[Asterisk-Users] Small office setup/using analog lines w/ Ast erisk

[Colin Anderson]

> >>
> > Colin,
> >
> > Would you possibly explain why you prefer Intel based systems over the 
> > AMD based system for Asterisk?
> >
> > When you speak of Intel here are you talking about Celerons, Pentium 
> > 3, Pentium 4, Xeon, Pentium D?
> >
> > When you speak of AMD are you talking XP, MP, Duron, Sempron, 64, 64 
> > FX, X2, Opteron?
> >
> 
> 
I'm quite aware that Opterons et al have gained signifigant market share in
the past couple years and AMD and their supporting chipsets have
dramatically improved in quality. I'm actually an AMD fan. However, when you
are spec'ing a system that a business will depend on (and your Asterisk
server is arguably the most important piece of kit in the rack) why would
you introduce an unknown variable in the equation just to save, say, 30% on
the price of the chip and motherboard? Just to throw out some comparative
numbers, let's say for the sake of argument that the Intel chip, a P4, is
$500. The AMD is $300 (not far off actually) The mobo's are the equivalent
from a reputable manufacturer like ASUS or what have you. For some magic,
unknown reason, (who knows, kooky Linux byproduct of using AMD or even user
error in compile flags) the AMD system performs poorly or not at all, and
the intel box runs OK. Now. let's say that this business is dependent on the
phones ( what business isn't?) and it has gross revenues of, say, $10,000 a
day and has regular business hours. In this case, the cost of downtime for
the phones is $20.83 a minute. That means essentially that whatever price
break you got by using AMD for this fictional business will evaporate in the
first 10 mins that an AMD based server doesn't do the job as opposed to an
Intel solution. Plus, fictional Asterisk consultant will tear his hair out
trying to figure out what the issue is and make blind stabs in the dark,
when the whole thing could have been avoided just be being conservative on
the hardware specs.    

The outfit I work for has gross revenues well in excess of $200M a year. Our
calculated cost of downtime is $16 a SECOND. At least 50%  of that can be
directly tied to phones. There is NO DAMN WAY that I would ever put a server
on the rack with specs that I got from TigerDirect or Toms Hardware or a
"consultant". No friggin way. Not even Dell. It's gonna be a Tier 1 box with
Intel. Trust me, you are rolling the dice doing anything else. Ever notice a
common thread with all of the "I'm bringing up a new system and I get call
disconnects / echo / clicks" posts? It's always whitebox hardware. Other
than the cursed Dell and the DL380G4, I never see: "I have a Tier 1 server
and I get disconnects / echos / clicks". Of course, it's quite possible to
*take* a Tier 1 box and make it perform poorly, but that's a different
kettle of fish.

Maybe Coalescent should do a poll on it, I'd be curious to see a matrix that
shows whitebox hardware or tier 1, what chip/chipset and number of users. 

Here's another thing to consider: The value proposition of Asterisk is that
it runs on commodity hardware instead of something specially engineered for
the task. We all agree on that, right? Well, Tier 1 Intel hardware *is* a
commodity product, and a proper Tier 1 Intel based solution, while 30-100%
more expensive than an AMD whitebox, is 3 to 10 times LESS expensive than a
dedicated PBX while giving at least equivalent and (in my case) oodles more
functionality than a traditional solution. It's a friggin steal. However,
there's no steal to be had if the thing desn't work in the first place.
(apologies and props to those running AMD right now)

My box? 4 way Xeon. 120 users, more added every day. 3500-4000 calls a day.
Zero problems. Takes everything I can throw at it and asks for seconds. In
my case, *I* am the weak link in this installation, not the server.