Hey I just wanted to make sure that my ESXi server will preform well with the Sangoma A102DE. They have 2 PRIs going in the card and I want to make sure it can handle the load of 46 calls in case they ever reach that.
Has anyone had experience (good or bad) with this? I’ve read a few bad things, but I’m not sure if that was just old problems that have been resolved.
Are you saying you’re worried about your hypervisor (ESXi) will (will not) be able to simulate (for its VM) that “physical” Sangoma card (Two-Span T1/E1)?
I bet it will not be able (It’s not like simulating a Network Card…) at least as far as I know.
IMHO It’s a no-go.
Maybe I’m wrong or maybe I misunderstood your scenario but I think “that” type of Hardware can’t be virtualized (by the Hypervisor) in order to be used by any of its Virtual Machines (e.g. by an Asterisk appliance).
Borderline vision: you can recycle your powerful VMware ESXi Intel Xeon based hardware server and let it to become a “real” (read: physical) IP-PBX powerful appliance: Sangoma Card will be recognized/managed/used by FreePBX Distro or - probably - by any Asterisk based system, once it is installed on that Hardware. But you should say “Goodbye VMware ESXi”.
With vt-x and vt-d or the amd equiv’s perhaps so with qemu-kvm and a good kernel, (IWFM) I can’t speak for ESXi but the last time I tried with XEN it was a miserable failure. Look at Redfone or Xorcom perhaps.
I’ve used Xorcom in the past (just had one fail one me actually). So you think because the Xorcom would by interfaced via USB it should be okay for the ESXi?
without hardware and kernel support it will be iffy at best, your gateway solution is perhaps your best but perhaps most expensive solution, the Redfone solution is neat and network based but needs solid layer 2 support, (best case use a dedicated NIC even within your KVM)
Yes, with a PRI/SIP Gateway you’re going to have far better result (SIP Trunk to the PSTN Gateway).
Pay attention to VM memory management/allocation in VMware ESXi: some users reported a memory setting which resulted in memory usage issue on FreePBX Distro running virtual.
Similar questions were (were not) answered before: see here and here).
I have posted this many times but for less than $100 on FleaBay you can get a Cisco 7960 router, DSP and PRI card. These things listed for over 2k new and are far better than any of the gateways such as the Xorcom. This is enterprise class gear and at the price you can get a spare.
If you are using ESX then our boards will not work on the virtual systems. The reason is our driver will not have Full access to the card.
With virtualization software I would recommend using our Vega10X series gateways. These will be able to communicate via IP the PBX hosted in the virtual environment. You can find a full gateway product list at http://www.sangoma.com/voip-gateways/.
If you have any questions regarding your exact setup I would recommend opening a ticket at support.sangoma.com and provide us with the details there.