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. SARK supports both DHCP and SIP multicast (PnP) endpoint notification. 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
- Panasonic KX-TGP500/550 DECT units
- 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 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. 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 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
- Snom - all models
- Yealink - all models
Snom, Yealink and Panasonic KX-UT 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. It also shows which devices are PnP capable and which devices can re-provision some of their settings "in-flight" without the phone rebooting. If a device is marked "In-flight", it means you can make, for example, a BLF lamp change in the SARK browser and push it to the phone without the phone restarting. Snom and Panasonic are both good at this, most other types will restart on any re-provision.
| Manufacturer | url | DHCP Option | PnP capable? | check-sync1 | Once2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aastra | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 66 | NO | Reboot | YES |
| CiscoSPA | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning/$MAU | 66 | NO | Reboot | YES |
| Gigaset | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 114 | YES | Reboot | YES |
| Panasonic KX-UT | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning?mac={mac} | 66 | YES | In-flight | NO |
| Panasonic KX-TG(DECT) | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning?mac={mac} | 66 | NO | In flight | NO |
| Polycom | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 66 | NO | Reboot | YES |
| Snom | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning?mac={mac} | 66 | YES | In-flight | YES |
| Yealink | http://your.sark.ip.address/provisioning | 66 | YES | Reboot | YES |
* If a device is marked "In-flight", it means you can make, for example, a BLF lamp change in the SARK browser and push it to the phone without the phone restarting. Snom and Panasonic are both good at this, most other types will restart on any re-provision.
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. 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 sense it, create a new extension for it in the SARK database and dynamically generate provisioning information for it. In other words, you simply un-box it, connect it to the network and power it up. There is nothing else to do. 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 models
- Snom - all models
- Yealink - all models
