SARK V4.0.1 Provisioning
Contents
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 synthesises each provisioning stream at the point it is requested by the phone. In the 4.0.1 release the following phone types are supported
- Aastra - all models
- CiscoSPA - all phone models (not the ATA's)
- Gigaset professional series DECT base-stations
- Panasonic KX-UT series - all models
- Polycom - all models
- Snom - 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).
The supported manufacturers require the following server URLs to get their provisioning data from SARK
| Manufacturer | url | DHCP Option |
|---|---|---|
| Aastra | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 66 |
| CiscoSPA | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning/$MAU | 66 |
| Gigaset | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 114 |
| Panasonic KX | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 66 |
| Polycom | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 66 |
| Snom | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning?mac={mac} | 66 |
| Yealink | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 66 |
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 to run an on-board DHCP server or even to run the SARK unit at a static IP address. A SARK listener task will respond to SIP broadcast packets from SIP devices requesting provisioning information. If SARK already has a definition in its database for the device making the request then it will respond with a URL reference 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 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
- Snom - all models
- Yealink - all models
Both Snom and Yealink 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 and plug it in.
Zero touch provisoning (ZTP)
(ZTP) is a feature which you will normally only turn on for short periods of time, for example during initial system installation or perhaps when new phones are being added to an existing system. It runs in conjunction with PnP. Whereas PnP will only provision phones it already knows about, ZTP can create entirely new extension entries in the database and automatically provision phones it hasn't seen before. When ZTP is running, you can connect a new phone to the network and ZTP will automatically create a new extension for it in the SARK database and dynamically generate provisioning information for it. In other words, the phone can provision itself and be ready to use with no human intervention. This is a hugely productive feature when you have a lot of phones to roll out and configure in a short period of time. 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.
There is no need to modify the existing DHCP server on the target site to provide provisioning information to the phones.
The following phones can be configured with ZTP
- Panasonic KX series - all models
- Snom - all models
- Yealink - all models
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 above.
