[Asterisk-Users] Clustering

[Douglas Garstang]

We're doing this. Our Polycom phones point to a domain name that support SRV records which gives us a roughly even distribution of calls. We have OpenSER systems sitting in front of the phones. Each OpenSER system is configured with different primary/secondary/tertiary Asterisk boxes. When a phone registers with SER, it 'copies' the registration down to all the Asterisk systems. 
 
However, now that I find we allegedly could have used regexten on Asterisk to replicate the registrations (yet to see docs on how this works), that $8k we spent on systems for OpenSER suddenly seems like money not quite so well spent.
 
Calls to the PSTN are routed from Asterisk back to the OpenSER proxies where it sends it to the PSTN gateway.
 
Eventhough it all seems to work quite well, and using OSPF we have been able to actually fail an interface on a single OpenSER or Asterisk box and fail over an RTP stream (only a few seconds of dead air), due to the horrible Asterisk documentation, our main challenge has been in replicating phone registrations between the Asterisk systems. 
 
It would have been great if the Asterisk product was mature enough to support Realtime SIP for storing registrations from multiple Asterisk boxes. On the surface you'd think it's possible, but every one has a different opinion about whether it's technically shown to work.
 
If your going to try and set up a HA Asterisk solution be prepared for a really tough time.
 
Doug.
 
 
 
 
 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Wai Wu [mailto:wwu at Calltrol.com] 
	Sent: Fri 3/10/2006 9:48 PM 
	To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion 
	Cc: 
	Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Clustering
	
	
	If all the sub-servers register themselves to the frontend load balancer and support reinvite, the load balancer can decide which server to send the call to based on the CPU utilizations of the call processing servers. I'm assuming all calls are voip calls here.

		 -----Original Message-----
		From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of Ron McCarthy
		Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 2:22 PM
		To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
		Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Clustering
		
		
		Hello All,
		
		Ive been doing more and more research on trying to setup a cluster/load balancer for Asterisk. All the Asterisk boxes would be using a config that is the same between them all (via a DB), but we want one location to point the phones to, and from there that machine/device will send it to a Asterisk server so the call can be processed. I know you cant balance the whole call, ie: once the call is started the RTP stream has to go to the same server, but a new call could go to a different server if perhaps the 1st server was unreachable.
		
		Has anyone tried this, or got this to work? Ive been looking at using a Juniper Session Border Controller, but not sure if thats gonna do the trick, and then we also have SER..
		
		Any comments would be great!
		
		Thanks
		Ron