The @COM Business Manager can be installed as a virtual system since software release v2.1. All versions before that only run on physical appliances and cannot be virtualized. To run the @COM Business Manager in a virtual environment it will require specific resources, which is explained below.
vmWare ESXi
Currently the @COM Business Manager only supports the vmWare ESXi virtualisation software (5.5 or higher) and is provide to you as an OVF template file which can easily be installed.
There are no plans of supporting Hyper-V, Azure, Google Cloud or Amazon Cloud. If you require such support and are willing to pay for the development, we may consider to built support. In this case, please contact us and tell us about your business case.
Resources
The advised resources for your virtual server (host) depend on many factors. In the table below we listed the minimal resources required, based on the amount of ports being used.
|
Light (6200VM) |
Standard (6300VM) |
Pro (6400VM) |
Ultra (6500VM) |
Extreme (6600VM) |
|
| Amount of ports (phones + trunks) |
50 | 250 | 500 | 1000 | 2000 |
| Concurrent Call Center applications | 2 | 8 | 25 | 50 | 50 |
| System requirements: | |||||
| Min. Shared CPU's * | 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 |
| Min. Memory | 1GB | 2 GB | 4GB | 8GB | 8GB |
| Min. Disk space | 48GB | 48GB | 48GB | 96GB | 250GB |
| Min. Network interfaces *** | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Important:
The actually required resources might differ, for example; If you are using lots of Call Center Agent or Wallboard applications the server will require more resources than anticipated in this table. Or when using @COM Voice-Recording additional resources are also strongly advised (depending on the amount of simultaneous recordings). Do not go any higher as the reported maximum ports, as the Local Management Tool won't be able to handle larger amounts.
Do not install vmWare tools!
Do not install vmWare tools as this will break the inner-workings of the @COM Business Manager. The @COM has open vmTools pre-installed for you and offers a console-menu to configure the basic network settings required to continue further configuration via the web-based Local Management Tool.
Shared vCPU's
These are virtual processors that are shared with other virtual hosts, and these allows you to more effectively use the available CPUs of the guest system .Telephony systems require quick access to these processors to allow "real-time" handling of the calls, which is why it is essential that the assigned processors are labelled as "high priority". It is not required to actually "Reserve" the processor for the @COM virtual host, but on larger systems it may be useful if the system is operating under high-loads, on the other hand you could also just increase the amount of "Shared CPUs".
CPU locks
In general you should make sure that CPU-locks wil not occur on the guest systeem. CPU-locks can occur when too many hosts are requesting CPU resources at the same time. For example; If you have 8 CPU cores in the guest system and are running 4 hosts that all have 4 CPU cores assigned, in that case "CPU Locking" will occur when all these hosts access their CPU's at the same time. There simply aren't enough CPU cores available on the guest system (4 x 4 =16 CPU, but you only have 8). The result is that some hosts will have to wait until enough CPU cores become available again, and waiting is a "no-go" on system that require "real-time" call handling.
Also be aware that the risk of CPU locks will increase when certain hosts have reserved CPU cores, because these CPU cores will then no longer be available to other hosts.
The best action is to always be careful with the amount CPU's you assign to a host, and to monitor the CPU core usage in the vSphere client software closely using the report that report the CPU "READY" and "CO-STOP" values.
Memory
Usually there is no need to increase the amount of reserved memory for a @COM Host. But when you are using lots of HTTP(S) connections you will likely need to increase it, as each connection requires quite a bit of memory. A likely scenario in which this is needed is when you have over 20 users that are using applications such as the @COM Call Center Agent, Wall board or Supervisor, at the same time. These application are constantly updating the information they display which increases the load on the system. The system is however protected against such overloads and will notify users if this is about to occur.
Disk Space
When using @COM Voice Recording additional disk space for storage is often required. In rare cases additional disk space may also be required if an incident requires logging of lots of data into logfiles.
Network interfaces
The minimal required physical network interfaces is just one. However, we prefer to have two physical interfaces; one for public connections such as SIP trunks and Internet connections, and one for local connections to the Local Area Network (LAN) and telephones.
Additionally, it is strongly advised to use VLAN techniques to separate VoIP traffic from Data traffic. This is especially true for the LAN interface because the @COM uses its own DHCP server to dynamically provision the phones, but also because it enables better Quality of Service and security.
Note:
If you are unsure you can meet these requirements, please contact your @COM partner.
