[asterisk-users] Replacing PBX with Asterisk, need feedback on my new architecture.

Ishfaq Malik ish at pack-net.co.uk
Tue May 8 03:32:05 CDT 2012


On Mon, 2012-05-07 at 02:49 +0530, Mitul Limbani wrote:
> For 100% High Availibility and Hot Failover, I would recommend one of
> those Red-fone Fonebridges.
> 
> Also getting 800 Phones all register on single server is crazy, add a
> SIP proxy to distribute load evenly between 2 Ast boxes.
> 
> For Wireless you might consider using DECT phones from Snom instead of
> std 802.11 based wifi phones. Giving QoS on wifi is a big pain.

If you do go down the DECT path I'd advise Gigaset hardware rather than
Snom. We've used both for DECT and find the Gigaset far more reliable.

> 
> Hope that helps,
> 
> Regards,
> Mitul Limbani
> Enterux Solutions
> 
> On May 6, 2012 11:34 PM, "Nunya Biznatch" <asterisk at ihearbanjos.com>
> wrote:
>         I'm about to receive approval to design and deploy an
>         Asterisk-based phone system for my company. I will immediately
>         have to start writing specifications. I'm working on the
>         hardware design and the architecture right now. I'd like a
>         second, third, fourth, 1,000th opinion.
>         
>         800 SIP phones. All will be G.722. I expect 200 concurrent
>         calls, with 20% leaving to the outside world. There will be
>         another 200 analog lines that will for the time being remain
>         on the TDM PBX switch they reside on, and will be whittled
>         down and converted to SIP as time and attrition allows. These
>         are primarily fax machines and conference "spider" phones.
>         Those are included in my 200 concurrent calls number. I'm
>         looking to get as close to 5-9's reliability as I can, with
>         4-9's mandatory. Proper power filtering and backup is already
>         available.
>         
>         
>         Here's what I'm thinking for the architecture:
>         
>         Server 1: PRI Gateway 1 - Support 2 outside PRI trunks for
>         local and long distance, plus a third PRI connecting to the
>         existing TDM PBX.
>         
>         Server 2: PRI Gateway 2 - Support 1 PRI trunk for local and
>         long distance with room for another, plus a second PRI
>         connecting to the existing TDM PBX.
>         
>         Reason for two PRI Gateways is for redundancy and fail-over,
>         but processor capabilities is a concern. I expect in about two
>         years I'll be ready to decommission the TDM PBX, but will be
>         left with about 80 Analog lines across the multiple buildings
>         on my campus. I expect I'll end up purchasing channel banks to
>         support the remaining analog lines, and distribute across the
>         campus using existing copper plant.
>         
>         
>         Server 3: Asterisk Master Server
>         
>         Server 4: Asterisk Slave Server
>         
>         I'm considering a clustered environment, but I believe a
>         fail-over solution would be easier to implement in the short
>         term. This means each system needs to handle all traffic by
>         itself. These servers will be used for Asterisk and
>         Voice-mail. Conferencing will be enabled, but I'm not
>         considering it in the build. If I see conferencing becoming a
>         factor, I will build another server and offload that service.
>         
>         
>         Server 5: Boot Server - DHCP, RADIUS, SNTP, DNS, LDAP, FTP,
>         HTTPS, SNMP, etc... 
>         
>         
>         This service will provide the phone network all the basic
>         services. This is a stand-alone phone network primarily
>         because it would be too costly to upgrade the entire data
>         network to support both voice and data. The phone network will
>         not initially have Internet Access. This server will be the
>         server all the phones talk to for pulling their configs.
>         
>         I'm considering a second Boot Server for redundancy, but since
>         the phones should store their configs, I'm not seeing this as
>         horribly critical. Am I smoking something?
>         
>         
>         
>         Finally, I'll have a Windows-based workstation that will be
>         used to remote into all the services, for administration,
>         etc...
>         
>         I need to plan to use FreePBX on all Asterisk Servers, but I
>         don't intend to install it until I'm in regular MAC
>         maintenance mode.
>         
>         
>         I have no plans at this time to build out any databases. I
>         just plan to use whatever Asterisk has. If it ever comes to
>         that, I would make those separate servers as well.
>         
>         
>         My goal is to build Asterisk Servers and PRI Gateways capable
>         of supporting 150% of what I anticipate, which would come out
>         to 300 concurrent calls. Again, all phones will use G.722. The
>         PRI Gateway servers will do the heavy lifting of converting
>         G.711 traffic from the PRIs to G722, and connect to the
>         Asterisk Servers via IAX2 trunk.
>         
>         
>         It's my intention to build each server myself with
>         high-quality off the shelf components. I'd like all servers to
>         be as close to identical as possible, as I intend to keep
>         spares on hand to facilitate quick repair and minimize
>         downtime. I'm considering RAID 1 + 0 (mirrored and stripped
>         drives) for all servers. I am considering dual redundant power
>         supplies.
>         
>         
>         For a processor, I'm currently looking at the i7-3770K @
>         3.5GHz or very similar. Its Passmark compares to the Xeon
>         E5-2630 @ 2.3GHz, but is half the price.
>         
>         
>         I have no idea what amount of memory to consider, so I am
>         thinking 8GB per machine.
>         
>         
>         PCI-E is what I plan for all the cards.
>         
>         
>         Debian is the Linux flavor
>         
>         
>         A new network will be deployed using PoE layer-2 managed
>         switches. Battery backup capable of providing 8 hours will be
>         installed as required. There will be multiple VLANs in the
>         network as I have multiple dissimilar offices I need to keep
>         separated from each other. We will also have 802.11 SIP
>         phones, and will be deploying a campus-wide WiFi network used
>         only by the phone system. Yes, I crunched the numbers. This
>         will be significantly cheaper than upgrading the entire
>         existing data network to support the new phone system. ...and
>         to be quite honest, I don't trust our network folks, and know
>         adding that layer of bureaucracy will only negatively impact
>         the customer experience. I was a network engineer for a
>         top-three telecom company for many years, so I do have a point
>         of reference to make those statements. 
>         
>         
>         ...yes, I am one guy looking to do all this, with an estimated
>         completion date of the end of 2013. I'll be building all this
>         out in addition to my normal "phone guy" job. I've built
>         servers (hardware and software) for 20+ years, but my Linux
>         Kung Fu is weak. I'll be learning by doing and know there'll
>         be a lot of extra hours. The boss is good about training, so I
>         hope I can get into a good Linux Admin class in addition to
>         dCAP.
>         
>         
>         
>         So tear it up! What do you think? Does the CPU have the oomph?
>         What am I missing? What am I overkilling? What would Brian
>         Boitano do?
>         
>         
>         I appreciate any feedback, and thanks in advance.
>         
>         
>         
>         
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-- 
Ishfaq Malik <ish at pack-net.co.uk>
Department: VOIP Support
Company: Packnet Limited
t: +44 (0)845 004 4994
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