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This section describes

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hardware and software requirements and recommendations.

To install and configure the 

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

Warning
title Warning
The recommended hardware and software settings are intended to ensure optimum  Spacevars 0 product2 stability and performance. If the recommended settings are not used, the Spacevars 0 product2 system may not behave as expected.

SBC SWe for VMware – Server Hardware Requirements

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MultiExcerptName SBC SWe for VMware – Server Hardware Requirements
The following table lists the server hardware requirements: Caption 0 Table 1 Server Hardware Requirements    Configuration Requirement Processor Intel Xeon processors (Nehalem micro-architecture or above) with 6 cores and above (processors should support hyper threading). Info title Note Sonus recommends using Westmere (or newer) processors for better SRTP performance. These processors have the AES-NI instruction set for performing cryptographic operations in hardware. Info title Note The supported CPU Family Number is 6 and CPU Model Number must be newer than 26. Refer to Intel Architecture and Processor Identification document for more information. Info title Note ESXi 6.5 and later releases requires approximately 2 physical cores to be set aside for hypervisor functionality. Number of VMs which can be hosted on a server needs to be planned accordingly.  RAM Minimum 24 GB Hard Disk Minimum 500 GB Network Interface Cards (NICs) Minimum 4 NICs, if physical NIC redundancy is not required. Otherwise, 8 NICs (preferably with SR-IOV capability to support SWe optimizations). Info title Note Make sure NIC has multi-queue support which enhances network performance by allowing RX and TX queues to scale with the number of CPUs on multi-processor systems. Info title Note The Intel I350, x540, and 82599 Ethernet adapters are supported for configuring as SR-IOV and DirectPath I/O pass-through devices. The SR-IOV is supported only with 10Gbps interfaces (x540/82599). Info title Note: Intel x710 NICs are also supported on VMware (ESXi versions 6.5 and above) with SR-IOV enabled. x710 NICs are not supported on Direct I/O or KVM.  Ports Number of ports allowed: 1 Management port 1 HA port 2 Media ports     Warning title Warning The  Spacevars 0 product2 software only runs on platforms using Intel processors. Platforms using AMD processors are not supported.

BIOS Setting Recommendations

Sonus recommends the following BIOS settings for optimum performance:

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0 Table 1 Recommended BIOS Settings for Optimum Performance
BIOS Parameter Recommended Setting Details Intel VT-x (Virtualization Technology) Enabled For hardware virtualization Intel VT-d (Directed I/O) Enabled If available Intel Hyper-Threading Enabled   Intel Turbo Boost Enabled   CPU power management Maximum Performance

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For example, the BIOS settings are shown below for HP DL 380p Gen8 servers. For BIOS settings of other servers, refer to the respective vendor website.

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0 Table 1 BIOS Setting Recommendations for HP DL380p Gen8 Server
BIOS Parameter Recommended Setting Default Value HP Power Profile Maximum Performance Balanced Power and Performance Thermal Configuration Maximum Cooling Optimal Cooling HW Prefetchers Disabled Enabled Adjacent Sector Prefetcher Disabled Enabled Processor Power and Utilization Monitoring Disabled Enabled Memory Pre-Failure Notification Disabled Enabled Memory Refresh Rate 1x Refresh 2x Refresh Data Direct I/O Enabled Disabled SR-IOV Enabled Disabled Intel® VT-d Enabled Disabled

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MultiExcerptName SBC SWe for VMware – Software Requirements
SBC SWe for VMware – Software Requirements The following are the VMware ESXi and  Spacevars 0 product2  software requirements: VMware ESXi Requirements Caption 0 Table 1 VMWare ESXi Requirements Software Version Tested and Qualified Version For More Information vSphere ESXi 5.1 or above VMware 6.0 tested with VM version 11 VMware 6.5 tested with VM version 13 Customized ESXi images for various server platforms are available on VMware and Hardware platform vendor sites. It ensures that all the required drivers for network and storage controllers are available to run ESXi server. Most of the customized ESXi images comes with customized management software to manage server running ESXi software. Customized ESXi images for HP ProLiant and IBM servers are available at: HP Servers Custom Image for HP Servers IBM Servers (under Download images) vSphere Client 5.1 or above   VMware Knowledge Base vCenter Server 5.1 or above   vCenter Server Info title Note The VMware Standard License will be sufficient for SWe SBC unless the PKT interfaces for SBC SWe needs to be configured in Direct IO Pass-through mode. In that case, the Enterprise Plus version of VMware ESXi software is required.

Third-Party References:

• Refer to VMware Compatibility Guide (external site) for a list of VMware supported Intel processors. 
• Refer to ESXi hardware requirements to ensure the VMware supported Intel processors meet ESXi hardware requirements.

Downloading the SBC SWe Software Package

For more information, refer to Downloading the SBC SWe Software Package.

Sonus Recommendations for Optimum Performance

Following are recommended VMware ESXi and

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virtual machine (VM) configurations. 

General ESXi Recommendations

Following are recommended VMware ESXi configurations:

• Plan enough resources (RAM, CPU, NIC ports, hard disk, etc.) for all the virtual machines (VMs) to run on server platform, including resources needed by ESXi itself.
• Allocate each VM only as much virtual hardware as that VM requires. Provisioning a VM with more resources than it requires can, in some cases, reduce the performance of that VM as well as other virtual machines sharing the same host.
• Under BIOS settings, disconnect or disable any physical hardware devices (floppy devices, network interfaces, storage controllers, optical drives, USB controllers, etc.)  that you will not be using to free up CPU resources.

• Use virtual hardware version 8 and above when creating new VMs (available starting in ESXi 5.x). This provides additional capabilities to VMs such as supporting a VM with up to 1 TB RAM, up to 32 vCPUs, etc.

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ESXi_Param ESXi_Param

ESXi Host Configuration Parameters

Use VMware vSphere client to configure the following ESXi host configuration parameters on the Advanced Settings page (see figure below) before installing the

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:

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Caption 0 Table 1 ESXi Advanced Settings   ESXi Parameter ESXi 5.1 Settings ESXi 5.5 Settings ESXi 6.0 Settings ESXi 6.5 Settings Recommended Default Recommended Default Recommended Default Recommended Default Cpu.CoschedCrossCall 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 Cpu.CreditAgePeriod 500 3000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 3000 DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedInit 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedMove 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding 256 32 Irq.BestVcpuRouting 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 Mem.BalancePeriod 0 15 0 15 Mem.SamplePeriod 0 60 0 60 Mem.ShareScanGHz 0 4 0 4 0 4 0 4 Mem.VMOverheadGrowthLimit 0 4294967295 0 4294967295 0 4294967295 0 4294967295 Misc.TimerMaxHardPeriod 2000 100000 2000 100000 2000 100000 2000 500000 Misc.TimerMinHardPeriod 100 100 Net.AllowPT 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 Net.MaxNetifRxQueueLen 500 100 500 100 500 100 500 Net.MaxNetifTxQueueLen 1000 500 1000 500 1000 500 1000 2000 Net.NetTxCompletionWorldlet 0 1 0 1 Net.NetTxWordlet 0 2 1 2 1 2 1 Numa.LTermFairnessInterval 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 Numa.MonMigEnable 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 Numa.PageMigEnable 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 Numa.PreferHT 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 Numa.RebalancePeriod 60000 2000 60000 2000 60000 2000 60000 2000 Numa.SwapInterval 1 3 1 3 1 3 1 3 Numa.SwapLoadEnable 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1

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0 Figure 1 ESXi Parameters

VM Configuration Recommendations

The following configurations are recommended to improve performance.

Configure the VM Latency Sensitivity setting to High in VM Options > Advanced configurations as shown below:

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0 Figure 1 VM Options Window

 

Limit instances to using cores from a single NUMA by configuring the numa.nodeaffinity option according to the number of the NUMA node the VM is on. Access this option using the path: VM Options > Advanced > Configuration Parameters > Edit Configuration  For example, in the following figure the Numa node is 0. 

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0 Figure 1 Configuration Parameters Window

Additional VM configuration recommendations appear in the following table.

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0 Table 1 VM Configuration Recommendations

Info
title Note
Make sure the Processors, ESXi version and VM configuration (vCPUs, vRAMs, Virtual Hard Disk, vNICs, and vSwitch Settings) must be identical for SBC SWe HA pair.

Info
title Note
Make sure that the BIOS and ESXi settings and recommendations must not be changed once it is applied on the server.

 

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