[asterisk-dev] HW requirements for a big conference server

[Geoffrey Mina]

I think you are not going to get MeetMe to work reliably with 200
concurrent users.  There are some elements of the MeetMe architecture
which don't allow it to scale very well.  Conference (app_conference)
could probably handle 200 users on your current hardware.  It doesn't
have all the bells and whistles of MeetMe, but it does the core job of
conferencing lots of users very well.



On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Pavel Troller<patrol at sinus.cz> wrote:
> Hi!
>  I've got a task - to build a carrier-grade conference server for at least
> 200 participants in one big meetme. It will be TDM only solution, no VoIP
> involved. The participants will come over SS7 trunks from 2 different EWSD
> transit exchanges.
>  I'm planning to use 2 TE412/420 cards in the box, but I'm not sure about
> characteristics of the hardware I need. I've already built two smaller
> servers, with one TE410 card in each. They are running on a Dual-core P-IV
> at 3GHz, but when they handle 2 - 3 meetmes with about 30 participants in
> total, CPU load increases to 1.30 - 1.50 (which is still OK because we have
> 2 cores), but it's clear that such a CPU would not be able to handle 200
> participants at all. Numerically, it looks that I need about 8x the
> performance of the above server to be sure that it will be able to handle it
> gracefully.
>  What I need to know, is:
>  1) Whether it's even possible to build such a machine from a generally
>     available server hardware
>  2) Which bus type to prefer (PCIe or classic PCI)
>  3) Recommended CPU type and number (currently I'm thinking about dual-socket
>     board equipped with two quad-core Bloomfield Xeons at 3.2 GHz, giving
>     8/16 (with hyperthreading) cores total, with 8GB of memory and no swap
>     partition)
>  4) Whether there is a noticeable delay when the calls are brigded between
>     the cards, i.e. whether hardware echocancellers are necessary or not for
>     this purpose.
>
>  And please, excuse me for writing this question to the developers list, I
> know that there is no source code discussion in it, but I'm afraid that in the
> user list I would not find really usable answers.
>
>  With regards, Pavel Troller
>
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