Ensure that the physical specifications of the ESXi hosts allow for successful deployment and operation of the physical ESXi host design for RAN.

Physical Design Specification Fundamentals

The physical design specifications of the ESXi host determine the characteristics of the ESXi hosts that you use to deploy the Telco Cloud Platform RAN solution. For example, consistent PCI card slot placement, especially for network controllers, is essential for the accurate alignment of physical to virtual I/O resources. By using identical configurations, you can balance the VM storage components across storage and compute resources.

ESXi Host Memory

The amount of memory required for vSphere compute host for RAN varies according to the workloads running in the host. Ensure that at least 8% of the resources are available for ESXi host operations.

ESXi Boot Device

The following considerations apply when you select a boot device type and size for local storage. Select all ESXi host hardware, including boot devices by referring to the VMware Compatibility Guide.

The device types that are supported as ESXi boot devices are as follows:

  • USB or SD embedded devices. The USB or SD flash drive must be at least 8 GB.

  • SATADOM devices. The size of the boot device per host must be at least 16 GB.

Caution:

The use of USB and SD boot devices in ESXi is deprecated. For more information, see VMware KB85685.

Recommended Physical ESXi Host Design

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

Use hardware based on VMware Compatibility Guide.

  • Ensures full compatibility with vSphere.

  • Allows flexibility and ease of management of both RDC and Cell Site hosts.

Hardware choices might be limited.

Ensure that all ESXi hosts have a uniform configuration across the Cell Sites.

Ease of management and maintenance across the Cell Sites.

None

Onboard a Cell Site with a minimum of one ESXi host

Cell Sites are limited in space, and only a few telco workloads can be run.

Additional ESXi host resources might be required for redundancy and maintenance.

Set up each ESXi host with a minimum of two physical NICs.

Ensures full redundancy for the two Physical NICs for workloads.

In servers with two NUMA nodes, each NUMA node must have a minimum of two physical NICs.

Set up each ESXi host in the Cell Site with two minimum disks.

  • ESXi boot drive

  • Local Storage for workloads.

Local storage is the primary storage solution for Cell Sites.

Note: The disk size must be considered based on telco workloads.

The local disk must be sized appropriately.

Note: Local storage does not support sharing across multiple hosts.

Set up each ESXi host in the Cell Site location with a minimum of 192 GB RAM.

  • A good starting point for most workloads.

  • Allows for ESXi and other management overhead.

Additional memory might be required based on vendor workload and sizing requirements.