Acano solution

White Paper on Virtualized

Deployments
Simon Evans, Acano Chief Scientist

March 2016
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Contents
Introduction

Host Requirements

Sizing a VM

Call Bridge VM

Acano EdgeVM

Recommended Core VM Configurations

VMWare

10

Microsoft Hyper-V

12

Amazon Web Services

14

Conclusion

15

Figures:
Figure 1: Acano software components and their typical deployment

Figure 2: Distributed Acano deployment using both VMs and Acano Server

Figure 3: Virtual CPU core allocation for a dual E5-2680v2 host

Figure 4: VM isolation domains created by pinning

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Figure 5: Typical settings for Acano VM deployment

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Introduction

Introduction
The Acano solution is a scalable software platform for voice, video and web content.
The solution integrates with a wide variety of third-party kit from Microsoft, Avaya
and other vendors. With the Acano solution, people connect regardless of location,
device, or technology.
The solution can be deployed on optimized Acano Servers, in a Virtual Machine (VM
deployment), or through a combination of Acano Server and VM. Customers often use
the Acano Server for core functionality and deploy Acano edge services on VM for
geographic distribution.
This document covers how the whole solution or individual components of the solution
can be run in a virtual machine (VM) deployment.
Three deployment models are covered by this document:
l

Single VM running all components

Single VM running edge components (Web Bridge, TURN server, XMPP server)
connected to a hardware Acano Server running the Call Bridge component.
One VM running edge components, connecting to a second VM running the Call
Bridge component.

Figure 1 illustrates the Acano software components and their typical deployment.
Each instance can be on a VM or Acano Server.

Figure 1: Acano software components and their typical deployment

Figure 2 illustrates a distributed Acano deployment using both VMs and Acano Servers.
Example signalling and media paths for two Acano clients are shown.

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Introduction

Figure 2: Distributed Acano deployment using both VMs and Acano Server

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Host Requirements

Host Requirements
The Acano solution runs on a broad range of standard Cisco servers as a VM
deployment, and also third party servers including systems from Dell and HP
containing both Intel and AMD processors. Small form factor and ruggedized systems
such as Klas VoyagerVM and DTECH LABS M3-SE-SVR2 are also supported. The
solution can be deployed on VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V as well as cloud
services such as Amazon AWS.
Minimum

Recommended

Server
manufacturer

Any

Any

Processor type

Intel Nehalem microarchitecture

Intel Xeon 2600 v2 or later

AMD Bulldozer microarchitecture

Processor frequency

2.0Ghz

2.5Ghz

RAM

1GB per core

1GB per core

Storage

100GB

100GB

Hypervisor

VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 2, 5.5

Update 1

VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 2, 5.5

Update 1

Hyper-V 2012

Hyper-V 2012, 2012 R2

Table 1: Minimum and recommended server specifications

All memory channels should be populated to maximize available memory bandwidth.

There are no special requirements for NUMA systems.
Out-of-band management systems should not be configured to share a network port
with the VM. Internal testing has shown that they can cause bursts of packet loss and
degraded voice and video quality. Out-of-band management should either be
configured to use a dedicated network port or disabled.
When comparing AMD and Intel processors, the number of AMD Modules (a pair of
cores sharing resources) should be compared to Intel cores (which execute a pair of
hyperthreads). In internal testing we have found that AMD processors provide 6070% capacity of an equivalent Intel processor. For this reason Intel processors are
recommended for production deployments.
Similarly hyperthreading should be enabled on the host, without this there is capacity
reduction of up to 30%.

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Sizing a VM

Sizing a VM
When a VM is configured to run one or more Acano components, Acano recommends
that the entire host is dedicated to the VM. This provides best performance for real
time media applications and ensures high quality end user experience. The sizing of
VMs depends on the components being used.

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Call Bridge VM

Call Bridge VM
The Call Bridge component carries out the media transcoding for the solution. This
component has the highest requirements of any.
Each physical core of an Intel Xeon 2600 series (or later) CPU, running at 2.5GHz, is
capable of approximately 2.5 720p30 H.264 call legs when hyperthreading is enabled.
Capacity scales linearly with number of CPU cores and frequency, so a two socket E52680v2 system, which has 20 physical cores, can handle 50 concurrent 720p30 H.264
call legs.
The VM should be configured to use all but one of the host physical cores. When
hyperthreading is enabled the number of available logical cores is double the number
of physical cores, so in the dual E5-2680v2 system above, there are 40 virtual CPUs, of
which 38 should be allocated to the VM. If an option is available to choose both
number of sockets and number of cores per socket, a single socket should be
configured with all the virtual CPU cores.

Figure 3: Virtual CPU core allocation for a dual E5-2680v2 host

Over subscription of the host, either by incorrectly setting the number of Acano VM
virtual CPUs or by contention for CPU resources amongst VMs, causes scheduling
delays and results in degraded media quality. An Acano VM, correctly configured
according to the recommendations above, will degrade gracefully by dropping frame
rate and/or resolution if pushed over capacity.
1GB RAM for each underlying physical CPU core should be allocated to the VM. For the
system above, the VM should be configured with 19GB corresponding to the 19 physical
CPU cores in use.

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Acano EdgeVM

Acano EdgeVM
The requirements for other components are lower, and a VM can be used in a split
core-edge deployment to provide edge functionality (Web Bridge, TURN server, XMPP
server) for the solution. This VM edge can be coupled with either a VM or Acano Server
core.
A VM configured to provide edge services to an Acano Hardware Server should be
configured with a minimum of 8 virtual CPUs and 8 GB RAM. A VM providing Edge
services to a single Core VM should be configured with a minimum of 4 virtual CPUs
and 4 GB RAM.

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Recommended Core VM Configurations

Recommended Core VM Configurations

720p30 calls

CPU configuration

RAM configuration

Example systems

50

Dual Intel E5-2680v2

32 GB (8x4GB)

Cisco UCS C220 M3

Dell R620
HP DL380p Gen8

40

Dual Intel E5-2650v2

32 GB (8x4GB)

Cisco UCS C220 M3

Dell R620
HP DL380p Gen8

25

Single Intel E5-2680v2

16 GB (4x4GB)

Cisco UCS C220 M3

Dell R620
HP DL380p Gen8

15

Single Intel E5-2640v2

8 GB (4x2GB)

Cisco UCS C220 M3

Dell R620
HP DL380p Gen8

Table 2: Recommended Core VM Configurations

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VMWare

VMWare
Acano supports VMs running on ESXi 5.0 Update 3, 5.1 Update 2 and 5.5 Update 1.
Other releases are not supported and in some cases are known to cause issues.
Core VMs should be configured to use the entire host as described above. This ensures
that a CPU core is available for the ESXi kernel to perform management and network
operations.
As part of internal testing Acano regular benchmarks a variety of CPU and server
configurations. During these tests synthetic calls are added over time, gradually
increasing the demands on the VM and pushing it over capacity. Several internal
statistics are monitored to ensure quality of user experience. In addition, ESXi
statistics are monitored and diagnostic logs are collected. Since Acano is a VMware
Technology Alliance Partner, these logs are submitted to VMware QA teams as part of
VMware Ready certification.
Although not recommended, it is possible to run other VMs alongside the Acano VM as
long as CPU isolation domains are created to prevent contention. This technique is
known as anti-pinning, and involves explicitly pinning every VM to a subset of the
cores. The Acano VM must be the only VM pinned to its cores, and all other VMs need
to be explicitly pinned to other cores.
For example, if a 20 core dual E5-2680v2 host is available, but only 25 concurrent
720p30 call legs are required, then anti-pinning can be used. Using the 2.5 calls/core
ratio, 10 physical cores are required to provide this capacity. 10 cores can be used for
other tasks.
With hyperthreading enabled, 40 logical cores are available and ESXi labels these
logical cores by index 0-39. The Acano VM should be allocated 20 virtual CPUs and
configured with scheduling affinity 0-19. All other VMs running on the host must be
explicitly configured with affinity 20-39 to create the pair of isolation domains. It may
also be necessary to leave a physical core with no VMs pinned to it for the ESXi
scheduler.

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VMWare

Figure 4: VM isolation domains created by pinning

VMXNet3 virtual network adapters are prefered as they require lower overhead than
other adaptor types. All virtual network adapters should be the same type.
VMware vMotion and High Availability (HA) technologies are fully supported. VMware
Fault Tolerance (FT) is not supported as it is limited to single virtual core VMs. High
level tools such as VMware vCenter Operations Manager are fully supported.
Note: If a VMWare hypervisor with EVC mode enabled is used, the EVC must be set to
one of the following modes or higher:
B1/AMD Opteron Generation 4
L2/Intel Nehalem generation (formerly Intel Xeon Core i7)
EVC modes which enforce compatibility with older CPUs than those listed above, are
not supported as they will disable SSE 4.2; SSE4.2 is required.

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Microsoft Hyper-V

Microsoft Hyper-V
Acano supports Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 and 2012 R2. VHD disk images are created
during software release and should be used for deployment. The host should be
dedicated to the Acano VM, leaving one physical core free for system tasks. Standard
virtual network adapters are preferred, as they require fewer resources than legacy
network adapters.
The VM should be configured to use all but one of the host physical cores. When
hyperthreading is enabled the number of available logical cores is double the number
of physical cores. For example, a dual E5-2680v2 system has 40 virtual CPUs available,
of which 38 should be allocated to the VM. Capacity will be approximately 2.5 720p30
call legs per physical CPU core for an E5-2600 or later host.
Hyper-V does not support CPU pinning. However, the Virtual Machine reserve option
should be set to 100% to dedicate resources to the Acano VM.
Note: The Processor Compatibility Mode MUST NOT be enabled as it disables CPU
extensions, in addition SSE 4.2 is required.

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Microsoft Hyper-V

Figure 5: Typical settings for Acano VM deployment

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Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services

The Acano VM can run on Amazon EC2/VPC instances. An AMI template is available
for deployment. Dedicated instances should be used to prevent contention with other
VMs or AWS tenants. A security group must be associated with the Acano VM to allow
control and media traffic to flow required ports can be found in the Acano
Deployment Guide.
Acano recommends the following instance types:
Instance Type

Virtual CPUs

Edge services

c3.2xlarge

20 720p30 call legs

c3.4xlarge

16

40 720p30 call legs

c3.8xlarge

32

Table 3: Recommended EC2 Instance Types

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Conclusion

Conclusion
The Acano solution was designed for maximum flexibility to scale and to work with
existing network environments. That extends to the ability to mix and match
optimized Acano Servers and VM deployments, for example using VM on edge servers
and Acano Server at the core for a highly scalable distributed architecture, or placing
all components within a VM deployment on a single standardized server.
Maximum flexibility is also carried through into the wide range of standard servers and
specifications the Acano software can run on. We have provided details for the most
popular virtualization technologies, including VMware, Microsoft HyperV and Amazon
Web Services. The Acano software also runs effectively on an array of more specialized
servers, for example for applications requiring portable and rugged form factors.
Our goal is to provide the highest quality audio, video and web experience in any
environment.

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Conclusion
2016 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
This document is provided for information purposes only and its contents are subject to change without notice. This
document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, for any purpose other than the recipients
personal use, without our prior written permission.
Acano is now part of Cisco, and a trademark of Cisco Systems. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

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