[asterisk-users] 2000+ user Asterisk PBX

[Steve Totaro]

On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 3:13 AM, Grey Man <greymanvoip at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 2:53 PM, Femi <adalemo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Any 2000+ user Asterisk PBX installs out there?
>>
>> Please hit me off-list, I need some support on a 2000+ user Asterisk PBX
>> with high availability and over 10E1s to PTOs
>>
>
> If you're talking about 2000+ SIP users then I have some experience.
> When we got to 1000 users we replaced the Digium E1 cards with a Cisco
> AS5400 to make our echo and static problems go away (that was 3 years
> ago so the cards may have improved since then). Now we've largely
> replaced the Cisco AS5400 with an SS7 switch but that was more a
> business call related to supplier interconnect considerations than a
> technical one. Those Cisco AS5400's are fantastic pieces of kit, it's
> the only thing in our set up that we have never had even the smallest
> problem with in over 3 years! An AS5400 will be more expensive than a
> commodity server with 2 or 3 four port E1 cards which is the main
> drawback. At the time it was more expensive for us to be continuously
> troubleshooting static and echo issues and as mentioned above that
> situation may have improved.
>
> If you are talking SIP users the other thing you'll have to do is to
> move as much of the non-call related SIP traffic off Asterisk. That
> means a separate SIP Proxy and/or Registrar. We have split those two
> functions off onto separate boxes so that Asterisk only has to deal
> with SIP for call signalling and of course media which is what its big
> strength is.
>
> Finally you will need a nice big database box, realtime is the only
> practical way to run Asterisk for anything over a few hundred users.
> The SIP Registrar and Asterisk will both generate large loads on your
> database and it is the critical link in the chain. If your database
> has problems you can't get any calls out and if that's not bad enough
> all your user's ATAs registrations will drop off meaning you get a
> deluge of support calls. We use Postgresql which does a good job but
> the big problem with it is redundancy. Postgresql does not really have
> an industrial strength replication solution which means the time it
> takes to switch over from the primary to secondary database is a
> problem. MySQL seems to have a much better replication solution and
> Asterisk doesn't really need a lot of the advantages Postgresql has
> over MySQL such as better stored procedure support etc.
>
> So in summary the critical factors in my opinion are:
>
> 1. Good database,
> 2. Good quality solution ofr E1's,
> 3. Split off non-media related signalling from Asterisk.
>
> If you're not talking about 2000+ SIP users then you can pretty much
> disregard everything I've said :-).
>
> Regards,
>
> Greyman.
>

Curious why you stay with postgres then, and not go with MySQL if you
know in advance it is a problem and will bite you sometime?

You way want to look at extconig.conf and ODBC or whatever database
driver and even hook up to a MSSQL cluster.  While not inexpensive, it
is is mission critical.  If you can monetize one hour of downtime and
then figure the MTBF (including all the pieces) and how long ot
trouble shoot and get it back up, maybe that is worth quite a bit of
money.  If you can just say "sorry, we were upgrading" and the cost is
only time, then that certainly dictates your direction.

As for the Digium cards, they are WAY better now, I think a little
competition in the regards to cards from Sangoma made up for that.

Anyways, most providers are offering SIP over IP nowdays or  starting
to.  I know GXing can usually supply a point to point to their PSTN,
DS3/T3 or whatever, then with g729 you can get alot of calls across
that pipe.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro