WARNING

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

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:

Caution

This page covers the Ribbon-recommended host hardware settings for VMware and not the SBC VM instance size. Network operators must work with the designated Ribbon account team to determine the size of the VM that is required for the call flows and rate they require.

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

Note

Ribbon retired the two-vCPU configuration for the SBC SWe private cloud as of the 12.0 release. 



WARNING

Any SBC SWe configuration (other than/outside of a D-SBC deployment) beyond 32 vCPUs is invalid and 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).

NOTES:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • ESXi 6.5 and later releases require approximately two physical cores to be set aside for hypervisor functionality. You must plan accordingly the number of VMs to host on a server.
 RAMMinimum 24 GB
Hard DiskMinimum 500 GB
Network Interface Cards (NICs)

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

Ribbon recommends using SR-IOV with 10 Gbps interfaces (e.g., x540/82599/x710). Although SR-IOV is supported on 1 Gbps, the 10 Gbps interfaces provide better throughput.

  • Cisco VIC
  • Intel E810
  • Intel I350
  • Intel x540
  • Intel x550
  • Intel x710
  • Intel 82599
  • Mellanox Connect - 4x 
  • Mellanox Connect - 5x

NOTES:

  • Use the latest firmware for the specific NIC corresponding to the hardware platform. 
  • 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 VMware Enterprise Plus license is required for SR-IOV.
  • You can use vmxnet3 (as 1G interfaces) in VMware for for Management and HA ports.
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.


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

Software

Version

Tested and Qualified VersionFor More Information
vSphere ESXi

The version must be supported.

  • VMware 6.7.3 tested with virtual hardware version 14
  • VMware 7.0.2 tested with virtual hardware version 19
  • VMware 8.0.0 tested with virtual hardware version 20 for SRIOV and VMXNET3 (This version is qualified for NIC 710)

Modified: for 12.1.3

  • Refer to the current Release Notes for the latest supported version of ESXi.
  • 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:
vCenter Server
vCenter Server
Note

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


Third-party references: