[asterisk-users] Replacing PBX with Asterisk, need feedback on my new architecture.

Sun May 6 16:19:45 CDT 2012

For 100% High Availibility and Hot Failover, I would recommend one of those
Red-fone Fonebridges.

Also getting 800 Phones all register on single server is crazy, add a SIP
proxy to distribute load evenly between 2 Ast boxes.

For Wireless you might consider using DECT phones from Snom instead of std
802.11 based wifi phones. Giving QoS on wifi is a big pain.

Hope that helps,

Regards,
Mitul Limbani
Enterux Solutions
On May 6, 2012 11:34 PM, "Nunya Biznatch" <asterisk at ihearbanjos.com> wrote:

>  I'm about to receive approval to design and deploy an Asterisk-based
> phone system for my company. I will immediately have to start writing
> specifications. I'm working on the hardware design and the architecture
> right now. I'd like a second, third, fourth, 1,000th opinion.
>
> 800 SIP phones. All will be G.722. I expect 200 concurrent calls, with 20%
> leaving to the outside world. There will be another 200 analog lines that
> will for the time being remain on the TDM PBX switch they reside on, and
> will be whittled down and converted to SIP as time and attrition allows.
> These are primarily fax machines and conference "spider" phones. Those are
> included in my 200 concurrent calls number. I'm looking to get as close to
> 5-9's reliability as I can, with 4-9's mandatory. Proper power filtering
> and backup is already available.
>
>
>  Here's what I'm thinking for the architecture:
>
> Server 1: PRI Gateway 1 - Support 2 outside PRI trunks for local and long
> distance, plus a third PRI connecting to the existing TDM PBX.
>
> Server 2: PRI Gateway 2 - Support 1 PRI trunk for local and long distance
> with room for another, plus a second PRI connecting to the existing TDM PBX.
>
> Reason for two PRI Gateways is for redundancy and fail-over, but processor
> capabilities is a concern. I expect in about two years I'll be ready to
> decommission the TDM PBX, but will be left with about 80 Analog lines
> across the multiple buildings on my campus. I expect I'll end up purchasing
> channel banks to support the remaining analog lines, and distribute across
> the campus using existing copper plant.
>
>
>  Server 3: Asterisk Master Server
>
> Server 4: Asterisk Slave Server
>
> I'm considering a clustered environment, but I believe a fail-over
> solution would be easier to implement in the short term. This means each
> system needs to handle all traffic by itself. These servers will be used
> for Asterisk and Voice-mail. Conferencing will be enabled, but I'm not
> considering it in the build. If I see conferencing becoming a factor, I
> will build another server and offload that service.
>
>
>  Server 5: Boot Server - DHCP, RADIUS, SNTP, DNS, LDAP, FTP, HTTPS, SNMP,
> etc...
>
> This service will provide the phone network all the basic services. This
> is a stand-alone phone network primarily because it would be too costly to
> upgrade the entire data network to support both voice and data. The phone
> network will not initially have Internet Access. This server will be the
> server all the phones talk to for pulling their configs.
>
> I'm considering a second Boot Server for redundancy, but since the phones
> should store their configs, I'm not seeing this as horribly critical. Am I
> smoking something?
>
>
> Finally, I'll have a Windows-based workstation that will be used to remote
> into all the services, for administration, etc...
>
> I need to plan to use FreePBX on all Asterisk Servers, but I don't intend
> to install it until I'm in regular MAC maintenance mode.
>
> I have no plans at this time to build out any databases. I just plan to
> use whatever Asterisk has. If it ever comes to that, I would make those
> separate servers as well.
>
> My goal is to build Asterisk Servers and PRI Gateways capable of
> supporting 150% of what I anticipate, which would come out to 300
> concurrent calls. Again, all phones will use G.722. The PRI Gateway servers
> will do the heavy lifting of converting G.711 traffic from the PRIs to
> G722, and connect to the Asterisk Servers via IAX2 trunk.
>
> It's my intention to build each server myself with high-quality off the
> shelf components. I'd like all servers to be as close to identical as
> possible, as I intend to keep spares on hand to facilitate quick repair and
> minimize downtime. I'm considering RAID 1 + 0 (mirrored and stripped
> drives) for all servers. I am considering dual redundant power supplies.
>
> For a processor, I'm currently looking at the i7-3770K @ 3.5GHz or very
> similar. Its Passmark compares to the Xeon E5-2630 @ 2.3GHz, but is half
> the price.
>
> I have no idea what amount of memory to consider, so I am thinking 8GB per
> machine.
>
> PCI-E is what I plan for all the cards.
>
> Debian is the Linux flavor
>
> A new network will be deployed using PoE layer-2 managed switches. Battery
> backup capable of providing 8 hours will be installed as required. There
> will be multiple VLANs in the network as I have multiple dissimilar offices
> I need to keep separated from each other. We will also have 802.11 SIP
> phones, and will be deploying a campus-wide WiFi network used only by the
> phone system. Yes, I crunched the numbers. This will be significantly
> cheaper than upgrading the entire existing data network to support the new
> phone system. ...and to be quite honest, I don't trust our network folks,
> and know adding that layer of bureaucracy will only negatively impact the
> customer experience. I was a network engineer for a top-three telecom
> company for many years, so I do have a point of reference to make those
> statements.
>
> ...yes, I am one guy looking to do all this, with an estimated completion
> date of the end of 2013. I'll be building all this out in addition to my
> normal "phone guy" job. I've built servers (hardware and software) for 20+
> years, but my Linux Kung Fu is weak. I'll be learning by doing and know
> there'll be a lot of extra hours. The boss is good about training, so I
> hope I can get into a good Linux Admin class in addition to dCAP.
>
>
> So tear it up! What do you think? Does the CPU have the oomph? What am I
> missing? What am I overkilling? What would Brian Boitano do?
>
> I appreciate any feedback, and thanks in advance.
>
> --
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