Breaking News RealPresence Platform, Virtual...
Transcript of Breaking News RealPresence Platform, Virtual...
March 2014 | Level 2
Breaking News
RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition and RealPresence Platform Director
Software Release Dates: February, 2014
Breaking News: RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition
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Contents
Module Overview ................................................................................................................... 4
Polycom RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition Overview ................................................ 5
Server Components .............................................................................................................. 6
RealPresence Platform Director ........................................................................................ 7
Platform Director Functionality .......................................................................................... 7
VMware Server Requirements .............................................................................................. 8
Software Requirements ........................................................................................................ 8
Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) Files ........................................................................... 8
Feature Differences between Software and Hardware-based Editions .............................. 9
Thin / Restricted Shell ......................................................................................................... 10
Recommended/Full Capacity Environment ..................................................................... 12
Custom Environment ...................................................................................................... 12
Installation Process Overview ......................................................................................... 13
Lab Exercise / Demonstration: RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition Environment and
RealPresence Platform Director.......................................................................................... 14
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Module Overview
This module provides an overview of the newly released RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition and the RealPresence Platform Director product.
Intended Audience
This course is intended for students that are familiar with existing Polycom solutions and now want to learn about the RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition and the RealPresence Platform Director.
Prerequisites
Students should have attended Polycom Virtualization Essentials and RealPresence Implementation, Configuration and Troubleshooting (Level 2) training or have equivalent experience with Polycom video and infrastructure products. These topics cover some advanced features and it is recommended that students have also attended RealPresence Platform: Security and Firewall Traversal Using RealPresence Access Director RPSAT301 prior to reading this material.
It is also expected that students will have a reasonable knowledge of VMware virtualization terminology and concepts.
Product Release Date
Polycom RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition and RealPresence Platform Director were made generally available in February of 2014.
Demonstration Scenarios
A brief demonstration of the RealPresence Platform Director product has been included with this training.
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Polycom RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition Overview
Polycom RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition is designed to provide customers the ability to run the RealPresence Platform appliances as virtualized software within their datacenter infrastructure in conjunction with appliance-based infrastructure.
This new solution enables video collaboration to run on an organization’s standardized servers and VM environments to achieve huge savings in time, money, and energy while improving flexibility, efficiency, and disaster recovery.
These virtual editions offer a flexible approach to video architecture with savings in capital and operational costs. The key benefits for customers of RealPresence Platform Virtual Editions are as follows:
Increase simplicity and flexibility
Manually spin-up and spin-down video capacity based on the changing needs of the
organization: if video demands within an organization spike, for example, the
administrator can quickly add and license a new instance of an MCU within the existing
virtualized infrastructure. If the demand recedes, this MCU instance can be quickly
removed from service
No hardware lock-in (i.e. can use the preferred hardware vendor of the organization)
Increase resilience
Use of virtualization provides for improved backups, disaster recovery and business
continuity. Virtualization platforms such as VMware provide built-in capabilities to
snapshot running instances along with high availability capabilities
Reduce deployment time
Virtualized components are quick and easy to deploy which means a much faster time-
to-service in production, trial and proof-of-concept environments
Reduce total cost of ownership
Virtualization ensures IT resources are used efficiently in dynamically changing
environments
The use of virtual appliances and applications supports datacenter consolidation
efforts
Hybrid deployment (i.e. a mixture of hardware and software-based components) is
supported and allows the customer to migrate across at their own pace or continue to
use a mixture of software and hardware servers to optimize performance
Simplify management
The RealPresence Platform Director provides centralized management and monitoring
that allows IT managers to plan and optimize resources more effectively with an
embedded reporting capability
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Align with strategic IT policies
This approach provides tighter alignment to IT policies and procedures by allowing
video infrastructure to be included in an existing virtualized datacenter
Improve Manageability by consolidating management tools (i.e. use the same tools to
support, monitor and distribute video applications as are used for other virtualized
business applications)
Support green drive (i.e. use datacenter virtualization to reduce the carbon footprint of
the organization)
Server Components
The RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition is comprised of the following components:
RealPresence Collaboration Server, Virtual Edition v8.2 – enterprise-grade
video collaboration server that provides native SVC and AVC support
RealPresence DMA, Virtual Edition v6.0.2 – a network-based virtualization
application for managing and distributing calls across collaboration networks; provides
call signaling for both H.323 and SIP in a single platform and virtualizes bridging
resources for a seamless user conferencing experience
RealPresence Resource Manager, Virtual Edition v8.0.1 – allows administrators to
centrally provision monitor and manage the entire video collaboration network
RealPresence Access Director, Virtual Edition v3.0 – allows users inside or outside
the firewall to collaborate via video safely with anyone in the organization; supports
both SIP and H.323 signaling and tightly integrates with bot the DMA, Virtual Edition
and Resource Manager, Virtual Edition
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RealPresence Platform Director
Polycom RealPresence Platform Director is a software management solution that helps you easily deploy, use and monitor the virtual editions of the RealPresence Platform. Supported in VMware environments, Platform director works alongside VMware tools to support the IT staff in delivering RealPresence Platform video services.
Key benefits of Platform Director include:
Centralized management – single point to deploy, manage and monitor RealPresence
Platform virtual and appliance components
Fast deployment – quickly spawn RealPresence Platform software instances
Dashboard monitoring – quickly determine status and usage of video infrastructure
with summaries and alarm correlation
Platform Director Functionality
Functionality offered by the RealPresence Platform Director gives administration and management staff the ability to:
Create, start, stop, and delete virtual RealPresence Platform instances
Configure capacity thresholds and notifications
View real time and historical usage data of conferences and bridge resources
Add and monitor both appliance-based and virtual editions of the RealPresence
Platform components
Create a RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition software image repository to hold the
OVAs used for creation of server instances
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VMware Server Requirements
The table below gives an indication of the server resource requirements necessary for a VMware ESXi environment to support the RPPVE components. The precise requirements per VM instance depend on the RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition components and the level of performance required.
Server Hardware Requirements
Per VM Instance 4 to 16 Physical Cores 8 to 32 Virtual Cores (with optional hyper-threading enabled)
Recommended Processors are:
2.0 Ghz (Intel Xeon E5 Series or better CPU) or 2.5 Ghz (Intel Xeon 5500 Series or better CPU) or 2.9 Ghz (Intel Xeon E5 Series or better recommended for Collaboration Server)
One of the key requirements for RPPVE components is the provision of adequate computing resource in the form of physical CPU cores and clock cycles. The high compute demand by the components means that only current and previous generation CPUs will provide adequate resources. The table above shows the recommended CPUs.
Software Requirements
The following software is required to install, configure and administer the RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition:
VMware vSphere 5.0 or 5.1 client installed to access the ESXi host
vCenter Server (required for Platform Director)
Microsoft Internet Explorer version 10
Adobe Flash version 9.0.124 or newer
Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) Files
The Virtual Edition components are distributed in the form of Open Virtualization Appliance or Application (OVA) files to reduce setup and configuration time.
The OVA file is basically an archive file (i.e. TAR) which contains multiple files from a single directory: a list of hardware requirements, one or more disk images and metadata required to securely deploy a virtual machine. Shown below is an example of the contents of the RPAD 3.0 OVA file:
The metadata is stored in the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) file. This is an open standard format used to distribute virtual machines in VMware and many other virtualization environments.
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Feature Differences between Software and Hardware-based Editions
In most respects the Virtual Editions are identical to their hardware counterparts, except for Collaboration Server. The main difference relates to the hardware interface required in order to support certain communication protocols such as ISDN, PSTN and Serial/V.35. These hardware-based interfaces (i.e. modules) are not available for either the soft or appliance-based platforms. Other capabilities of the hardware over the software-based platforms include higher capacity, UC-APL certification (i.e. support for Assured Services SIP), 802.1X and a DNS service.
There also exist some minor feature gaps in this release of the RealPresence Collaboration Server, Virtual Edition that include:
1080p30 SVC / AVC / Content
SVC Content
Selective Mixing
Multi Link Cascade
ITP Support and Layouts
TIP (1080p30)
Integrated MLA
Dial-out SVC
Another difference that applies to Virtual Edition servers is that high availability is managed using VMware rather than server clusters. For example, DMA superclusters are supported but not the local cluster.
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Thin / Restricted Shell
All the RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition components have a thin or restricted shell which
is accessible via the console. This restricted shell allows the configuration of basic networking
and DNS settings. Any configuration changes through the shell results in the RPPVE
application service being restarted to ensure it is in a stable state for operation. Any further
configuration changes can be handled by logging onto the web GUI via a browser.
Shown below is the thin shell for the RealPresence Resource Manager, Virtual Edition. A common use of the shell is to configured static IP address settings, in this case using Management network setup. The Virtual Edition servers default to using settings from DHCP but can be re-configured to meet customer requirements.
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Minimum/Lab Environment
The table below shows the virtual hardware requirement and associated capacity for each of the Polycom RealPresence Virtual Edition components in a Minimum/Lab Environment:
RPPVE Component Hardware Requirement/Capacity
Collaboration Server 8 Virtual Cores 16GB RAM 30GB Storage
5HD / 15 SVC ports
DMA 2 Virtual Cores 8GB RAM 25GB Storage
50 concurrent calls
Resource Manager 2 Virtual Cores 8GB RAM 50GB Storage
400 devices
Access Director 1 Virtual Core 4GB RAM 16GB Storage
5 simultaneous calls
Platform Director 4 Virtual Cores 8GB RAM 25GB Storage
5 Instances*
Total Resources Required 25 Virtual Cores 52GB RAM 171GB Storage
*Note: Each instance is a separate virtual machine.
This configuration is designed for customers who wish to get started with Virtual Edition components using a lab environment, proof-of-concept or trial. As shown in the Total Resources Required row, this configuration including Capture Server and Platform Director requires 25 virtual cores, 52GB memory and 171GB of disk space.
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Recommended/Full Capacity Environment
The table below shows the virtual hardware requirement and associated capacity for each of the Polycom RealPresence Virtual Edition components in a Recommended/Full Capacity Environment:
RPPVE Component Hardware Requirement/Capacity
Collaboration Server 32 Virtual Cores 16GB RAM 120GB Storage
20HD / 60 SVC ports
DMA 16 Virtual Cores 8GB RAM 100GB Storage
5,000 concurrent calls
Resource Manager 24 Virtual Cores 16GB RAM 146GB Storage
50,000 devices
Access Director 8 Virtual Cores 8GB RAM 32GB Storage
900 simultaneous calls
Platform Director 8 Virtual Cores 8GB RAM 100 GB Storage
10 Instances
Total Resources Required for a single instance of each component
104 Virtual Cores 64GB RAM 548 GB Storage
This configuration is designed for customers requiring maximum capacity from the virtualized platform. As shown in the Total Resources Required row, this configuration including Capture Server and Platform Director requires 104 virtual cores, 64 GB memory and 548 GB of disk space. The resources required to run the RPPVE components can be provided by one or more physical servers depending on the customer’s available hardware and preference.
Custom Environment
It is likely that many customers will require a custom configuration to provide a capacity which lies between the Minimum and Recommended models shown in the tables above. The documentation for each individual Virtual Edition component should provide the necessary planning information with tables showing the level of resource required for a number of different capacity scenarios.
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Installation Process Overview
Each one of the RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition components is deployed in a similar fashion following these three basic steps from within the virtualized environment:
1. Install the OVA file to create the system instance in a new virtual machine. Installation can be performed using the VMware vSphere client or Platform Director. A virtual machine instance installed using vSphere can subsequently be added to Platform Director for management purposes
2. If required, change the network configuration using the VMware console options
3. Restart the RealPresence, Virtual Edition component and access the product with the new IP address using a web browser to complete initial configuration
Shown below is a screen shot from VMware’s vSphere Client where a RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition lab environment has been installed. Notice the separate instances for each component, including the RealPresence Platform Director.
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Lab Exercise / Demonstration: RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition Environment and RealPresence Platform Director
Exercise Summary
This lab exercise demonstration will provide a brief look at an installed RealPresence Platform, Virtual Edition lab environment. First, the VMware vSphere Client will be used to examine the installed server images. Then, we will login to the RealPresence Platform Director to review the same environment.
Detailed Lab Steps
Review ESXi Server Environment
1. Open the VMware vSphere Client software and login with administrator credentials
2. Expand the ESXi host in the upper left corner by using the “+” icon
3. Record the list of ESXi servers found here:
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ____________________________
__________________________
4. Close the VMware vSphere Client software
Navigate RealPresence Platform Director
5. Open a web browser and navigate to the RealPresence Platform Director and login with admin credentials
6. Record the names of the four primary sections of the dashboard here:
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ___________________________
7. Navigate to System > Providers and record the type of provider listed:
___________________________
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8. Navigate to System > Zones and record the name and description of the zone:
__________________________ ___________________________
9. Navigate to System > Image Repository and record the name and type of each image stored in the repository:
Image Name Image Type
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ___________________________
10. Navigate to Service > Instances and record the name and type of each instance currently being managed by the Platform Director:
Instance Name Instance Type
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ___________________________
__________________________ ___________________________
11. Navigate to User Management > Users and record the name of any existing Service Groups:
___________________________
12. Navigate to Monitoring > Alarms and expand any item in the list to review the detailed description of the alarm.
13. Navigate to Home and sign out by selecting the drop-down from My Account in the upper right corner of the screen and then select the Sign Out option
End of practical exercise