As most of you may or may not know, Cisco currently only provides non-bootable Unified Communications ISO images on CCO for download. These ISOs are listed as being provided for “upgrades” and hence will not boot.
 
The only difference between these non-bootable images and a bootable disc is that the bootable disc includes a boot sector file.   Fortunately, this boot sector file can easily be extracted from a bootable disc and then injected into your non-bootable ISO.  To accomplish this, you will need to use some sort of ISO image software such as UltraISO, MagicISO, PowerISO, etc.  I prefer to use UltraISO for its ease of use.

 

 

In my example, I am using a bootable Unified Communications Manager 7.1.3 DVD for the boot sector file and will inject it into my non-bootable Unified Communications Manager 8.6 image,  UCSInstall_UCOS_8.6.1.10000-43.sgn (I have on occasion been provided a bootable image from Cisco TAC which generally will read in the format “Bootable_UCSInstall_UCOS_X.X.X.XXXXX-XX.sgn.ISO”).  One thing to make note of is that the boot sector file seems to be independent of application type you are extracting from.  What this means is, I have extracted the boot sector from a CUCM disc and injected into UCCX, CUPS, etc images.

 

1.  Put a bootable Cisco UC disc into the DVD drive and start UltraISO.  On the Menu, go to Bootable > Extract Boot File from CD/DVD…
 
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2.  Save the file as “any_name_you_want_.bif”.  It is important you save as .bif!
 

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3.  Open up your non-bootable image in UltraISO and go to menu Bootable and make sure “Generate Bootinfotable” is checked.  Now select Load Boot File… Browse to the .bif file extracted early and select.  You will notice that the UltraISO Image type will change from “Data CD/DVD” to “Bootable CD/DVD”
 
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4.  On the Menu go to File > Save As… and save the newly created bootable image as an ISO. I generally stick to the Cisco naming convention and prefix “Bootable”, but you can save as any name desired.
 
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Now that you have the bootable ISO created, you can burn to disc or mount the ISO directly from VMWare, etc.
 
Note:  I am pretty certain that this is NOT supported by Cisco, so you are on your own if something blows up.  Use at your own risk!  :)

 

 

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