[Asterisk-Users] Hardware to build an Enterprise AsteriskUniversal Gateway

[Steven Critchfield]

On Sun, 2004-01-04 at 10:14, Doug Shubert wrote:
> I would set the "Enterprise Class" bar at five 9's reliability
> (about 5.25 minutes per year of down time) the same
> as a Class 4/5 phone switch. This would require redundant
> design considerations in both hardware and software.
> 
> In our network, Linux is approaching
> "Enterprise Class" and I don't see why *
> could not achieve this in the near future.

I may be wrong, but I think the 5 9's relates to full system not to
individual pieces especially when talking about a class4/5 switch. On a
small scale deployment, that will be a problem as you won't implement
full redundancy. Redundancy adds quite a bit to the cost of your
deployment. 

As far as linux goes, it is at that level if you put forth the effort to
make it's environment decent. I have multiple machines approaching 2
years of uptime, and many over a year of uptime. I have not had a
machine in my colo space go down since we removed the one machine with a
buggy NIC.

So next step, is asterisk. Outside of a couple of deadlocks from kernel
problems when I was compiling new modules, I haven't had asterisk knock
over while doing normal calls.

The downtime could have been dealt with by having some redundancy in the
physical lines. I would have lost the calls on the line, but the calls
could be reconnected immediately. 

I can say up front that I have asterisk installs running multiple months
without problems. 
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>