[asterisk-users] Running Multiple Instances of Asterisk

[Douglas Garstang]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Rogan [mailto:brogan at syderial.com]
> Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 12:40 PM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Running Multiple Instances of Asterisk
> 
> 
> Doug,
> 
> Why do you want to do this to begin with?  I think the best 
> solution is
Because we are trying to build a hosted IPT solution, not an enterprise solution.

> to use the realtime stuff, and build your own management tools, which
> would allow you to do this (you could drastically cut the complexity
> with the right tools).  Even if you could run them together, how
> would you put everything on the appropriate ports?  How would you deal
> with multiple instances accessing hardware?

Realtime is resource intensive, requiring many queries to perform simple lookups. We can easily create multiple virtual IP address, and since each virtual IP address can bind to port 5060, each phone can register with domain.com:5060 without a problem. We don't need multiple instances to access hardware as this is a SIP only solution. Our PSTN access is via external Audiocodes gateways, not via Digium T1 cards. 

The dial plan was not able to handle the complexity we needed (for example the MySQL() application command could not do nested queries), and so right now, we have a 2000 line python script and several very complex MySQL stored procedures in order to fulfull our requirements.

> 
> I'm not convinced that maintaining the config files, binaries 
> and other
> components of multiple asterisk's is easier than just building better
> tools to configure one.

I am. I look at our configuration which is currently for one customer, and there's already several dozen contexts in order to cover a lot of complexity. Multiply that by a couple of hundred, and I won't want to be administering it!

> 
> You could also try User-Mode-Linux or something like that.

I was going to give v-servers a try. There's a guide at:
http://www.telephreak.org/papers/vpa/