[asterisk-dev] 1.4 and CDRs -- The Breaking Point

Michiel van Baak michiel at vanbaak.info
Sat Feb 7 16:36:37 CST 2009 

On 16:35, Sat 07 Feb 09, Venefax wrote:
> We have found that having one independent Asterisk per client, with its
> unique IP address, is the best way to minimize downtime in service. This
> knowledge comes from actually doing the business in a large scale. The
> alternative would be to use a commercial softswitch like Nextone. For 10.000
> simultaneous calls, a Nextone goes for around 1 million. So this
> architecture saves about a million and change. We use SQL Server 2008, with
> perfect results.
> Also, your idea of Windows requiring a license per virtual machine is false.
> The Windows 2008 Server Datacenter edition allows a high number of virtual
> machines to coexist with one license. Virtualization is the way of the
> future. It is a lot cheaper to buy a large server, let?s say, a Dell with 16
> cores and 128 GB goes for $20.000 directly from Dell. Any other alternative
> that we have researched, either hardware based or software based, is several
> times more expensive, for the same amount of calls and stability. But please
> let me know where we did calculate wrong. 

This discussion has nothing to do with asterisk development anymore.
Connection: Close;

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Michiel van Baak
> Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 3:57 PM
> To: asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] 1.4 and CDRs -- The Breaking Point
> 
> On 15:37, Sat 07 Feb 09, Venefax wrote:
> > The fact that Easysoft does not want to work with virtualization makes it
> a
> > useless product. Think about the economies of scale. 
> 
> It has nothing to do with virtualisation. Their product is licensed on a
> per machine base. A virtual machine is still a machine.
> 
> > I have several servers
> > with 16 cores and 128 GB of RAM, filled with Asterisk's virtual machines.
> I
> > calculated that going that route would cost my company over 1 million
> > dollars, versus zero with Freetds. 
> 
> If those vm's were running windows, you still need to get a license for
> windows for every vm. Same thing.
> 
> > What we do is wholesale trading. We
> > assign an independent Asterisk virtual machine to each client. 
> 
> Why ? Asterisk can do this with just one instance.
> We run a bunch of asterisk machines, handling way more clients then
> asterisk instances. We use dialplan contexts for this without trouble.
> 
> > We use a
> > cluster software provided by Proxmox, that allows us to relocate the
> virtual
> > environments when the machine needs to be taken down, etc. The technology
> > underneath the hood is OpenVZ, which has very little overhead. Please
> > suggest a better strategy and I will follow it. I have around 400 virtual
> > machines in my environment, in one single rack. I hope you don't think
> that
> > you can match this scenario with blades an still stay in one single rack. 
> > I think that the British are royalists, even when writing software. We are
> > revolutionaries, even when applying technologies to make money. God save
> > Obama.
> 
> We dont have to run 400 virtual machines in one rack. but it's certainly
> possible if you load a 42U rack with sun X4150's, put debian on them,
> and start using kvm for virtualisation.
> Showing off the number of vm's per rack is not the deal here. You want
> to serve around 400 customers on asterisk. You have no need to run 400
> vm's for that.
> We run around 100 to 150 clients on a single asterisk server (depends on
> the number of sip devices and concurrent calls the client needs). So for
> your 400 we have to run 4 servers. Ok, we want this redundant so we add
> another 4 servers for the asterisk instances and two servers to spread
> the load acros the 8. That makes a total of 10. 10x1U is 10U. That's not
> even a half rack here in .nl (where 42U is the smallest, and some
> colocating facilities give you 52U)
> So in this case it would give you 8 licenses instead of 400. How about
> that ?
> 
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com
> > [mailto:asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Michiel van
> Baak
> > Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 12:36 PM
> > To: asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com
> > Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] 1.4 and CDRs -- The Breaking Point
> > 
> > On 11:49, Sat 07 Feb 09, Venefax wrote:
> > > There is certainly a "paid" version, extremely expensive, $1500 per box.
> > If
> > > you use virtual machines, exclusively, like I do, it would cost you a
> > > fortune, I mean, literally. I explained the fact that in the US we are
> > fully
> > > virtualized and we use hundreds of virtual machines in cluster of big
> > > servers, a cloud, instead of a big physical box, but the manufacturer in
> > > London wanted $1500 per virtual machine and I had to stop using them,
> > after
> > > buying one copy. They are clearly still living in the 20th century.
> > England
> > > is still a place with a queen. I argued for a change on the licensing
> > model,
> > > but they would not follow any clues. You are welcome to contact them.
> > >
> >
> http://www.easysoft.com/products/data_access/index.html?gclid=CNTild_uypgCFQ
> > > pgswodQB0W1Q
> > 
> > Cant help it, but I have to go off-topic here.
> > Please ignore this email if you like.
> > 
> > You are clearly not getting the idea here.
> > A virtual machine is still a machine. Licenses that are sold per machine
> > are licenses that are sold per machine.
> > They have totally no need to change their way of doing business because
> > you are using virtualisation.
> > There's no way they force you to use virtualisation or a big box.
> > 
> > The statement that everyone is using virtualisation is wrong as well.
> > Most 'cloud' setups are still done with bare-metal running the service.
> > 
> > Add to that that virtualisation is highly overrated and you'll see where
> > this is going.
> > 
> > A license is a license. They decided to go this way. If you dont like it
> > dont use it.
> > 
> > Question:
> > Digium is selling G729 (and soon skype) on a per channel basis.
> > Are you going to make the same statement as above when your business
> > reaches 100 concurrent channels with this technology ?
> > 
> > Question2:
> > Most colocating facilities charge you per KWh power.
> > Are you going to make the same statement as above when you replace all
> > your gear with HP blades that need 380v 2500W powersupplies ?
> > 
> > </rant>
> > 
> > Now to the constructive part of my email:
> > If this problem is affecting you, why not setup a linux box/couple of
> > linux boxen with postgresql ?
> > Most of the things in mssql can easily be converted to postgresql (I
> > know because I did loads of those conversions) and all the stuff you
> > need is available for free.
> > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com
> > > [mailto:asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Sebastian
> > > Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 11:32 AM
> > > To: 'Asterisk Developers Mailing List'
> > > Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] 1.4 and CDRs -- The Breaking Point
> > > 
> > > Is there any other MSSQL driver to compare the results?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com
> > > [mailto:asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Tilghman
> > Lesher
> > > Sent: s?bado, 07 de febrero de 2009 01:32 p.m.
> > > To: Asterisk Developers Mailing List
> > > Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] 1.4 and CDRs -- The Breaking Point
> > > 
> > > On Saturday 07 February 2009 04:40:32 Venefax wrote:
> > > > Your statement about Freetds is untrue. I hired Frediano Ziglio of the
> > > > Freetds team to work with Murphy and he did not find any problem by
> > > tracing
> > > > the driver.
> > > 
> > > You also hired Digium to trace the problem, and we couldn't find a
> single
> > > problem with our stack, either.
> > > 
> > > > Furthermore, it can be proven that Freetds works fine since I 
> > > > use AGI and Perl to the same job that slows Asterisk to a halt.
> > > 
> > > That's not the same job.  By your own admission, it opens and closes the
> > > database connection for every single job and runs each query in a
> > completely
> > > separate process.  That's quite a bit different from sharing resources
> and
> > > running many queries on the same connection.
> > > 
> > > > There is 
> > > > like a bottleneck in Asterisk. When the amount of calls to a func_odbc
> > > > driver goes above 10-15 per second, the rate of calls to the database
> > > > versus calls to func_odbc starts dropping dramatically.
> > > 
> > > Except that it doesn't, when you use a backend like MySQL.  It's only
> when
> > > you
> > > use the FreeTDS backend that it slows down.
> > > 
> > > > I call that 
> > > > constipation. Please ask Steve Murphy about the case.
> > > 
> > > I actually worked closely with Steve Murphy on this case, and I'm fully
> > > aware
> > > of the testing done.
> > > 
> > > > The only way to make 
> > > > it work is to call a Perl script that opens and closes a connection to
> > the
> > > > database for each call, which is absolutely inefficient and makes me
> use
> > a
> > > > very expensive SQL machine. The mechanism to share the connections to
> > SQL,
> > > > called "pooling", is flawed. Just picture it this way: Asterisk cannot
> > > > handle more than 20 queries per second to the database using
> func_odbc,
> > > > while I can get to 100+ calls per second using AGI and Perl. I have
> not
> > > > reached yet any upper limit using Perl.
> > > 
> > > Right, but you're using a completely different methodology that relies
> on
> > > hundreds of different engines running concurrently, as opposed to
> running
> > > hundreds of different instances on the same engine.
> > > 
> > > > I think that we need to redesign 
> > > > the entire ODBC technology from scratch.
> > > 
> > > You are certainly welcome to redesign it and contribute your new design
> > back
> > > to the community.  Many others, who are not using FreeTDS, have no
> problem
> > > using func_odbc.
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Tilghman
> > > 
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> > -- 
> > 
> > Michiel van Baak
> > michiel at vanbaak.eu
> > http://michiel.vanbaak.eu
> > GnuPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x71C946BD
> > 
> > "Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?"
> > 
> > 
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> -- 
> 
> Michiel van Baak
> michiel at vanbaak.eu
> http://michiel.vanbaak.eu
> GnuPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x71C946BD
> 
> "Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?"
> 
> 
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-- 

Michiel van Baak
michiel at vanbaak.eu
http://michiel.vanbaak.eu
GnuPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x71C946BD

"Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?"

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