[Asterisk-Users] Hardware to build an Enterprise AsteriskUniversal Gateway

[Nick Bachmann]

>>> Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:
>>>>>I would set the "Enterprise Class" bar at five 9's reliability
>>>>>(about 5.25 minutes per year of down time) the same
>>>>>as a Class 4/5 phone switch. This would require redundant
>>>>>design considerations in both hardware and software.
>>>>
>>>
>>> To turn around, let's discuss what we need to focus on to get
>>> Asterisk there:
>>>
>>> Here's a few bullet points, there's certainly a lot more
>>> * Linux platform stability - how?
>>
>> Even more than Linux itself is the x86 platform... I've thought about
>> this a bit when considering * boxes for big customers.  When one
>> actually comes along, I'll have to actually make a decision :-).
>>>From where I stand, the best thing to do for smaller customers is give
>> them a box with RAID and redundant power supplies, if they can afford
>> it.
>
> You can overcome most of those problems by buying good quality
> hardware.  If you buy your * server from your local Taiwanese clone
> shop, you're asking for trouble.  A big, beefy machine from Dell would
> be better.

Yeah, but nothing like a nice, big Sun machine.  A cluster of Dell
machines is reliable, but a midrange Sun box puts them to shame.
>> But if I were to have a big customer with deep pockets, I'd really
>> like * on a big Sun beast with redundant-everything (i.e. you can hot
>> swap any component and there's usually n+1 of everything).  The
>> problem is that I don't think there's any Solaris support for Digium
>> cards, since it's kind of  a chicken-and-egg problem.
>
> Nope.  No Solaris support, but you might be able to get away with
> Linux/Solaris...but then you lose a lot of the hot-swapability.  In my
> experience, though, the only things I've ever been able to hotswap were
> power supplies and hard drives...and thats not software/os dependant.

With the big boxes like the 4800, you can hot swap CPUs and memory and
such as well.  You're right that all that stuff is pretty
Solaris-dependent, which is why I wanted to see if I couldn't get Asterisk
to run on a little Solaris machine (and then sell it to people who own the
big ones).
>> One of these days, I may convince myself to buy a modern Sun box
>> (maybe the ~$1000 Blade 100s) and see what can be done.  The only
>> problem I could conceive would be endian-ness, but I read about Digium
>> cards in a PowerPC box, so that won't be a problem, right?
>> Nick
>
> Endian-ness is really only a driver issue.  Its when programmers who
> believe that the world revolves around Linux/i386 that you have
> problems.

But it can also be a problem if you have on-card firmware, I've heard.

> Personally, I'd stick my Digium cards into an Alpha of some sort.  A
> DS-10L for 1U mounting with 1 card or a DS-20 for multiple cards where
> you need lots of processor zoobs.

I like the Alphas too, but they're being discontinued last I heard, and
being replaced with the Itanium.  Even VMS is being ported (now _there's_
an OS for * :-)
Nick