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Batch Virtual Appliance

High-Level Summary

This release provides internal bug and security fixes. It is recommended that customers on previous releases upgrade to this version.

Important Notices

Deprecation Note

The legacy V1 API that the Batch Virtual Appliance currently supports will be removed by February 2022. The V2 API as used in the Speechmatics SaaS (https://asr.api.speechmatics.com/v2/docs) is now supported in the Batch Virtual Appliance. We recommend all customers move to using the V2 API. Please see the section How to use the V2 API.

If you are importing an appliance using VMWare, please note that the hardware_version of the appliance has been updated from 9 to 11. This is to automatically take advantages of performance optimisation using Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (AVX2). This should have no effect on the appliance assuming you are on a version of VMWare ESXi supported by Speechmatics (versions 6.5 onwards). If you are importing an appliance through VirtualBox and AVX2 is not automatically enabled, you can also take advantage of the the performance benefits from AVX2 following these guidelines.

It is now necessary to run the appliance on processors that support AVX2 in order to take advantage of latest performance optimisations.

What's New

  • Internal bug and security fixes
  • Customers who use the Glances API output should be aware that as part of critical bug fixes the API version now supported is version 3 - further information can be found here. Interaction with Glances via the Management API has changed to reflect the Glances API update - please see the monitoring and alerting section of the Installation Guide for an example.

Issues Fixed

The following issues are addressed since the previous release:

Issue IDSummaryResolution Description
REQ-18031Speaker Diarization ImprovementsSpeaker Diarization has been improved where there are two speakers in a file

Known Limitations

The following are known issues in this release:

Issue IDSummaryDetailed Description and Possible Workarounds
REQ-1409Proteus HCL with <unk> causes out of memory errorA custom dictionary list that contains the word '' causes the worker to crash.
REQ-7549Memory leak affecting gRPCThere is a small memory leak in the gRPC Python server https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues/5913.
REQ-10160Advanced punctuation for Spanish (es) does not contain inverted marks.Inverted marks [ ¿ ¡ ] are not currently available for Spanish advanced punctuation.
REQ-10627Double full stops when acronym is at the end of the sentenceIf there is an acronym at the end of the sentence, then a double full stop will be output, for example: "team G.B.."
REQ-10634Putting "-" as an item in additional vocab configuration will cause the container to failDo not enter just a "-" on its own in Custom Dictionary either as an additional vocab item or in the sounds_like property. Hyphens are still supported when entered as part of phrases or words
REQ-14402When running very large numbers of small jobs (less than 10 seconds) offline, this may cause some of the jobs to be rejectedIf you encounter this issue, please ensure licensing is in offline mode when running the appliance offline

Supported Platforms

Virtual Appliance image (OVA) for installation on:

  • VMware ESXi 6.5+ or VMware Workstation Player.
  • VirtualBox 5.2+
  • Amazon EC2

See the Installation and Admin Guide for details on the minimum specifications for the VM. The maximum number of concurrent jobs (maxworkers) that you can run on a single appliance is 30.

Form Factors

VariantImage SizeMax. Disk SpaceLanguages
nano11GB40GBen
mini19GB40GBen, de, es
midi38GB60GBen, de, es, fr, ko, ja, nl, pt
maxi65GB80GBen, de, es, fr, ko, ja, nl, pt, it, da, pl, ca, hi, ru, sv
plus65GB80GBen, cmn, no, ar, bg, cs, el, fi, hu, hr, lt, lv, ro, sk, sl, tr, ms

Upgrade Path

Remove the license from your old appliance (see the Admin Guide), then re-import the new OVA and configure networking as per the Installation and Admin guide. You will need to re-apply the license code you have once the OVA has imported.

Installation

Upload the OVA to VMWare ESX, VMWare Workstation Player, or VirtualBox. See the Installation and Admin Guide for more information.

Performance at Scale

Further notes on IOPS requirements under heavy usage of the appliance are now provided in the System Requirements section of the Installation Guide.