[asterisk-users] Best Hardware for Asterisk Server?

[Gordon Henderson]

On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Mark Greene wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> In your experience what is the best way to go for a production asterisk box
> in your offices? With desktop prices so cheap you might think that you
> should just buy them off the shelf, but is that really a reliable machine?
> Anything you can tell me that would assist me in deciding the best way to
> obtain and maintain these boxes would be very helpful. I have even looked
> into building system myself that have no moving parts, but for about the
> same price I can build an immensely more powerful machine WITH moving parts.

The best hardware is the hardware that you're most familiar with - the 
hardware they you know will be reliable and know how to fix it if/when
it goes wrong.

And yes, you do end up paying slightly more (sometimes) for smaller, 
quieter, and no-moving parts kit. It's all to do with volume of sales I 
guess!

If you have a computer/comms room with servers, etc. already in-place, 
then noise isn't going to be an issue for you, but you still want 
reliability. So if you are having moving parts (ie. disks!) then get two 
and run them in a RAID-1 (mirror) configuration. Think about redundant 
PSUs. (and UPS - and UPS the Ethernet switch, and think about PoE) Fit 
good ball bearing fans and if building it yourself, good thermal grease. 
Soaktest the system before it goes live.

For some production machines, I'm using mini-ITX boards - 1GHz processors, 
fanless, diskless (boot off flash) but they aren't without their 
limitations (I doubt they'd be happy in a 100-extension office for example 
;-)

But I am currently looking at a 150-line system, but I'm still going to 
boot it off flash, just to reduce one failure point in the system...

Gordon