[Asterisk-Users] Computing horsepower needed

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 12:47, Trench Shoring wrote:
> I have been reading asterisks and everything I can get my hands on for the 
> past week. I want to know what class processor is the bare minimum I need 
> for a four port Asterisk installation?

This type of question comes up quite often. I don't know whether it is
the frequency that annoys me or the seemingly implied "I don't want to
use a modern machine, will this POS that I was about to throw in the
dump going to make this work". 

Basically the answer as usual is, it depends on what you want to do. We
run production machines on P3 and Celeron(coppermine) machines. Just
remember that once you deploy, it is harder to add CPU power in a non
disruptive way. Of course if you are a bit over on the CPU power, you
eventually will grow into it.

So stepping away from the "bare minimum" part, you should shoot for
something in the P3 range, and decent memory. It is much easier to debug
any problems you have when you don't have to wonder if it is the
hardware or not. Also a decent P3 machine shouldn't be too difficult to
come by for little cost. The machine I had at home was a 1400 Duron that
cost $106 for the CPU and motherboard. On this Duron I was running a
T100P card. So again, it doesn't have to be an expensive machine, but
please save your self time and aggravation and get a somewhat modern
machine.  
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>