System information

36 Dialogic
®
HMP Software Release 3.0WIN Release Guide — December 2010
Dialogic Corporation
Features
HMP virtualization is implemented using VMware
®
ESXi 4.0 Update 1 Installable.
VMware
®
ESXi partitions a physical server into multiple secure and portable virtual
machines that can run side by side. Each virtual machine represents a complete system—
with processors, memory, networking, storage and BIOS—so that an operating system
and software applications can be installed and run in the virtual machine without any
modification.
Refer to the VMware
®
ESXi 4.0 documentation at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/
for more information.
The density achieved when operating in an virtual environment is directly dependent on
the configuration settings of the virtual machine (i.e., CPU, memory, etc.) and the host
platform hardware. Users should view the configuration settings provided as guidelines
and not absolute, based on the target platform hardware characteristics in which feature
validation was performed. Customizing the settings for optimal performance based on
needs of the controlling application and host platform should be done by knowledgeable
and experience personnel familiar with VMware
®
ESXi products.
3.9.2 Configuring HMP Virtualization
To configure Dialogic
®
HMP software to run as close as it would in a physical server
configuration, the hypervisor should be configured to distribute the host hardware CPU
processor, memory, storage, and networking resources to enable the real-time processing
of RTP, media, and call control on all instances of the Dialogic
®
HMP software. The
following subsections examine the critical parameters to achieve this goal. Please refer to
the vSphere Resource Management Guide found at
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40_u1/vsp_40_u1_resource_mgmt.pdf for a
thorough explanation of the terms and concepts utilized herein.
CPU Affinity Settings
To run real-time software on VMware
®
ESXi, use CPU affinity. This is the recommended
method for real-time voice since each virtual processor can get CPU resources directly
from one or more of the available host CPUs, reducing the likelihood that virtual
processors are rescheduled to give CPU time to another virtual machine.
Each virtual machine is more isolated, which helps real-time software run as though it
were in a physical server environment. Due to HMP software’s intensive use of the
operating system kernel resources, it is also highly recommended to set aside one
physical (host) CPU to the VMware
®
ESXi 4.0 hypervisor. This host CPU should not be
part of the affinity setting of any of the virtual machines.
For example, on a dual-processor, four-core host system without hyper-threading system,
there will be eight physical CPUs available to VMware
®
ESXi. In this scenario, two virtual
machines are configured with two virtual processors each. The system administrator
could set the first virtual machine CPU affinity to physical CPUs 0 through 3 (total 4), and
the second virtual machine CPU with affinity to physical CPUs 4 through 6 (total 3); this
leaves physical CPU 7 unassigned and available to the VMware
®
ESXi hypervisor.