Using Intel Dialogic SIP software inside VMWare ESX 3.5

As a final part of our Data center virtualization initiative, We recently moved from a traditional hardware-based Intel Dialogic T1 dialer from Edulink to an Intel Dialogic SIP solution running 24 channels peered to our ShoreTel PBX.

Since Intel does not recommend running their Dialogic SIP software inside a VM since CPU time slicing and resource sharing dont play well with real time applications, we came up with a workaround.

Here are the custom settings we had to setup for the VM

CPU
1 vCPU
High Resource Shares
2000 MHz Reservation

Memory
2048 MB RAM
High Resource Shares
1024 MB Reservation

Hyperthreaded Core Sharing
Mode: Internal - This keeps the physical CPU core to just this VM
No Scheduling Affinity

Stats
Over the last month it has maxed out at
14.9% (444 MHz) CPU
10.99% (230MB) Memory

No reported issues since

Silent install for SRI and SRC

After being frustrated by Scholastic tech support and being told there is no way to make the installer for Scholastic Reading Counts Enterprise or Scholastic Reading Inventory Enterprise install silently, I was determined to find a way. Here are the results of my exercise:

Step 1:
Find the \SRI_Client\Windows (for Reading Inventory) or the \SRC_Client\Windows (for Reading Counts) install folder.

Step 2:
Create a file named installer.properties

Step 3:
Edit installer.properties in a text editor such as notepad or wordpad and insert the following text
INSTALLER_UI=silent
SERVER_IP=your_sri_servername_or_ip_here

Step 4:
Save the file

Step 5:
Deploy using the software deployment tool of your choice. We happen to use Systems Center Configuration Manager, the successor to SMS from Microsoft.