Hi Everyone,

We are currently planning a PureCloud rollout. In an active-active configuration with multiple edge devices, using the standard DHCP approach to provision phones, I am trying to understand how the phone selects which edge is primary and which is secondary.

- Does it treat whichever one the DNS lookup returns when the DHCP process is occuring as the primary edge? If so, to achieve an even distribution of phones to edges, does the DNS need to be doing a round robin when returning the IP of the edge?

- If it's not based on this, then how does it work?

I'm going off this page:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/phone-provisioning-dhcp-dns/

Thanks

Luke

Phone distribution is handled by phone balancing and phone re-balancing routines that PureCloud implements and manages. As a result PureCloud will manage the phone's primary and secondary configurations. This is all done by the configured phone provisioning service. DHCP is just one option that provides the mechanism for the phone to reach the phone provisioning service. Once provisioned, phones may be re-provisioned as PureCloud Edges are added or removed from and Edge Group which will keep the phones relatively balanced across all edges within the group.

Thanks for the reply Richard, makes sense. May I ask a followup question: what is the difference between using the cloud provisioning service and provisioning from the Edge (referenced here: https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/use-purecloud-provisioning-service-phone-configuration/)? Or put another way, what is the use case for the cloud provisioning service? The article states the cloud service can "handle site-wide configuration changes and firmware updates", but is this not something the Edges do as well?

Thanks again

Luke

Both local edge provisioning and the cloud provisioning service offer the same set of features. The advantage of the cloud-based service is the additional robustness, durability and reliability that it offers by simplifying the provisioning process and limiting the potential for phone downtime. If the phone set you are using meets the requirements for support by the cloud provisioning service then it is a good option to choose.