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Host recommendations for an Interaction Media Server virtual machine

Requirement area	Specifications
Virtualization software	VMWare vSphere 5.1 or higher VMWare vSphere ESXi 6.X Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows Server 2016 Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows Server 2019
Networking	NIC - Two or more network interface cards with a bandwidth rating of 1Gb/s or higher. NIC configuration - We recommend teaming NICs in a Fault Tolerance configuration with failover capabilities (two or more NICs available for communication but only one NIC is active at any given time) Important! Do not use a load balancing NIC teaming configuration with an Interaction Media Server guest VM. You must use reservations (vSphere) or a combination of weight-based and minimum bandwidth rules (Hyper-V) to ensure that the Interaction Media Server VM guest communications are not delayed or interrupted by other guests or the host. Virtual Network Switch - The Virtual Network Switch must be dedicated to the Interaction Media Server guest VM. RSS/vRSS If available, you must enable Receive Side Scaling (RSS) on the physical NICs and its virtual counterparts (vRSS) to ensure that bandwidth usage is distributed among multiple network interfaces.
Central Processing Unit (CPU)	Intel Xeon Gold 6138 or better A speed rating of 2.0 GHz or better Important! The host CPU load must not exceed 60% utilization. Failure to keep the host CPU load under 60% can result in problems, such as call audio issues or unanswered calls. Consult the documentation of your hypervisor for methods of determining CPU usage.
RAM	The host should have enough RAM to meet the minimum requirements for the Interaction Media Server guest machines as well as to support the host’s operating system.
Virtual drive source	Reservation with High Shares A reservation of data storage resources does not protect the Interaction Media Server guest VM from interference by other guests. An oversubscribed host can cause poor performance of the Interaction Media Server guest VM and can result in the inability to answer calls.
Clock synchronization	Interaction Media Server is sensitive to time variations in the system clock and inserts silence into audio paths and recordings when the synchronization becomes off. It is imperative that the guest’s clock is always synchronized accurately to the host’s clock and that the host has a reliable and accurate clock source. For VMWare vSphere, we recommend configuring the Windows Server guest clock source (w32time) through the information contained at the following website: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1318 For Microsoft Hyper-V, we recommend using the time synchronization integration service built into Hyper-V to synchronize the guest’s time to the host’s time.