Fax Server Virtualisation

Passport 4000 lives comfortably in a virtual world

Virtualization is the process of consolidating multiple physical computers onto a single traditional hardware server using virtualization software products such as VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V. The software partitions the physical server into separate, secure virtual machines that each run independently of one another with distinct operating systems and applications on each virtual machine, each with their own processors, memory, networking storage and BIOS. Consolidation of multiple servers into one utilises far more of the available hardware capacity than the traditional approach of running one application per server.

Benefits of virtualization include:

	Significantly reduced infrastructure costs as fewer physical servers are required meaning less hardware, less maintenance, less energy usage and lower administration costs.
	Improved operational flexibility as virtualization allows server and storage resources to be set up or re-purposed as required to meet changing business needs. Disaster recovery is also much easier to manage in a virtualized environment.
	Greener IT – reduced overall energy use and space requirements lower the organisation’s carbon footprint.

Click image to enlarge.

The diagram above shows how the various software ‘layers’ reside on the physical server with VM software allocating resources dynamically and creating multiple simulated computer environments each capable of acting as an independent server. Each of these virtual machines is able to run separate operating systems and applications – one of which could be the fax server.

Lane’s Passport 4000 Fax over IP (FoIP) solution leverages field-proven Dialogic® Brooktrout® fax technology to deliver high performance, reliability, and scalability. Brooktrout® SR140 Fax Software performs well in virtual environments and has been tested running multiple SR140 channels simultaneously on separate VMs on a single host server. This enables hosting of multiple fax services or hosting fax and voice services on a single physical server.
Brooktrout SR140 provides:

	VMware ESXi 4.0 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V support, offering multiple virtual deployment options
	Scalability from 2 to 120 channels in a single server or virtual machine
	Simple deployment, with boardless fax processing
	High speed, based on the V.34 fax standard — twice the speed of V.17 fax products
	T.38 IP fax protocol that encapsulates Dialogic® Brooktrout® T.30 fax data stream — ensuring interoperability with new fax equipment and highly reliable, efficient fax processing
	G.711 fax pass-through, supporting fax on an IP network when a gateway or IP network operator does not support FoIP (T.38)
	Voice play and record, DTMF detection and generation, inbound fax routing

Find out more about Lane’s Fax over IP solutions which enable virtualization of the fax server here.