Page History

This section describes

To install and configure

.

SBC SWe for VMware – Server Hardware Requirements

• 1 Management port
• 1 HA port
• 2 Media ports

BIOS Setting Recommendations

Ribbon recommends the following BIOS settings for optimum performance:

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

SBC SWe for VMware – Software Requirements

Third-Party References:

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

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.

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

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:

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. 

Additional VM configuration recommendations appear in the following table.

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

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.

• requirements

• .

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

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.

• Use four different vSwitches for the four vNICs on the

  Spacevars
  0 product

  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
    title Note
    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

  Spacevars
  0 product

  VMs on different physical servers.
• Disable VM logging.