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

[James Sharp]

>> Andrew Kohlsmith 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.
>>>
>>
>> To turn around, let's discuss what we need to focus on to get
>> Asterisk there:
>>
>> Here's a few bullet points, there's certainly a lot more
>> * Linux platform stability - how?
>
> Even more than Linux itself is the x86 platform... I've thought about this
> a bit when considering * boxes for big customers.  When one actually comes
> along, I'll have to actually make a decision :-).
>>From where I stand, the best thing to do for smaller customers is give
> them a box with RAID and redundant power supplies, if they can afford it.

You can overcome most of those problems by buying good quality hardware. 
If you buy your * server from your local Taiwanese clone shop, you're
asking for trouble.  A big, beefy machine from Dell would be better.

> But if I were to have a big customer with deep pockets, I'd really like *
> on a big Sun beast with redundant-everything (i.e. you can hot swap any
> component and there's usually n+1 of everything).  The problem is that I
> don't think there's any Solaris support for Digium cards, since it's kind
> of  a chicken-and-egg problem.

Nope.  No Solaris support, but you might be able to get away with
Linux/Solaris...but then you lose a lot of the hot-swapability.  In my
experience, though, the only things I've ever been able to hotswap were
power supplies and hard drives...and thats not software/os dependant.

> One of these days, I may convince myself to buy a modern Sun box (maybe
> the ~$1000 Blade 100s) and see what can be done.  The only problem I could
> conceive would be endian-ness, but I read about Digium cards in a PowerPC
> box, so that won't be a problem, right?
> Nick

Endian-ness is really only a driver issue.  Its when programmers who
believe that the world revolves around Linux/i386 that you have problems.

Personally, I'd stick my Digium cards into an Alpha of some sort.  A
DS-10L for 1U mounting with 1 card or a DS-20 for multiple cards where you
need lots of processor zoobs.