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

[John Faubion]

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

I too restart the asterisk process every night as part of the cron process.
Many people here seem to be under the impression that restarting the
application every day is a bad thing. Having worked with carrier grade
systems for 20+ years, I can tell you that even these systems restart the
application during the days slow period. Granted these are usually two
separate systems for redundancy but the typical method is to:

1) Unsync the two systems
2) Run system testing on the inactive side
3) Restart the inactive side
4) Resync the data between the systems
5) Switch the active and inactive processors
6) Repeat steps 1-4 on the newly inactive side

Now don't think that smaller PBX or key systems are all that different. I
know that the Meridian systems go through a similar process each day. On the
SL1 systems there is a garbage daemon that runs every day. This daemon
restarts the application to clean up RAM allocation. The Norstar key systems
do this as well although the reset only takes about 2 seconds. Since
everything is stored in flash memory, it is a quick way to make sure any
glitches in RAM are cleaned up. 

Interestingly, the restart of Asterisk on my system only takes 3-4 seconds.
Actual call processing is probably only affected for less that 2 seconds.
Done during our night time activities no one ever notices. I've had some
argue that a restart shouldn't be done because of the possibility that the
system might not come back up. While this is potentially true, it will be
because a file was changed without restarting or reloading asterisk. Yes
this can happen though the likelihood is very small. At least it should be
on a production system. 

One other thing to point out, if you are the type to constantly "upgrade" to
the latest and greatest, you can expect to have issues. Once you get the
system on a stable setup, the only reason for "upgrading" is if the new
version fixes some problem that you have. Again some argue that security
vulnerabilities would require the upgrade but that isn't always the case. If
your system is a closed network, for example, your connection to the outside
world is strictly analog and your network isn't shared with your computers,
none of the security concerns would every matter. Now think back to that key
system you revered for just working, did it have any outside connections
that a hacker could exploit? Not likely. I have one system that we installed
nearly a year ago. The only time it has been down was due construction
workers cutting the main power feed to the building, between the building
and the generator. It took them 10 hours to fix it and the UPS lasted over 4
hours. That was 200 days ago however asterisk was restarted about 8 minutes
after midnight.

As they say, your mileage may vary, but I don't think restarting asterisk is
a bad thing.

John