[Asterisk-Users] Clustering

[Ron McCarthy]

Hi Gabe,
Well im guessing your ServerIron wont work because its not near smart enough
to know how SIP works, let alone, 99.9% of load balancers I have seen use
private IP's on server side, the and Load Balncer then has the public IP's
assigned to them. Right there, this creates a problem in itself. But im
assiumg the Foundry isnt smart enough to keep track of multiple phones from
the same IP, and all the RTP sessions associated with it, since like you
said, several hundred port numbers are being used. The Juniper box seems to
rewrite the actual SIP header on the outbound transversal to the Internet,
this solving the NAT return path problem, and then it keeps track in a state
table as to what ports go to what server, etc, etc. But I think there is no
way this could "failvoer" in the middle of the car, since it would somehow
have to change the RTP stream to another port, but also the phone would have
to get to get registered on that server as well, which its not, which is why
Douglas is using SER to have it register on several different machines, so
when the failover occurs the phone is registered and the RTP stream just
needs to pick up. Im trying to see exactly how he is doing this, since this
is the exact thing I need, and then Ill just run OSPF on my core router (not
sure if that will work yet).

I woudl perfer to do this all in hardware vs software since a Cisco/Juniper
box is musch less prone to failure then a server with software, but I guess
more research will tell what ill be using in the end :)

Once I get this going, I want to post a entire howto on the wiki.

Thanks!
Ron

On 3/12/06, Gabriel Afana <asterisk at gafana.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ron,
>     If the SBC would have served mearly as a load balancer...I already
> have one and it didn't work too well.  I have a Foundry ServerIron XL load
> balancer and I've tried using it with Asterisk.  It has had positive and
> negative results.
>
> Positive:  It *would* load balance between asterisk servers for whatever
> port I set (I was using 5060 for SIP).  However, I didn't mess with the RTP
> because its got so many ports (and you can't add ranges for virtual server
> ports, you have to enter exact ports - at least I think) and because I have
> no idea how that would work if SIP signaling goes to one server and RTP goes
> to another???  (probably not!)  I would create a virtual IP on the load
> balancers and have all the phones register to this IP.  When checking status
> of the ports on each server, it showed 5060 for all servers was unused (0
> current connections).  When I would make a call, it would show the 5060 port
> on one of the * servers in use (1 current connections) and it worked
> fine....this is where the problem started.
>
> Negative:  When I would hang up the phone, it would still show 1 current
> connection to that server's 5060 port.  Every call I would make from then on
> would *still* go to that same server.  It seems the ports are "sticky" or
> set with a keepalive.  Of course I can define these options on the
> ServerIron, but even with "sticky" disabled and keepalive disabled, the port
> would appear active (like keepalive was enabled) and every call would go to
> the same server (like "sticky" was enabled).  Even if I would shutdown
> asterisk on that server, it would still show an active user on that port and
> when I would make the call, the call would not go through.  The LB was not
> failing the port.  I think maybe if I keep playing with it...?   Any
> suggestions?
>
> If I can get my ServerIron working, I will do a complete write up on
> it...but it works only partially.
>
> This is why I was so interested in the Juniver SBC....if it would be able
> to act a proxy, do all the load balancing and instantly failover if a server
> fails; basically a VoIP Load Balancer.  But I guess thats not what it does.
> Does a VoIP load balancer hardware exist or is the only solution right now
> software proxies like SER?
>
> - Gabe
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Ron McCarthy <ronmccar at gmail.com>
> *To:* Gabriel Afana <asterisk at gafana.com> ; Asterisk Users Mailing List
> -Non-Commercial Discussion <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
> *Sent:* Sunday, March 12, 2006 1:16 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Asterisk-Users] Clustering
>
> Hi Gabe,
> Well I was going to use the SBC to have all phone point to the SBC, and
> then the SBC takes care of what servers it needs to register with, and then
> keep a state of what server the RTP stream and the phone need to connect to.
> Basically like a load balancer would. This is what I understood from
> Juniper's site. Have you seen anything on this?
>
> Thanks!
> Ron
>
> On 3/11/06, Gabriel Afana <asterisk at gafana.com> wrote:
> >
> >  Hi Ron,
> >     I've been following your thread.  I noticed you mentioned about a
> > Juniper Session Border Controller.  I checked online and read about it, but
> > was unsure exactly how it could intergrate with Asterisk.  How would you
> > have planned to use that device?  I am interested because one of my upstream
> > providers mentioned I should be using an SBC.
> >
> > - Gabe
> >
> >
> >  ----- Original Message -----
> > *From:* Ron McCarthy <ronmccar at gmail.com>
> >  *To:* Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion<asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
> >  *Sent:* Friday, March 10, 2006 11:22 AM
> > *Subject:* [Asterisk-Users] Clustering
> >
> > Hello All,
> >
> > Ive been doing more and more research on trying to setup a cluster/load
> > balancer for Asterisk. All the Asterisk boxes would be using a config that
> > is the same between them all (via a DB), but we want one location to point
> > the phones to, and from there that machine/device will send it to a Asterisk
> > server so the call can be processed. I know you cant balance the whole call,
> > ie: once the call is started the RTP stream has to go to the same server,
> > but a new call could go to a different server if perhaps the 1st server was
> > unreachable.
> >
> > Has anyone tried this, or got this to work? Ive been looking at using a
> > Juniper Session Border Controller, but not sure if thats gonna do the trick,
> > and then we also have SER..
> >
> > Any comments would be great!
> >
> > Thanks
> > Ron
> >
> > ------------------------------
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