[asterisk-users] Running Asterisk on VMware ESX

[Chris Bagnall]

On 8/6/12 9:17 pm, Hiers, Richard wrote:
> I don't expect to need to use any special hardware, just a sip trunk over our broadband connection.  We have about 150 phones at present.  Is ESX a viable platform for us?  And second, what is the recommended virtual configuration (mem, cpu, etc.)?  Any other considerations?

I think the concern expressed about running Asterisk on a virtualised 
platform is more to do with the impact the other load on the host 
machine might have on your Asterisk VM. If you're using ESX in a shared 
hosting environment where you have very little control over the other 
workload on that host, then sooner or later there's a risk your VM is 
going to experience spikes in latency.

On the other hand, if you're running a virtualised platform internally 
where you can control precisely the load on the host machine, then 
you'll probably find you're fine.

FWIW, we run Asterisk under Xen in production. Some of the VMs have well 
over a thousand connected SIP devices and we've yet to encounter 
significant problems. But we're able to control the other VMs on the 
hosts very precisely: the only other VMs running on those hosts provide 
low-load services such as rsync for remote backup (which is only used 
late at night when call load is low on the Asterisk VMs).

Running Asterisk in a VM, even if it's the only VM on that host, does 
give you some considerable benefits in the event of host machine 
failover: hardware independence and live migration are the two that 
spring immediately to mind.

Kind regards,

Chris
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