[asterisk-users] Voicemail on Different Server

[Remco Post]

Eric Germann wrote:
> How do you handle transfering vmail from one user to another when they're on
> separate servers?
> 

I'd have a look at:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+Voicemail+ODBC+storage

Having voicemail stored in a database solves all kinds of potential
locking problems. I guess (never played with it) that voicemail messages
are accessable from all * servers that have access to that table.

> I'm using the single vmail server, mounted NFS partition for this right now.
> I'd love to be able to have them standalone so they're survivable when the
> WAN collapses, but I haven't figured out transfer.
> 
> EKG
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Noah Miller
> Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 2:15 PM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Voicemail on Different Server
> 
> Hi Steve -
> 
>> Can you elaborate on this, "I changed to storing the voicemail via 
>> ODBC on MySQL.  Each server had it's own local storage, and then MySQL 
>> replicated the databases between the sites.  This setup was terribly 
>> finicky and unstable.  It was much worse than the NFS mount.  I 
>> quickly gave it up."
>>
>> This sounds like it would probably work the best, especially if you 
>> have users moving around between offices.  What was so "finicky" and 
>> "unstable" about it?  I am not one to quickly give up.  I have found 
>> that persistence pays off when the idea is sound.
> 
> Yeah, I thought I had found the silver bullet with MySQL replication (the
> users do float between offices, so it seemed perfect).  There were a number
> of problems, but in the end it was table corruption as a result of the
> replication process that made me drop this solution.
> 
> At the time I set this up, MySQL replication was really designed for one-way
> replication.  Two way replication was possible, but required somewhat
> unorthodox methods.  (Maybe this has changed, I don't know).
> Configuration is also a little tricky.  It's not too bad to set it up
> between two machines, but 3 machines is more tricky, and 4 is even more
> tricky, etc, etc.  This client had only 3 offices at the time, but I knew
> they would be expanding.  They now have 6.
> 
> Anyway, after getting everything working, I found that replication would
> periodically stop after some time.  I'd have to re-create the setup, and
> then replication would work for a time, and then stop again later.  This
> occurred across several different version of MySQL.  I suppose I could have
> fixed this issue with persistence, but unfortunately this was only an
> annoyance compared to the major issue of data corruption.
> 
> When replication worked, it was inevitable that after a time the voicemail
> storage table would experience data corruption.  Asterisk did not handle
> this gracefully at all.  It was effectively a total DOS.  This also occurred
> across several versions of MySQL.  Sometimes I was able to repair the
> tables, but usually I couldn't, and the users ended up losing quit a lot of
> voicemails.
> 
> I did not have the ability to spend the amount of time I needed to fix the
> issue, so I scrapped the whole setup.  Regular local voicemail storage has
> been flawless in all installations I've administered.
> 
> 
> - Noah
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Remco Post

"I didn't write all this code, and I can't even pretend that all of it
makes sense." -- Glen Hattrup