[asterisk-users] Using asterisk as the recording server

[David Backeberg]

On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 12:29 AM, Steve
Totaro<stotaro at first-notification.com> wrote:
> Did you push it past 300 on two year old hardware and software?

old hardware yes.
old software no.
The servers are more than 3 years old

>Core 2 Duo Dell Dimension desktop as proof of concept?

are core 2 duo's really two years old already? I guess so. I don't
really follow the latest hardware news. I have my lab on server-class
gear.

> Port mirroring is basic on almost any newer switch.  Login, enable port
> monitoring, write mem, done.

Port mirroring is basic on quality networking gear. I know perfectly
well how it works. My point was that replicating ALL traffic on a LAN
port seemed a bit like hauling out all the corn plants from the corn
field when what you really wanted was just the corn kernels from the
ears. That's what I mean by heavy-handed.

I've never used the software you've proposed. I realize that
replicating all traffic for a port, or in my case, all traffic for a
bonded interface is not difficult logically, and is quick to
configure. I think it is aesthetically displeasing compared to
grabbing the recordings at the place where the calls are already
taking place. Personal taste. You're allowed your opinion too, which
you've clearly stated.

> I build robust and redundant systems, separate server for DB, recording,
> gateways, in an all HA configuration.

Me too. Again, taste.

> Again, how many calls were you able record using RAMdisk?  Anywhere 300?

As I stated before, this is going to be dependent on how you're
manipulating the calls and the gear you're running on. The nice thing
about your 'just broadcast the entire LAN to the recording solution'
is that the recording service just gets to throw away everything
that's not an audio channel, and it doesn't have to do squat to the
call. If it COULDN'T do a lot of recordings under these circumstances
it wouldn't be worth any money.

I don't think I've pushed my solution past 90 simultaneous recordings
of MeetMe() mixing, with more than 100 AGI channels running, with
assorted ChanSpy() jobs.

> Bookmark my post, so when you reach your RAMDisk limit, you can join the big
> league.

Anything I do as a scaling solution will be price versus performance.
So since we're talking about a commercial solution to replace
something that asterisk does, I'll have to find out what your
commercial solution costs per channel, and compare that against the
cost of cloning out an identical server. My solution scales to
parallel servers just fine.

Is OrecX really $199 per recorded channel? So that 300 channels you're
talking about costs $60,000? So I can buy six $10,000 servers, each of
which can run circles around my current solution, and still break
even. I like my solution better.