Vultr's Hosting Policy for Voice Over IP (VoIP) Services

Vultr enables customers to host Voice Over IP (VoIP) services on both Virtual Machines (VMs) and Bare Metal servers. This article outlines Vultr's policy regarding limitations associated with using VMs for VoIP services and provides recommendations for hosting these services on Bare Metal servers to ensure optimal performance, stability, and security.

Recommended Hosting Environment for VoIP Services

VoIP Service Requirements

VoIP services, including SIP trunking, PBX systems, and voice call routing, are highly sensitive to latency, jitter, and packet loss. Ensuring consistent call quality and low latency requires a stable environment with dedicated hardware resources, such as CPU, memory, and network bandwidth. Selecting the appropriate hosting environment is critical to meet these requirements and avoid potential service degradation.

Challenges of Hosting VoIP Services on Virtual Machines

Resource Contention and Performance Issues

VMs share underlying hardware resources such as CPU, memory, and network interfaces with other VMs on the same host. This shared environment can lead to resource contention, where multiple VMs compete for the same resources, causing:

• Inconsistent CPU Allocation: High CPU utilization by other VMs can reduce CPU availability for VoIP services, resulting in jitter and poor call quality.
• Variable Memory Access: Memory-intensive operations by other VMs can lead to memory pressure, causing delays in packet processing and increasing latency.
• Network Bottlenecks: Shared network interfaces can cause congestion, packet loss, and increased latency, all of which are detrimental to VoIP call quality.

Increased Latency and Jitter

The virtualized nature of VMs adds layers of abstraction between the application and hardware, introducing additional latency. Moreover, as VMs are dynamically moved or balanced across hosts for resource optimization, changes in network paths can lead to jitter, further degrading VoIP performance.

Limited Resource Guarantees

VMs do not provide guaranteed access to the full resources of the underlying hardware. Resources are allocated dynamically based on demand, meaning a VoIP service hosted on a VM may not always receive the necessary resources during peak usage times, leading to unpredictable performance.

Benefits of Hosting VoIP Services on Bare Metal Servers

Bare Metal servers offer a dedicated environment with direct access to hardware resources, making them the ideal choice for hosting VoIP services. Key benefits include:

• Dedicated Hardware Resources: Bare Metal servers provide exclusive access to CPU, memory, and network interfaces, ensuring consistent performance and eliminating resource contention.
• Lower Latency and Jitter: With direct hardware access, Bare Metal servers eliminate virtualization overhead, resulting in lower latency and reduced jitter.
• Full Control and Customization: Bare Metal servers offer full control over hardware configurations, enabling fine-tuning to meet the specific needs of VoIP services.
• Improved Security and Isolation: Bare Metal servers provide a higher level of isolation, reducing the risk of cross-tenant security vulnerabilities and ensuring compliance with industry standards.

Vultr’s Policy on Hosting VoIP Services

Due to the limitations and potential performance issues outlined above, Vultr strongly recommends hosting VoIP services on Bare Metal servers. We cannot guarantee or troubleshoot call quality issues for VoIP services hosted on Virtual Machines, as the inherent resource contention and variability in the virtualized environment are beyond our control.

Conclusion

While Virtual Machines offer cost-effective and flexible hosting solutions, they are not suitable for latency-sensitive applications like VoIP. To avoid service degradation and ensure the best possible experience for users, Vultr advises customers to host VoIP services on dedicated Bare Metal servers.