Ability to run on virtual servers?

[Ralph]

I noticed that one of the features listed for V5 is the ability to run on virtual servers.

Has 3CX been changed or fine tuned in some way with V5 that it can now run better on a virtual server then it previously could??

Thans again,

 

[silentfun]

i have already running v3 on a virtual server and it is working fine.
(Windows 2003 Enterprise)

(i have also tested w2k and vista unl. in Virtual PC 2007 on Vista Host)

i have not done this with v5 because i still testing v5 on a real w2k maschine. Don´t want to test under condition that give me um more problems then normal.

Andy

 

[RobLloyd]

I think they all run but you need a higher end host machine to put the virtual machine on. At that point you've spent more than necessary to get a seperate box.
If you want consolidation then yes it works but get a really good machine and use Virtual Server instead of Virtual PC. Server runs as a service so you don't have to worry about the server rebooting and it not starting up.
VMWare also works well.

 

[cjammer]

I had run earlier versions of 3CX on MS VPC 2004 with Server 2K3 and I had some unexplained issues. After going to a actual machine, thing started working.

I have not tried it on newer versions yet. Nor have I tried it on VMWare.

Cjammer

 

[Pentangle]

If you have any issues with it under VMWare then give me a shout, we specialise in VMWare installations.

However, frankly the software's so small and backs up so well i'd probably not recommend a virtual machine anyway unless you have multiple PBXs required, for the following reasons:

1) The software's not exactly complex to recreate from scratch (other than voicemail) in a pretty quick time.
2) You'd be mad (IT wise) to put it on the same box as any other services anyway due to uptime issues, and hence would theoretically buy your own dedicated box for it.
3) With the churn in voicemail, you're going to have a lot of potential dead filespace in your VM and will need to periodically compact/defrag it.
4) Low latency is obviously high on the requirements list, and sometimes there are minor delays introduced by the presence of multitasking between VMs and VM-related caching issues.

Anyway, as I say, if you still have any issues, just ask.

Cheers,
Mike.

 

[BJReplay]

I've been running V3 and V5 on a VM (Win2K3 EE R2 SP2 on VS2K5 R2 SP1 on Win2K3 EE x64 R2 SP2) without any problems.

Host has 8GB RAM, 2ual Core Xeon 5050s, 500 RAID1 Disk, and is running half a dozen VMs.

VM has 256MB RAM allocated, and a 25% of Host CPU reservation (and VM Additions & Hardware Virtualisation Assistance) turned on.

We're using VMs because we're running in a co-lo data centre, and pay by the Rack Unit - so the less servers, the better

Given the light footprint of 3CX, and the ease of install and re-install, I could probably move it to the host, but we're running the host pretty much just as a host - everything else runs in VMs.

As for downtime issues, our VMs are up as often as our host - which is all the time. We're small enough that we can tolerate a 10 minute outage on the PBX to restart the host if that's needed - and that can be done out of hours anyway.