[Freeswitch-users] 2012 VoIP With Virtualization

[Thaddeus Hogan]

I have Freeswitch running on a KVM based VM right now, and it doesn't do 
too hot. Voicemail, MoH, and IVR prompts are choppy often but call media 
proxy (no transcode) works okay, though long calls start to deteriorate 
after about 30 minutes.

I haven't tried on Xen since I bailed to KVM to get to a later kernel in 
2010 when blktap2 progress was unapparent. However Xen has always been 
much better at I/O in my opinion. Rackspace runs Xen for their cloud 
servers service, and people on this list seem to report good results 
with Freeswitch on Rackspace cloud.

Most recently I have been testing on LXC guests on Ubuntu 12.04. This 
has worked out as well as LXC doesn't do any hardware virtualization. 
Instead it is a method of isolating execution of processes in different 
namespaces and all guests share the host kernel. I have been migrating 
all of my KVM guests to LXC, and my Freeswitch install is on the list. 
With LXC you can set memory and CPU usage restrictions, so in my 
experience provides all the same benefits of full virt minus the ability 
to run Windows. OpenVZ is also based on process isolation rather than 
hardware virtualization, and would probably have the same benefits over 
full virt as LXC with Freeswitch.

-- Thaddeus


On 5/15/2012 4:12 AM, Chris Mylonas wrote:
> Hi FS Users,
>
> What is the consensus about using virtualized servers for real-time voice (RTP)?  Even up until a few years ago it was hard to guarantee the CPU cycles to the voice nodes.
> Virtualizing the signalling (SIP) has always been favourable in terms of HA.
>
> If the entire host is under control, is it safe to say - we can virtualise voice?
> Does it depend on what else is shared in the host - say it would be silly to put a high load database server on the same hardware node...
>
> Thanks for your inputs
> Chris
> _________________________________________________________________________
> Professional FreeSWITCH Consulting Services:
> consulting at freeswitch.org
> http://www.freeswitchsolutions.com
>
> 
> 
>
> Official FreeSWITCH Sites
> http://www.freeswitch.org
> http://wiki.freeswitch.org
> http://www.cluecon.com
>
> FreeSWITCH-users mailing list
> FreeSWITCH-users at lists.freeswitch.org
> http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users
> UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users
> http://www.freeswitch.org
>