
📡 Beacona Collab Cowboy tool
Real alarms, not RTMT noise, and a renewal runbook for the cert that’s expiring.
RTMT drowns real problems in false alarms, and certificate expiries are the 2 a.m. outage nobody saw coming. Beacon is two jobs in one dashboard: live cluster monitoring and certificate lifecycle management, across every CUCM, IM&P, Unity Connection, and Expressway cluster you’ve connected. Per-node health rolls up into one alarm panel with the classic false positives filtered out, and every certificate is tracked to expiry with a renewal procedure generated for your exact build.
Beacon uses the clusters you’ve already added, discovers and roles every node automatically, and ticks about every five minutes. It reconciles alarms against what’s really wrong (not expired trust entries or services you took out of service on purpose) and reads each cert’s build to write a renewal runbook specific to that certificate on that cluster.
Cluster health + certificate expiry● live
CUCM-PUB
Publisher
svc ✓repl ✓disk 41%
CUCM-SUB1
Subscriber
svc ✓repl ✓disk 38%
UNITY-1
Unity Cxn
svc 1 OOSrepl ✓disk 52%
Certificate expiry · every identity cert, every node
| Certificate | Node | Type | Expires |
|---|
| tomcat | CUCM-PUB | CA-signed | 214 days |
| CallManager | CUCM-PUB | self-signed | 41 days |
| CAPF | CUCM-PUB | self-signed | 9 days |
2 real alarms (RTMT noise filtered) · pick a cert → Generate renewal runbook for this build
Monitoring
One alarm panel that means something
One card per node: per-service status, database replication state, CPU, memory, per-partition disk, registered-phone and active-call counts, and Expressway peer and traversal status. Every problem rolls up into a single alarm list with the RTMT false positives stripped out.
- Per-node health: services, replication, CPU/memory/disk, phones, calls
- Auto-discovered: pubs, subs, IM&P, Unity, Expressway peers, roled for you
- Noise filtered: expired trust entries and OOS services don’t cry wolf
- Re-tier or ack: downgrade an alarm for your environment, or quiet it
Certificates
Tracked to expiry, with a runbook
A live inventory of every identity certificate on every node: type, owner, self-signed vs. CA-signed, key type and size, and days-to-expiry color-coded by urgency. Pick a cert and Beacon generates a renewal runbook built from that cert’s own context, not a generic checklist.
- Full cert inventory: every node, color-coded by days to expiry
- Build-specific runbook: reads cert type, security mode, version, topology
- Risk header: flags phone resets, CTL updates, blast radius, after-hours
- Pre-flight checks: confirms replication healthy and DRS backup current
Why teams reach for it
Cluster health and cert renewal, without the RTMT tax.
Alarms that are actually alarms. Beacon filters the classic RTMT false positives, so the panel reflects real problems instead of expired trust entries you already know about.
Certs stop being a surprise. Every certificate is tracked to expiry and color-coded, so the 2 a.m. Tomcat outage becomes a scheduled renewal.
The runbook is yours, not generic. Beacon reads the cert’s build (type, mixed vs. non-secure, version, topology) and writes steps for that cert on that cluster.
It knows what a renewal breaks. The risk header calls out whether phones reset or a CTL update is needed before you start, not after.
Pre-flight before you commit. A cert change can’t be rolled back, so Beacon confirms replication is healthy and the backup is current first.
Whole estate, one board. CUCM, IM&P, Unity, and Expressway health and certs in one place, roled automatically.
For the estate you’re expected to just keep running
Cluster health and certificate expiry are the two things that turn into outages when they slip, and both are easy to lose track of across a multi-cluster estate. Beacon watches the health with the noise removed and hands you a build-specific runbook for the next cert due. So renewals are planned, not emergencies.
Setup & Fit
Works with
Every CUCM, IM&P, Unity Connection, and Expressway cluster you’ve connected.
Turn it on
Nothing extra to point it at. It uses your existing cluster connections and starts ticking.
Sized for
Single cluster to a multi-cluster estate; the more nodes, the more it saves.