[Asterisk-Users] 2 4-port T1 cards

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2003-05-28 at 11:02, Joe Antkowiak wrote:
> 1.  Voicemail, and the voicemail itself will be stored on another box, NFS
> mounted, or I might use mysql.  There will be a little bit of call routing
> via iax to a separate * box with a channel bank on it.

Don't use Mysql. if you ever have had to deal with it in a production
environment that works it over, you will know that as it reaches it's
limits, it starts a death spiral that is very difficult to recover from.
For our software on a dual P3 866 with a gig of ram, the limit was
around 1.5 queries a second fairly mixed update, inserts, and selects.
Total file size of the database was under 200meg, and was fully cached
so even though we had hardware raid 5 across 4 10K rpm ultra160 drives,
it shouldn't have mattered for the selects.

Also, NFS mounting of the voicemail for such a large install is probably
not the best idea. Unless you really need it available to another
machine, you _may_ want to rethink this idea. NFS can be a major speed
hit on a machine, especially if the client is overworked. Also if you
are planning on running most all the channels to voicemail, then do you
think you are going to be able to have your NFS server keep high speed
writing going so as not to slow you asterisk machine down with it's 96
channels running full tilt? 

> 2.  I don't disagree with you, they do throw in a lot, but redhat does have
> its advantages, IMHO.  I've always been able to get things to work quickly
> with redhat, and there is that whole 24 hour support contract we have with
> them...
> 
> 3.  Mmm, ok.
> 
> 4.  Does the ati radeon 9000 have a frame buffer?  That's the card I was
> going to use for all the * boxes.
> 
> Thank you very much.
> 
> -Joe
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Steven
> Critchfield
> Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 6:09 PM
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] 2 4-port T1 cards
> 
> On Tue, 2003-05-27 at 16:05, Joe Antkowiak wrote:
> > Are there any known issues with putting 2 4-port T1 cards in a single box
> > and having all ports and all channels in use at the same time?  Planning
> on
> > 4 of these boxes, dual AMD cpu MB from MSI, 512m, redhat 9, agp video, on
> > board NICs, serial ata raid.  
> 
> Newbie 101		(Not deragatory)
> 1. What are you doing with these ports?
> 	If you are routing calls from one side of the cards to the
>  	other, then you should have no problems with a 1gig P3 or so.
>  	But if you are doing more than routing, it will depend on what
>  	that something is, and what kind of overhead it is going to 
> 	impose.
> 2. RH blows chunks. (Personal opinion)
> 	RH is known to make kitchen sink installs when you don't need 
> 	them, and would be better off without most of the install base.
> 3. Dual MB won't help much in pure telephony.
> 	In pure telephony, you are basically dealing with serial line 
> 	IO. A T1 is little more than I long distance serial line. 8 T1s 
> 	is just 11.7megs per second each way, or 23.4 megs in and out. 
> 	Not too much for a good machine to do. Granted, if you are doing
> VoIP
> then you add another set of ins and outs with compression in 	the middle
> of it too. This is where the second CPU comes in handy.
> 4. AGP Video.
> 	Make sure not to use the frame buffer, it has been reported that
> the
> frame buffer generates large amounts of interupts and will 
> 	degrade the performance.
>  
> Here is for discussion as it is parts I don't know real well. Will the
> serial ATA buy you any flexibilty or lowered CPU load while accessing
> the disk? Don't take this question as shooting down the SATA, just don't
> know if there is real benefit in it yet.
> 
> Also what chipset is the onboard nics? 
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>