[Users] VoIP on virtual infrastructure and oVirt in particular

[Patrick Lists]

On 13-01-14 17:38, Gianluca Cecchi wrote:
> Hello,
> any feedback about VoIP softswitches on virtual servers?
> I found this positive whitepaper on VMware web site but it seems
> mostly related to Class5 softswitches (intended for work with
> end-users):
> http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/voip-perf-vsphere5.pdf
>
> I would like to know about real experiences and Class4 softswitches
> too (used for transit VoIP traffic between carriers).

I have no experience with oVirt & VoIP but here is some general feeback. 
This has been asked several times on the Asterisk mailing list so you 
might want to search those archives. If you want to use an E1 or T1 then 
last time I looked it's a no go because (at the time) passing on PCI(e) 
cards to a VM was not working very well. If you use all SIP than your 
mileage may vary. It all depends on how much load the box has from the 
other VMs. The less load on the entire box the better and the less VMs 
run on the box the better and the less the VoIP software does to the 
actual calls in transit the better. And if there's no clock skew the 
calls might even sound ok. Best thing you can do is setup a proof of 
concept and load it with hundreds or thousands of calls. Then add a few 
other VMs and let them do stuff that causes disk reads/writes and 
network send/receives (aka a lot of interrupts). Then see what happens 
to your calls. In general, the more calls the bigger the chance that 
(clusters of) bare metal boxes are used.

Regards,
Patrick