[asterisk-users] Server redundancy

[RR]

Interesting points on both messages

1) as far as multiple asterisk servers talking to the same database is
concerned, I will have to test this out. I know nothing about the
database side of things, and a newbie on asterisk and linux so I have
no idea what and where the development of either of these are. From
your message it sounds like it's just how ARA is designed because I
doubt it's to do with the ODBC driver itself. This will cause me a lot
of grief if you're right about this for multiple * servers to not be
able to access the same database for peer lookup.

2) Clustering of DB isn't an issue, not for me at least. Haven't
tested this either but my DBs are clustered A/P providing a single
entity to the internal systems. Might further look into a local DNS
lookup to add to this. I believe it's possible to do this in the MySQL
world with MySQL grid etc?

3) I don't believe frequent registration is that big of an issue for
the network load it generates. Most providers out there set devices
for a 30-40secs Reg. Refresh to support NAT'ed endpoints and the a reg
refresh is hardly about 300-400Byte pkts (I think). The math doesn't
add up for a major load esp. if you've got a load balancing mechanism
in front of your * boxes.

4) I don't know enough about DUNDi to get into this discussion but
DUNDi just lookup extensions? or it also have any part to play in
registrations? If they just do extension lookup, then If DUNDi is
implemented on an A/P pair of dedicated DUNDi lookup servers which
access a clustered database, then barring #1 being true, each * server
accesses the same database and pool of registrations. If registrations
are refreshed frequently enough, the contact info in the database will
always be current and one server dying won't affect anything. At the
same time, they just consult the DUNDi lookup server for extension
lookups instead of asking the database directly.

5) If you really want to improve on this, supplement your network with
SER as proxies and have them deal with Registrations and load-balance
feature requests to * servers etc. Once * has done whatever it needs
to do (e.g. provide PBX features, voicemail, conference, IVR etc.) it
passes the call back to the Proxy to deal with the endpoints.

All depends on your scope and budget. If you want to have a SP grade
service then you need to breakout your functions.

I just hope #1 isn't true though. The only alternative then would be
to have /etc/asterisk reside on an NFS share or a CFS for all servers
to read massively huge conf files if you're catering for large number
of endpoints.

Dunno if it helps anyone or I'm just shooting sh*t ;)