[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk and VMWare

[Erik Anderson]

Agreed.  Do not try and run Asterisk within VMWare.

I use VMWare day in and day out but VMWare (even GSX) is not the place to be
running Asterisk.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of Dan
> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 1:15 PM
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk and VMWare
>
>
> Hi John,
>
> Thanks for your effort to make me buy Call Manager..:-)
> Maybe a 2K$ server with a couple of 2+ GHZ Xeons and 4GB of RAM
> will be good
> enough to run just the Web interface of the Call Manager...
> If running a maximum of two simultaneous audio calls through Asterisk
> installed over VMWare is a far too big job for my computer, then
> you're right.
>
> In between I have found an old Compaq Armada notebook who does
> the job very
> well, but unfortunately without any possibility to add any Digium hardware
> to it.
>
> Thanks to all of you who have tried to answer me to my question and I
> consider this issue closed.
>
> Dan
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Laur" <johnl at blurbco.com>
> To: <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 5:49 PM
> Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk and VMWare
>
>
> > Dan,
> >
> > Your problems are all the result of your computer and your software.
> > It's not going to work for you in your setup. Repeat: It's not going to
> > work for you in your setup. Repeat again for increased clarity: It's not
> > going to work for you in your setup. I really don't understand why you
> > keep asking the question because you keep getting the same answer from
> > every single person. For the $299 that VMWare costs, you can build a
> > barebones machine with a small HDD that is sufficient to run asterisk.
> > Even if you'd rather run it all on the same machine, IT IS THE ONLY WAY
> > YOU WILL GET ASTERISK TO RUN PROPERLY. VMware Workstation is NOT
> > DESIGNED to do this kind of job. As I said in a post before, VMWare GSX
> > Server which is designed to do this sort of thing (but still may be
> > insufficient for asterisk) is priced at $2500. If you bought a support
> > contract from VMWare, they'd tell you the same thing.
> >
> > Software running inside of VMWare with a Win32 host is not going to give
> > you good performance when it needs to be interactive, and Asterisk needs
> > to be interactive a lot of the time. No matter how many performance
> > tweaks you make to the Win32 box, you're still going to have problems
> > with asterisk. With the amount of RAM you have, Windows WILL swap the
> > VM's main memory to disk after a while. This will cause you
> > insurmountable performance problems with asterisk or any service-type
> > application running in the VM. You can look at a SIP-Proxy only solution
> > like SEP that doesn't do transcoding or IVR and maybe get things working
> > IF you can figure out how to force windows to never swap VMWare to disk
> > (ie buy another 640MB of ram and force VMWare to run in the highest
> > priority even in the background)
> >
> > Here are your options. Both one of these will give you a 100% working
> > solution to your problem:
> >
> > 1) Return VMWare if you have already purchased it for this purpose and
> > use the $299 to build a standalone computer suitable for the task. If
> > you don't want to build one, you can buy one already built:
> >
> > http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MC1740-1
> >
> > 2) Purchase a VoIP or IVR application that runs and is supported under
> > Windows that suits your purpose. If you need all the functionality that
> > Asterisk provides, are stuck on Windows, and already have some cisco
> > equipment, I hear that they have a product called "CallManager" that
> > might do what you need :)
> >
> > No amount of belief on your part is going to make your computer and
> > VMWare do this.
> >
> > John
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
> > > admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Dan
> > > Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 3:23 AM
> > > To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> > > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk and VMWare
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > >
> > > > 1. run VMWARE in Full screen windows.
> > > Tried this... same problem
> > >
> > > > 2. is your Linux kernel SMP? (see VM knowledge base)
> > > I have the RH9 downloaded from Redhat site.
> > >
> > > > 3. what about your Linux guest CPU usage? Swap usage? Windows might
> > > > report 5% but its what the linux guest sees that counts. VMWARE is a
> > > > very good emulation but it is still an emulation. Doing near real
> > time
> > > > codec conversion on a AMD <1GH machine with 386MB might be too much.
> > > I'll check this, but still I don't think that the CPU power or memory
> > is
> > > the
> > > problem, more the interrupts and timing...
> > >
> > > > 4. Did you do bridge networking on the guest OS? NAT will invoke
> > > > additional performance penalty, and have a big effect on your SIP
> > call.
> > > Bridging, using another IP address from the same subnet.
> > >
> > > > 5. What about the other "cards" in your system? Do they need a lot
> > of
> > > > interrupts from the PC? Check your perfmon for interrupts per
> > second.
> > > > CPU usage is only one piece of the pie.
> > > I think yes, a lot of interrupts are shared between cards.....
> > > I have:
> > > - 1x Firewire, 2xUSB2.0, 1xUSB1.1, PCI Soft modem, USB Modem, 4xSerial
> > > Ports, 1xgraphic card + TV Tunner (ATI All-in-Wonder 128) and a HA Box
> > > (serial based).
> > > I have succeeeded using USB under VMWare (a flash memory stick) , but
> > > still
> > > not able to use ztdummy or zaptelrtc (it uses USB for timing, not?)
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Dan
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
>
>
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