[asterisk-users] Is Asterisk ready for Prime-Time?

[Mojo with Horan & Company, LLC]

An off-the-shelf 5+ year old MSI MS-6378X-L motherboard, 1.6GHz AMD, 512 
RAM, 10 extensions, no more than three concurrent calls:

[pbx at pbx ~]$ uptime
 11:31:45 up 103 days,  1:00,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

But:
[pbx at pbx ~]$ sudo asterisk -rx 'core show uptime'
System uptime: 9 hours, 32 minutes, 25 seconds

I reboot every evening :)  Drew, what's the uptime on your asterisk 
process on that box that's been up for 193 days?

Drew Gibson wrote:
> Bill Andersen wrote:
>   
>> This is not a troll.  I've used my real email because I want this
>> taken seriously.  I'm not trying to make anyone mad, I just want
>> some real discussion on this issue.  Please bare with me...
>>
>> I'm a USER of Asterisk.  We purchased 3 commercially available
>> "Asterisk Based" PBXs a little over a year ago. (I won't mention
>> which one at this point - I don't want to bad mouth them - yet!)
>> Two of the systems are very small (5 SIP lines/6 Polycom phones).
>> The third is on a PRI with 30 Polycom phones.
>>
>> My smaller sites work pretty good.  I've only had to restart
>> Asterisk every month or so.  However, my 30 station system
>> is a continuous headache.  I average a restart at least once a
>> week.  Sometimes a couple of times in the week.  I'm always being
>> called to "fix" something that just stopped working.
>>
>> I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO A "Well, don't just complain, tell us
>> your setup and we can help you get it working".  This list HAS
>> helped me figure out some of the issues.  THANK YOU!  But the
>> purpose of this post is more of a fact finding mission.
>>
>> 1) Was choosing Asterisk for our company the wrong decision...
>>
>>    a) IF... I expect a phone system to just work.  Once it is
>>       configured, a phone system should just work with
>>       very little attention.  My previous system was a
>>       Comdial with external voice mail on a DOS based PC.
>>       I LITERALLY WENT OVER 4 YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO REMOVE
>>       POWER TO THE COMDIAL CONTROL OR RE-BOOT THE VOICE MAIL PC.
>>  
>>    b) IF... I really only need a phone system that allows an operator
>>       to answer each call and transfer them to the appropriate
>>       person.  I need voice mail, but very little auto attendant
>>       features (mostly after hours).  All the bells and whistles
>>       that Asterisk offers are cool, but don't bring that much to
>>       the table for our purpose.
>>
>>    c) IF... Stability is more of an issue than high end features?
>>
>> 2) Are there any users out there that really DO have an Asterisk
>>    system that just works like clockwork?  I'm saying, once setup,
>>    run for a year (or more) without any issues?
>>
>> 3) If SO, Should I simply consider a different vendor?
>>
>> 4) If NOT, and if my expectations are that a system SHOULD just
>>    run and run without any problems.  Is Asterisk simply not my
>>    solution.  Is Asterisk not REALLY ready for production.  Because
>>    in my mind (as a user of phone services), "dealing" with the
>>    phone system, even on a MONTHLY basis, means that the system
>>    is NOT really production ready...  Before we installed an
>>    Asterisk based PBX, I spent maybe 4 hours per YEAR with phone
>>    issues (setting up a new station?).  Since we moved to an
>>    Asterisk based PBX, I spend 4 hours (or more) every WEEK!
>>
>>    Am I expecting too much?
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>   
>>     
>
> I don't think you are expecting too much.
>
> We have:-
>
> 130 physical extensions including 24x7 inbound call centre
>
> Debian on Dell server
>
> root at asterisk:~# uptime
>  13:15:31 up 192 days, 23:49,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
>
> (Power was removed to switch to new UPS)
>
> asterisk*CLI> show version
> Asterisk 1.2.24 built by root @ asterisk on a i686 running Linux on 
> 2007-09-08 17:17:07 UTC
> asterisk*CLI> show uptime
> System uptime: 63 days, 4 hours, 26 minutes, 40 seconds
>
> (Asterisk was restarted after queue config changes)
>
>
> We had a single power supply and single drive fail in one incident in 
> Feb 2007 (one drive of RAID 1). System stayed up but was taken down for 
> 15 minutes to swap the drive. PS was hot-swapped when it arrived later.
>
>
> regards,
>
> Drew
>
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