[Asterisk-Users] Reasons why I shouldn't use Asterisk?

[Chris Albertson]

Yes, I agree.  Your typical PC might have only 96% "uptime"
but you could still build a __system__ with "five nines" of
uptime using PC hardware.  

You eed to do two things.  1) Use better quality PC hardware
that employs some internal redundancy, like mirrored drives and
multiple load sharing power supplies.  2) design the system
so that critical functions can fail over or at worst be restored
quickly.  Doing all this will triple (at least) your costs but
that's just what it takes if you _really_ need all five of those
nines.

Yes it would be nice if someone could port Asterisk to Sun SPARC
hardware then it could run on Sun's telco-grade Netra boxes



--- Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 09:36, WipeOut wrote:
> > Gavin Hamill wrote:
> > 
> > >It would seem an odd question, but I'm trying to put together a
> little
> > >presentation on 'Why Asterisk?' and need to list Pros and Cons....
> I've
> > >got plenty of Pros (including the availability of commercial
> support),
> > >but the only Con I can think of is 'Relatively few installations
> > >worldwide'
> > >
> > >Can anyone think of any others?
> > >  
> > >
> > No built in high availability or clustering options making it as 
> > reliable as the harware, OS and apps..
> > 
> > Last time I looked it up PC systems combined hardware components
> average 
> > reliability was about 96% uptime(This was a while back so the
> percentage 
> > may not be accurate).. This is a problem for telecom's system whos 
> > uptime is usually measured in years and not a percentage of 1
> year..
> > 
> > No flames please, I realise that there are issues involved with the
> PSTN 
> > lines, channel banks and some other things in a clustered senario..
> 
> 
> I think the number you cited needs qualification to be accurate.
> Because
> if it where accurate as it stands, I'm due for major downtime in my
> rack
> as I have several systems approaching 2 years uptime without a single
> hardware failure. These machines also where not new when they where
> sent
> to the colo facility. In fact they all had been running for about a
> year
> before hand.
> 
> And as a question of the 5 9's reported on telco hardware, As far as
> I
> know, that is for total system failure. The fact that they could
> loose
> trunks, or even a portion of a neighbor hood doesn't count against
> their
> downtime. If it did, I could point to a couple of telcos in this area
> that would have problems meeting those requirements.
> 
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> to back up my claim about uptime,
> my webserver is showing 136 days uptime, this is after a 497 day wrap
> around of the uptime counter. This machine is a Dell pe2450
> 
> the mail server is a home built 700 celeron showing the same 136 day
> uptime after the 497 day uptime wrap around.
> 
> Due to a hacker, our clients machine is showing 105 days uptime post
> 497
> day uptime wrap around. Again home built machine.
> 
> One of our fileservers is showing 133 days uptime post uptime wrap
> around. This is due to a screw up at the keyboard just 3 days after
> installing it in the colo. Also a home built machine.
> 
> Our VPN machine is just getting up to 354 days uptime. This is a
> super
> micro we purchased and put into service shortly there after.
> 
> Our database server just went through a hardware and software upgrade
> that caused it's reboot, now at 185 days uptime. Same hardware as the
> above listed webserver.
> 
> The 2 machines in my rack without impressive uptimes are a NT machine
> and my phone gateway that just had a kernel update.
> 
> This should probe that good power supply to the machine will help
> make
> hardware run well for a long time. Why do you think the telco
> equipment
> runs on 48volts? They are pulling from the batteries 100% of the
> time.
> This makes a smooth even power flow.
> 
> Machines in my office are subjected to poorer quality power and
> tweaking
> so they don't tend to make it to the 200 day uptime mark very often.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>
> 
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=====
Chris Albertson
  Home:   310-376-1029  chrisalbertson90278 at yahoo.com
  Cell:   310-990-7550
  Office: 310-336-5189  Christopher.J.Albertson at aero.org
  KG6OMK

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