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Warning

The recommended hardware and software settings are intended to ensure optimum SBC SWe stability and performance. If the recommended settings are not used, the SBC SWe system may not behave as expected.

In this section:

Related articles:

This section describes SBC SWe hardware and software requirements and recommendations for VMware.

To install and configure SBC SWe, make sure the Virtual Machine (VM) host meets the following recommended hardware, server platform and software requirements.

SBC SWe for VMware – Server Hardware Requirements

Warning

The SBC SWe software only runs on platforms using Intel processors. Platforms using AMD processors are not supported.


The following table lists the server hardware requirements:

 ConfigurationRequirement
Processor

Intel Xeon processors (Nehalem micro-architecture or above) with 6 cores and above (processors should support hyper threading).

Note

Ribbon recommends using Westmere (or newer) processors for better SRTP performance. These processors have the AES-NI instruction set for performing cryptographic operations in hardware.

Note

The supported CPU Family number is 6 and CPU Model number must be newer than 26. Refer to the Intel Architecture and Processor Identification document for more information.

Note

ESXi 6.5 and later releases require approximately 2 physical cores to be set aside for hypervisor functionality. The number of VMs which can be hosted on a server must be planned for accordingly.

 RAMMinimum 24 GB
Hard DiskMinimum 500 GB
Network Interface Cards (NICs)

Minimum 4 NICs, if physical NIC redundancy is not required.

The following NICs are supported for configuring as SR-IOV and DirectPath I/O pass-through devices. SR-IOV is supported only with 10 Gbps interfaces (x540/82599/x710):

  • Intel I350
  • Intel x540
  • Intel x550
  • Intel x710
  • Intel 82599
  • Mellanox Connect - 4x 
  • Mellanox Connect - 5x
  • CISCO VIC. 


Note

Use the latest firmware for the specific NIC corresponding to the hardware platform. 

Note

Make sure NICs have multi-queue support which enhances network performance by allowing RX and TX queues to scale with the number of CPUs on multi-processor systems.

Note

The VMware Enterprise Plus license is required for SR-IOV.

Ports

Number of ports allowed:


SBC SWe for VMware – Software Requirements

Warning

Using older versions of ESXi can trigger a VM instance shutdown. To prevent this from occurring, you must upgrade the VMware ESXi -- refer to the End of General Support column on https://lifecycle.vmware.com/#/ for supported versions.


The following are the SBC SWe requirements for VMware ESXi environments:

Software

Version*

Tested and Qualified VersionFor More Information
vSphere ESXi

6.0 or above


  • VMware 6.7.3 tested with virtual hardware version 14
  • VMware 7.0.2 tested with virtual hardware version 19
  • Customized ESXi images for various server platforms are available on VMware and hardware platform vendor sites.
    • These ensure that all the required drivers for network and storage controllers are available to run ESXi server.
    • Most of the customized ESXi images come with customized management software to manage the server running the ESXi software.
  • Customized ESXi images for HP ProLiant and IBM servers are available at:
vSphere Client5.1 or above
VMware Knowledge Base
vCenter Server5.1 or above
vCenter Server

*   The version must be supported. See the End of General Support column at https://lifecycle.vmware.com/#/ for supported versions. 

Note

The VMware Enterprise Plus license is required for SR-IOV.


Third-Party References: