This section describes
hardware and software requirements and recommendations.
To install and configure the
, make sure the Virtual Machine (VM) host meets the following recommended hardware, server platform and software requirements.
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The recommended hardware and software settings are intended to ensure optimum stability and performance. If the recommended settings are not used, the system may not behave as expected. |
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MultiExcerptName | SBC SWe for VMware – Server Hardware Requirements |
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The following table lists the server hardware requirements: Caption |
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Configuration | Requirement |
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Processor | Intel Xeon processors (Nehalem micro-architecture or above) with 6 cores and above (processors should support hyper threading). Info |
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| note | Sonus recommends using Westmere (or newer) processors are recommended for better SRTP performance. These processors have the AES-NI instruction set for performing cryptographic operations in hardware. |
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| 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 future SWe optimizations). Info |
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| 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. |
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| note | Only Intel I350 Ethernet adapter is supported for configuring as VMDirectPath I/O pass-through device. |
| Ports | Number of ports allowed: - 1 Management port
- 1 HA port
- 2 Media ports
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| The software only runs on platforms using Intel processors. Platforms using AMD processors are not supported. |
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BIOS Setting Recommendations
Sonus recommends the following BIOS settings for optimum performance:
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BIOS Parameter | Recommended Setting | Details |
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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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BIOS Parameter | Recommended Setting | Default Value |
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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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SBC SWe for VMware – Software RequirementsThe following are the VMware ESXi and software requirements:VMware ESXi Requirements Caption |
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| Software | Version | Tested and Qualified Version | For More Information |
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vSphere ESXi | 5.1 or above | - VMware 6.0 tested with VM version 11
| - 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:
| vSphere Client | 5.1 or above | | VMware Knowledge Base | vCenter Server | 5.1 or above | | vCenter Server |
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Virtual network interfaces will not come up using VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 3. For more information, refer to 5.0.x Release Notes. |
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| 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. |
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Third-Party References:
Downloading the SBC SWe Software Package
For more information, refer to Downloading SBC SWe Installation Files from SalesForce Portal.
Following are recommended VMware ESXi and
virtual machine (VM) configurations.
General ESXi Recommendations
Following are recommended VMware ESXi configurations:
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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| ESXi Parameter | ESXi 5.1 Settings | ESXi 5.5 Settings | ESXi 6.0 Settings |
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Recommended | Default | Recommended | Default | Recommended | Default |
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Cpu.CoschedCrossCall | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Cpu.CreditAgePeriod | 500 | 3000 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedInit | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedMove | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding | 256 | 32 | | | | | Irq.BestVcpuRouting | 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 | Mem.VMOverheadGrowthLimit | 0 | 4294967295 | 0 | 4294967295 | 0 | 4294967295 | Misc.TimerMaxHardPeriod | 2000 | 100000 | 2000 | 100000 | 2000 | 100000 | Misc.TimerMinHardPeriod | 100 | 100 | | | | | Net.AllowPT | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Net.MaxNetifRxQueueLen | 500 | 100 | 500 | 100 | 500 | 100 | Net.MaxNetifTxQueueLen | 1000 | 500 | 1000 | 500 | 1000 | 500 | Net.NetTxCompletionWorldlet | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | | | Net.NetTxWordlet | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Numa.LTermFairnessInterval | 0 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 5 | Numa.MonMigEnable | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Numa.PageMigEnable | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Numa.PreferHT | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Numa.RebalancePeriod | 60000 | 2000 | 60000 | 2000 | 60000 | 2000 | Numa.SwapInterval | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Numa.SwapLoadEnable | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
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VM Configuration Recommendations
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Settings | Recommended Configuration |
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vCPU | Minimum 4 vCPUs required. But In case where there are only four physical cores available, you must configure the VM with only 3 vCPUs. Any number of vCPUs may be configured depending upon the call capacity requirements. - Keep Resource Allocation setting marked as 'unlimited' with CPU freq. set to "physical processor CPU speed multiplied by number of vCPUs assigned to VM".
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| note | 3 vCPUs configuration is supported only from SBC 4.2.4 release. |
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| note | VMDirectPath mode is only supported for PKT ports for vCPUs >=4. |
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| In Direct I/O, if you want to notified with link detection failure using LinkMonitor, use a server with more than 4 vCPUs. |
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vRAM | Keep 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 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
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vNICs | Set number of virtual NICs as 4 (1-MGMT, 1-HA, 1-PKT0 and 1-PKT1). - Use only VMXNET3 driver
Always use automatic MAC address assignment option while creating vNICs. Associate each vNIC to separate vSwitches Use ESXi NIC teaming feature to achieve redundancy at physical NIC level.
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vSwitch settings | - Use four different vSwitches for each vNICs onVM. This ensures various traffic to be physically separated on SBC.
- Use four different virtual networking labels, each with different VLANs or subnets.
- Always run active and standby VMs on different physical servers
- Disable VM logging
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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. |
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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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On a server with a single 4 cores processor, ESXi 6.5 and above releases are not supported since there is not enough CPU available for launching 3 vCPUs SBC SWe VM after considering overhead required for ESXi. |