[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk and VMWare

[Robert Hajime Lanning]

agreed here too.

You cannot hook into real hardware interrupts for timing in a VM.

A cheap small pentium can run asterisk (I have a dual 200MHz Pentium Pro),
but as soon as you add the hardware emulation layer of any VM real/pseudo
realtime needs are not met.

Even using the USB digium device, the VM cannot handle isosyncronos IO.

<quote who="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
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Asterisk-Users mailing list
>> > Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com
>> > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Asterisk-Users mailing list
>> Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com
>> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>


-- 
END OF LINE