[Asterisk-Users] Reasons why I shouldn't use Asterisk?

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 09:36, WipeOut wrote:
> Gavin Hamill wrote:
> 
> >It would seem an odd question, but I'm trying to put together a little
> >presentation on 'Why Asterisk?' and need to list Pros and Cons.... I've
> >got plenty of Pros (including the availability of commercial support),
> >but the only Con I can think of is 'Relatively few installations
> >worldwide'
> >
> >Can anyone think of any others?
> >  
> >
> No built in high availability or clustering options making it as 
> reliable as the harware, OS and apps..
> 
> Last time I looked it up PC systems combined hardware components average 
> reliability was about 96% uptime(This was a while back so the percentage 
> may not be accurate).. This is a problem for telecom's system whos 
> uptime is usually measured in years and not a percentage of 1 year..
> 
> No flames please, I realise that there are issues involved with the PSTN 
> lines, channel banks and some other things in a clustered senario..


I think the number you cited needs qualification to be accurate. Because
if it where accurate as it stands, I'm due for major downtime in my rack
as I have several systems approaching 2 years uptime without a single
hardware failure. These machines also where not new when they where sent
to the colo facility. In fact they all had been running for about a year
before hand.

And as a question of the 5 9's reported on telco hardware, As far as I
know, that is for total system failure. The fact that they could loose
trunks, or even a portion of a neighbor hood doesn't count against their
downtime. If it did, I could point to a couple of telcos in this area
that would have problems meeting those requirements.



-----------------------------------------------------------
to back up my claim about uptime,
my webserver is showing 136 days uptime, this is after a 497 day wrap
around of the uptime counter. This machine is a Dell pe2450

the mail server is a home built 700 celeron showing the same 136 day
uptime after the 497 day uptime wrap around.

Due to a hacker, our clients machine is showing 105 days uptime post 497
day uptime wrap around. Again home built machine.

One of our fileservers is showing 133 days uptime post uptime wrap
around. This is due to a screw up at the keyboard just 3 days after
installing it in the colo. Also a home built machine.

Our VPN machine is just getting up to 354 days uptime. This is a super
micro we purchased and put into service shortly there after.

Our database server just went through a hardware and software upgrade
that caused it's reboot, now at 185 days uptime. Same hardware as the
above listed webserver.

The 2 machines in my rack without impressive uptimes are a NT machine
and my phone gateway that just had a kernel update.

This should probe that good power supply to the machine will help make
hardware run well for a long time. Why do you think the telco equipment
runs on 48volts? They are pulling from the batteries 100% of the time.
This makes a smooth even power flow.

Machines in my office are subjected to poorer quality power and tweaking
so they don't tend to make it to the 200 day uptime mark very often.


-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>