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Version: 4.0.0-rc1

Deployment to VMWare Workstation Pro

To deploy the Phonexia Speech Platform 4 Virtual Appliance, you need these two ZIP files, downloaded from Phonexia:
– Virtual Appliance ZIP file
– Licensed models ZIP file

Step 1: Import Virtual Appliance
  1. Extract the contents of the Speech Platform Virtual Appliance ZIP file
  2. In VMWare Workstation Pro, select File / Open... and open the extracted speech-platform.vmware.ovf file
  3. In the Import Virtual Machine dialog, type the name of the virtual appliance and select the location where the virtual appliance will be imported
  4. Click on the Import button and wait for the import to finish
 

After finishing the import, it is strongly recommended to open the virtual machine settings and check the following:

  1. On the Hardware tab

    • make sure that the Memory default size 32768 MB is below the Maximum recommended memory blue marker; if not, you need a computer with more RAM
    • check that the number of Processors is at least 4
    • set the Network Adapter to Bridged

  2. On the Options tab

    • in the Advanced settings

      • set the Disable side channel mitigtations for Hyper-V enabled hosts check box (this is applicable to a Windows host with "Windows Hypervisor Platform" feature installed)

Using the bridged networking has the advantage of assigning a separate IP address to the virtual appliance using your DHCP server, thus saving you from a hassle with additional port forwarding rules configuration.

Step 2: Run Virtual Appliance

After you have imported and configured the setting of the virtual appliance, you can finally start it.

The console displays the boot log with various messages as startup tasks are completed. This typically takes several minutes.

When the system is fully up and running, the console shows a screen similar to this:

Rocky Linux 9.5 (Blue Onyx)
Kernel 5.14.0-503.14.1.e19_5-x86_64 on an x86_64

Welcome to Phonexia Speech Platform 3.7.0
.
.
.

speech-platform login:
Step 3: Upload licensed models and configure the platform

The virtual appliance distribution contains only the bare Speech Platform system. To actually breathe life into the system it's necessary to upload the licensed models to the appliance and configure the technologies.

These steps can be done either semi-automatically via the platform GUI, or manually via SSH access to the platform console.

The Virtual Appliance contains a Filebrowser tool, which simplifies some management tasks like uploading the models and accessing and editing the appliance configuration files.
The Filebrowser is accessible at http://<virtual appliance IP address>/filebrowser.

Open the Filebrowser and click on the upload icon in the top right corner, then click on the "File" option, browse for the licensed models ZIP file (licensed-models.zip). A small pop-up window in the bottom right corner will show the upload progress. You can also click on the up arrow to show the graphical progress bar.

When the upload is finished (progress is at 100 %), Filebrowser automatically starts extracting the uploaded ZIP file and then runs the automatic configuration script. While these processes are executed, the upload progress pop-up remains visible at 100%, seemingly doing nothing — don't worry, this indicates that background tasks are still running.

When the progress pop-up disappears, it means that the extraction and configuration is finished and the system is ready for use.

The automatic configuration detects which models and licenses were extracted from the ZIP file and automatically turns on the corresponding technologies and configures them to use the provided models.