WARNING

Any SBC SWe configuration (other than/outside of a D-SBC deployment) beyond 32 vCPUs is invalid and not supported.


In this section:

Caution

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.

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 KVM Hypervisor – Server Hardware Requirements

Note

Ribbon is retiring the 2 vCPU for the SBC SWe private cloud as of the 12.0 release. 


The following table lists the server hardware requirements.

Configuration Requirement
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.

 

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

Minimum 4 NICs

Note

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

The following are supported for configuring as SR_IOV:

  • Cisco VIC
  • Intel E810
  • Intel I350
  • Intel x540
  • Intel x550
  • Intel x710
  • Intel 82599 Ethernet adapters
  • Marvell QLogic QL45604
  • Mellanox Connect - 4x
  • Mellanox Connect - 5x
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.

The SBC SWe on KVM Hypervisor is qualified to support the Marvell QLogic QL45604 NIC (SR-IOV) for release 10.01.03R0.

Note

For this release, QLogic QL45604 NICs (SR-IOV) is not qualified on the SBC CNe or other SBC SWe platforms.

Ribbon highly recommends the following before using the QLogic QL45604 NIC: 

  • The QLogic NIC MFW (Management Firmware) is  8.30.x.x.
  • Upgrade storm firmware to a version8.40.33.0.
  • Upgrade Linux PF/kernel Driver to a version 8.20.x.x.
Ports

Number of ports allowed:

Warning

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


BIOS Setting Recommendations

Ribbon recommends the following BIOS settings for optimum performance:

BIOS ParameterRecommended
Setting
Details
Intel VT-x (Virtualization Technology)EnabledFor hardware virtualization
Intel Hyper-ThreadingEnabled
Intel Turbo BoostEnabled
CPU Power ManagementMaximum Performance
Sub-NUMA ClusteringDisabledOnly applies if it is present as an option on the server

Example BIOS setting recommendations for HP DL380p Gen8 servers are shown below. For BIOS settings of other servers, refer to the respective vendor's website.


BIOS Setting Recommendations for HP DL380p Gen8 Servers

BIOS ParameterRecommended
Setting
Default Value
HP Power ProfileMaximum PerformanceBalanced Power and Performance
Thermal ConfigurationMaximum CoolingOptimal Cooling
HW PrefetchersDisabledEnabled
Adjacent Sector PrefetcherDisabledEnabled
Processor Power and Utilization MonitoringDisabledEnabled
Memory Pre-Failure NotificationDisabledEnabled
Memory Refresh Rate1x Refresh2x Refresh

SBC SWe for KVM Hypervisor – Software Requirements


The minimum SBC SWe requirements for a KVM hypervisor environment are listed in the following table.

SoftwareVersionTested or Qualified Version
KVM Module 3.10.0 or above3.10.0
QEMU Emulator  1.5.31.5.3
libvirtd (libvirt)1.1.11.1.1
virt-manager0.10.00.10.0

Downloading the SBC SWe Software Package

For more information, see Downloading the SBC SWe Software Package.

Note

Ensure Processors and VM configuration (CPUs, RAM, Virtual Hard Disk, NICs, and Bridge settings) are identical for an SBC SWe HA pair.

Note

Do not change BIOS settings once they are applied on the server.

KVM Configuration and Settings 

ConfigurationSettings
 vCPU

Minimum 4 vCPUs required. Any number of vCPUs may be configured depending upon the call capacity requirements, but the number should be even (4, 6, 8, etc.) to avoid impacting performance.  

CPU resource reservation and pinning are required.

 vRAM

Reserve the memory based on call capacity and configuration requirements. Refer to benchmarking data for supported call capacities with different configuration limits.

Memory resource reservation is required.

Virtual Hard Disk

Set Hard Disk (virtual) size as 100 GB or more (based on requirements of retaining CDRs, logs, etc. for number of days).

Note: Hard disk size cannot be changed after the SBC SWe software is installed.

vNICs

Set number of virtual NICs as 4 (1-MGMT, 1-HA, 1-PKT0 and 1-PKT1).

  • Use Virt-IO drivers only for MGMT and HA. VIRT-IO interfaces are not recommended for higher call loads.
  • For PKT0 and PKT1 the driver to use depends on the parallel sessions to support - it is either VIRT-IO or SR-IOV.
  • Associate each vNIC to separate bridges.

Note

To configure VLAN on SRIOV and PCI Passthrough Ethernet interfaces, disable the Data Center Bridging (DCB) on the switch connected to the interfaces.

Note

You can instantiate the SBC SWe in smaller-sized configurations that use limited memory and vCPU resources, if required. However, the limited resources place some restrictions on capacity and capabilities. Refer to Small SBC SWe Deployment Characteristics and Small SBC SWe Configuration Performance Metrics for more information.