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

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 11:55, hkirrc.patrick wrote:
> i m a newbie with * so in all likelihood my question will sound stupid 
> to you but aren't there HA support for linux already?
> as to the pstn interfaces, i thought most traditional PBX uses redundant 
> equipment to provide HA;
> can't we do the same with * being the switch?

That depends, HA support in linux can make sure that a server or service
is there to handle certain failures. RAID is there to support failing
disks, and hotswap is an option for not having down time when it comes
to fixing the failure. Same goes with hot swappable power supplies. On
PC hardware, I think that is about as far as you can go on a single
machine. 

The next step is to write software that can jump in and take over
services when it detects the primary has failed. This isn't too
difficult on a VoIP machine as the phones talk to a IP address that can
be assumed on failure. This is supported currently for several services.

On a PSTN connection though, you get the problem of physical interfaces.
While it was recently mentioned that there is a device for T1 interfaces
to fail over in the case of alarm, and this could allow a new machine to
pick up and deal with calls from the PSTN. Of course for those of us on
all Zap interfaces, this would be interesting in that we would have the
failover piece on our inbound, and potentially on each T1 interface to
our channel banks. You would loose any in process calls, but new calls
would route fine.

Of course as I think back, The Intertel hardware our sister company was
installing didn't have any HA features. 

I wouldn't consider this a CON so much as a classification of what is
possible to do. I doubt the hardware the person who started this thread
has has any HA features built into it right now.
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>