Specifications

MBG Engineering Guidelines, Release 8.0

Software

Virtual MBG is supported on the following platforms:

• VMWare vSphere 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 (ESX/ESXi 4.1, 5.0, 5.1)

The following standard features of vSphere are not currently supported for vMBG:

• Update Manager Server & OS Patching: This feature does not support MSL and cannot be used. MSL

updates should be installed via the Blades panel or an MSL CD.

• VMSafe

• vCenter Converter

Use of the following features is not recommended:

• Power off: This is equivalent to pulling the power on a physical server, and could result in data

corruption on the virtual disk. Use the MSL Shutdown command to halt the vMBG.

• Snapshot while powered-on: The VM snapshot functionality creates considerable disk I/O load. Use of

this feature can substantially degrade the voice quality of calls in progress.

Finally, the following vSphere features require special consideration.

• Deployment: When vMBG is deployed, the vSphere client may change the network adapters from

VmxNet3 to VmxNet. This results in a lack of network connectivity in the VM. If this happens, the

network adapters must be manually updated using the vSphere client, by deleting the existing adapters

and creating new ones of type VmxNet3.

• Export: Exporting the virtual appliance changes some of the licensing input values, resulting in invalid

licenses. The solution is to clear the server’s hardware footprint at the AMC and re-register it.

• Cloning while powered-off: This is supported, but a new AMC Application Record ID will be required

for the cloned virtual machine.

• Snapshot while powered-off: Using a snapshot to create a restore point before a major upgrade is

recommended. However, to avoid performance issues afterwards, Mitel recommends deleting the

snapshot after confirming that the upgrade was successful and has caused no issues.

• VMotion: During the actual vMotion period (typically from 30 seconds to two minutes

), certain

communication services may become temporarily unavailable and some temporary degradation of voice

quality may occur.

• SRM: Site Recovery Manager is a powerful and sophisticated Vmware virtual infrastructure

management application. Integration of Mitel virtual appliances within SRM requires Mitel Professional

Services to assist with customer-specific configuration, including the deployment of Mitel-specific

automated scripts that assist in communications service restoration at the recovery site.

13.4High-Availability

As with physical MBG servers, high-availability is achieved through MBG clustering. However, with virtual

hardware, there is an additional consideration. To avoid a single point of failure, Mitel recommends using

VMWare anti-affinity rules to prevent all cluster nodes from running on the same physical host hardware.

8 Actual vMotion duration depends on site-specific attributes