[Freeswitch-users] AWS Instance Recommendations

Fri Feb 17 10:41:03 MSK 2017

the overall performance has never been an issue in virtualized
installations. It's the stability that is an issue, because of noisy
neighbors. Sometimes you just don't get enough CPU cycles to send your
RTP packet on-time.

I've done some tests with the help of Sevana Aqua software that
compares the recorded audio with original, and with 10-20 parallel
calls, very often I got some distortions in one or more calls. I tried
several Xen and KVM hosting providers, including DigitalOcean and
Linode. I don't think AWS is different in any sense.

Also I had my small PBX on a Xen virtual machine, and later moved it
to a hosted dedicated ARM (scaleway.com), and the voice quality has
become significantly more clear and stable, even that the geographical
distance is about 600km longer.

So, if you have the possibility not to process your RTP media on a
virtual machine, don't do this :)

On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 1:45 AM, Oleg Stolyar <olegstolyar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, sent accidentally.
>
> I don't see why c4 should not work as well but if you are transcoding, OPUS
> takes 2-3 times the CPU of other codecs.  Here is a test I did and sent to
> this list a while back in case it helps.
>
> AWS M3.2xl instance with 8 CPUs for a 10 person conference with all clients
> connecting from Chrome via WebRTC.
> FS CPU usage was jumping more or less within these ranges throughout the
> conference:
>
> PCMU: 4.3% - 5.0%
> 722: 7.6% - 8.3%
> OPUS: 25% - 50%
>
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 4:43 PM, Oleg Stolyar <olegstolyar at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I don't see why c4 should not work as well but if you are transcoding,
>> OPUS takes 2-3 times the CPU of
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 3:01 PM, Colin Morelli <colin.morelli at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks for the info, Oleg.
>>>
>>> Do you know what AMI you're running? Kernel version? Etc. We opted for
>>> the c4s out of an assumption that our configuration would lend itself to
>>> being more CPU hungry than memory hungry (we're using opus)
>>>
>>> Colin
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 5:52 PM, Oleg Stolyar <olegstolyar at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I have been running FS on m3.2xlarge instances for a long time without
>>>> issues.
>>>>
>>>> With a mix of G.722 and G.711 it handles up to 250-300 concurrent
>>>> calls/conferences with transcoding although we try to not let it go above
>>>> 200.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 2:12 PM, Colin Morelli <colin.morelli at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Stanislav,
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry about that - I hadn't seen your reply! Understood on your
>>>>> suggestions. I guess my ultimate question is - is virtualization still a
>>>>> huge problem aside from noisy neighbors? AWS of course allows you to get
>>>>> dedicated instances (albeit expensive), but you're still running in a VM.
>>>>>
>>>>> The complexity of including another data center in the infrastructure
>>>>> is a bit too much for this use case, but as mentioned - it'll definitely
>>>>> move this way over time.
>>>>>
>>>>> Joel,
>>>>>
>>>>> Nothing other than what's on this thread. However, I will say that I
>>>>> moved from Ubuntu to an Amazon Linux AMI, moved logging from direct to disk
>>>>> out to syslog (with async writes to disk), and increased the instance size
>>>>> to a c4.xlarge, and users are reporting considerable improvements.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best,
>>>>> Colin
>>>>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 5:01 PM Joel Serrano <joel at gogii.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Colin,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Did you get any more info on FS on AWS? I'm interested on this also.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>> Joel.
>>>>>> On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 6:43 AM, Colin Morelli
>>>>>> <colin.morelli at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hey list,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'll start by saying I have read the warnings and recommendations to
>>>>>>> not run FS on virtualized hardware. For right now, though, it's really the
>>>>>>> only option for me. I don't anticipate nor will I expect the behavior to be
>>>>>>> the same as what I would get on physical hosts, but would just like it to be
>>>>>>> as consistent (and good) as possible given the constraints.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My question is - does anyone have particular kernel and instance type
>>>>>>> recommendations for AWS? I'm getting relatively frequent jitter and what
>>>>>>> seem like timing-related issues on calls, even in simple device <-> device
>>>>>>> calls within FS (no external gateway involved). I'm currently running FS in
>>>>>>> a Debian 8 docker container (with no memory or CPU limits) on a c4.large
>>>>>>> Ubuntu 16.04 host (kernel 4.4.0-45, default 250hz timer). The particular
>>>>>>> behavior I'm seeing feels and sounds like a few frames of silence, followed
>>>>>>> up by the audio being sped up slightly for a second or two (almost like it's
>>>>>>> trying to catch up), happening occasionally throughout calls. Note that this
>>>>>>> is with one call, and ~5% CPU usage on the host. Thus I'm pointing a finger
>>>>>>> most likely at kernel timer resolution. Running time_test 100 on FS returns
>>>>>>> an average of 200, which seems pretty bad.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've heard people have better success with the Amazon Linux AMIs for
>>>>>>> their packaged kernels. Is this true? Would recompiling the kernel with a
>>>>>>> 1000hz timer help a lot here?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If you're having success on AWS, would be great to know what AMI
>>>>>>> you're based off of, what kernel version (and timer), and instance size.
>>>>>>> Thanks in advance.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>>> Colin
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
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>>>>
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>
>
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