[Asterisk-Users] How much CPU power needed for asterisk

[Jay Milk]

Based on this email, I would tell you that you need to set the CPU to
power setting 14, and top the case off with some fresh oil whenever it
runs hot.  The point is, the quality of the answer depends on the
quality of your question, and unfortunately, you didn't provide nearly
enough information.

- I'd stay away from ITX if your office *depends* on phones.  For any
professional or semi-professional solution, you should have something
with a bit more reliablity and hopefully some redundancy.  ITX is built
for compact (home-) use.  Get a server built for 24/7 operation and keep
some spare parts on hand.

- What are those 50 people doing in your office?  The needs of 50
customer service reps in a call center are much much different from the
needs of 50 internal case-workers.  What kind of call volume do you
expect?

- How are you planning on running those 50 office phones?  IP phones
using sip, h323, etc?  ATAs?  What codecs?

- What kind of WAN connection will you have, and how many calls/channels
are you planning on having available?  Keep in mind that there's real
limit even to a T1 connection, which depends of course on the codec and
the connection to your VOIP provider.  If T1 is all you got, those 50
folks in the office will most likely not be able to talk at the same
time.

- Will there be transcoding going on?  If so, between which codecs and
how many channels at a time?

Once you know these things, you'll receive an intelligible answer.  If
you don't know these things until you have the system up and running,
err on the side of over-performing and get dual XEONs with some good
ooompf.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Stahl [mailto:mstahl at ocg.ca] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 1:02 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] How much CPU power needed for asterisk


I'm thinking of placing Asterisk on an itx motherboard in a tiny case.
The ITX motherboards top out around 400Mhz PII (in terms of power
relative to a desktop).  

How much CPU would I need for an office of 50 people?  How much disk
storage for voicemail + OS?  (typical / average)

The system will have no PCI cards (no Digium FSO/FXO cards) - everything
over the LAN connection.

Thanks,
Mike