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Back to Table of Contents

Back to Installing SBC SWe on Virtual Platforms

Back to Hardware and Software Requirements

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Related articles:


This section describes

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hardware and software requirements and recommendations.

To install and configure

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

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Warning
title

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Warning

The recommended hardware and software settings are intended to ensure optimum 

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stability and performance. If the recommended settings are not used,

...

 the

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system may not behave as expected.

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SBC SWe for VMware – Server Hardware Requirements


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MultiExcerptNameSBC SWe for VMware – Server Hardware Requirements

The following table lists the server hardware requirements:

Caption
0Table
1Server Hardware Requirements

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 ConfigurationRequirement
Processor

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

...

.

Info
titleNote

Ribbon

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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

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number is 6 and CPU Model

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number must be newer than 26. Refer to the Intel Architecture and Processor Identification document for more information.


Info
titleNote

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.

Otherwise, 8 NICs (preferably with SR-IOV capability to support

...

SWe optimizations).

...

Info
titleNote

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.


Info

...

titleNote

...

  • The Intel I350

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  • , x540, x550, and 82599 Ethernet adapters are supported for configuring as

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  • SR-IOV and DirectPath I/O pass-through

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  • devices. SR-IOV is supported only with 10 Gbps interfaces (x540/82599).
  • The VMware Enterprise Plus license is required for SR-IOV.


Info
titleNote

 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
titleWarning

The 

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

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BIOS Setting Recommendations

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Ribbon recommends the following BIOS settings for optimum performance:

Caption
0Table
1Recommended BIOS Settings for Optimum Performance


BIOS ParameterRecommended
Setting		Details
Intel VT-x (Virtualization Technology)EnabledFor hardware virtualization
Intel VT-d (Directed I/O)EnabledIf available
Intel Hyper-ThreadingEnabled

...


Intel Turbo BoostEnabled

...


CPU power managementMaximum Performance

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For example, the BIOS settings

...

shown below are recommended for HP

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DL380p Gen8 servers. For BIOS settings of other servers, refer to the respective vendor's website.

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Caption
0Table
1BIOS Setting Recommendations for HP DL380p Gen8 Server


BIOS ParameterRecommended
Setting		Default Value
HP Power Profile Maximum 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
Data Direct I/OEnabledDisabled
SR-IOVEnabledDisabled
Intel® VT-dEnabledDisabled



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MultiExcerptNameSBC SWe for VMware – Software Requirements

SBC SWe for VMware – Software Requirements

The following are the

...

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 requirements for VMware ESXi environments:

VMware ESXi Requirements

Caption
0Table
1VMWare ESXi Requirements


SoftwareVersionTested and Qualified VersionFor More Information
vSphere ESXi

...

6.

...

0 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.

    ...

      • These ensure that all the required drivers for network and storage controllers are available to run ESXi server.
      • Most of the customized ESXi images

    ...

    ...

    vSphere Client5.1 or above

    ...


    		VMware Knowledge Base
    vCenter Server5.1 or above

    ...


    		vCenter Server
    Warning

    Virtual network interfaces will not come up using VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 3. For more information, refer to 5.0.x Release Notes.

    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.



    Info
    titleNote

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

    ...


    Third-Party References:


    ...

    • processor meets the ESXi hardware requirements.

    Downloading the SBC SWe Software Package

    For more information,

    ...

    refer to Downloading the SBC SWe

    ...

    Software Package.

    ...

    Recommendations for Optimum Performance

    ...

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    ...

    The following general recommendations apply to all platforms where SBC SWe is deployed:

    • The number of vCPUs deployed on a system should be an even number (4, 6, 8, etc.).
    • For best performance, deploy only a single instance on a single NUMA. Performance degradation occurs if you host more than one instance on a NUMA or if a single instance spans multiple NUMAs.
    • Make sure that the physical NICs associated with an instance are connected to the same NUMA/socket where the instance is hosted. In the case of a dual NUMA host, ideally two instances should be hosted, with each instance on a separate NUMA and the associated NICs of each of the instances connected to their respective NUMAs.
    • To optimize performance, configure memory card equally on both NUMA nodes. For example if a dual NUMA node server has a total of 128 GiB of RAM, configure 64 GiB of RAM on each NUMA node.

    General ESXi Recommendations

    ...

    The following are

    ...

    recommendations for 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.

    Anchor
    ESXi_Param
    ESXi_Param
    ESXi Host Configuration Parameters

    Use the 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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    ...

    .

    Div
    class

    ...

    pdf8pttext


    Caption
    0Table
    1ESXi Advanced Settings

    ...



    ESXi Parameter

    		ESXi 5.1 SettingsESXi 5.5 SettingsESXi 6.0 SettingsESXi 6.5 Settings

    Recommended

    Default

    Recommended

    Default

    Recommended

    Default

    		RecommendedDefault

    Cpu.CoschedCrossCall

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    		01

    Cpu.CreditAgePeriod

    500

    3000

    		100010001000100010003000

    DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedInit

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    		01

    DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedMove

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    		01

    Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding

    256

    32

    ...

    n/an/an/an/an/an/a

    ...

    Irq.BestVcpuRouting

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    		10

    Mem.BalancePeriod

    0

    15

    0

    15

    ...

    (error)

    n/a

    n/a

    		n/an/a

    ...

    Mem.SamplePeriod

    0

    60

    0

    60

    ...

    (error)

    n/a

    n/a

    		n/an/a

    ...

    Mem.ShareScanGHz

    0

    4

    0

    4

    0

    4

    		04

    Mem.VMOverheadGrowthLimit

    0

    4294967295

    0

    4294967295

    0

    4294967295

    		04294967295

    Misc.TimerMaxHardPeriod

    2000

    100000

    2000

    100000

    2000

    100000

    		2000500000

    Misc.TimerMinHardPeriod

    		100

    100

    ...

    n/an/an/an/an/an/a

    ...

    Net.AllowPT

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    		11

    Net.MaxNetifRxQueueLen

    500

    100

    500

    100

    500

    100

    		500n/a

    Net.MaxNetifTxQueueLen

    1000

    500

    1000

    500

    1000

    500

    		10002000

    Net.NetTxCompletionWorldlet

    0

    1

    		01

    ...

    n/an/an/an/a

    ...

    Net.NetTxWordlet

    0

    2

    		12121n/a

    Numa.LTermFairnessInterval

    0

    5

    0

    5

    0

    5

    		05

    Numa.MonMigEnable

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    		01

    Numa.PageMigEnable

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    		01

    Numa.PreferHT

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    		10

    Numa.RebalancePeriod

    60000

    2000

    60000

    2000

    60000

    2000

    		600002000

    Numa.SwapInterval

    1

    3

    1

    3

    1

    3

    		13

    Numa.SwapLoadEnable

    0

    1

    0

    1

    0

    1

    ...

    0

    ...

    1




    Caption
    0Figure
    1ESXi Parameters

    Image Modified

    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:

    Caption
    0Figure
    1VM Options Window

    Image Added

     


    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. 

    Caption
    0Figure
    1Configuration Parameters Window

    Image Added

     


    Additional VM configuration recommendations appear in the following table.

    Caption
    0Table
    1VM Configuration Recommendations

    ...



     SettingsRecommended Configuration
    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.

    Keep the Resource Allocation setting marked as 'unlimited.'

    ...

    Note

    3 vCPUs configuration is supported only from SBC 4.2.4 release.

    ...

    Refer to Adjusting Resource Allocations for a VM for more information on setting CPU-related parameters.

     vRAM

    Keep the Resource Allocation setting marked as 'unlimited'. Reserve the memory based on call capacity and configuration requirements. Refer to SBC SWe Performance Metrics for supported call capacities with different configuration limits.

    Virtual Hard Disk

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

      • Use Thick provisioning (eager zero)
      • Hard disk size cannot be changed once SBC SWe software is installed
    vNICs

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

    • Use only the VMXNET3 driver.
    • Always use the automatic MAC address assignment option while creating vNICs.
    • Associate each vNIC

    ...

    • with separate vSwitches.
    • Use the ESXi NIC teaming feature to achieve redundancy at the physical NIC level.
    vSwitch settings
    • Use four different vSwitches for

    ...

    • the four vNICs on the
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      VM. This ensures various traffic

    ...

    • is physically separated on the SBC.

      • Assign 1 physical NIC port (1 Gbps) to each vSwitch if physical NIC redundancy is not needed, otherwise assign 2 physical NIC ports (in active-standby mode using NIC team feature) to each vSwitch.

    ...

      • Info
        titleNote

        The same physical NIC port cannot be associated with different vSwitches.


    • Use four different virtual networking labels, each with different VLANs or subnets.
    • Always run active and standby
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      VMs on different physical servers.
    • Disable VM logging.

    ...


    Info
    titleNote

    Make sure the Processors, ESXi version and VM configuration (vCPUs,

    ...

    vRAM, Virtual Hard Disk, vNICs, and vSwitch Settings)

    ...

    are identical for an SBC SWe HA pair.


    Info

    ...

    titleNote

    Make sure that the BIOS and ESXi settings and recommendations

    ...

    are not

    ...

    changed once

    ...

    they are applied on the server.

    ...

    Multiexcerpt include
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