[asterisk-users] Managing complex setups with Asterisk

[Jeff LaCoursiere]

On 11/07/2012 02:16 PM, Johan Wilfer wrote:
> 2012-11-07 20:49, Jeff LaCoursiere skrev:
>> Just to chime in, if you REALLY want multi-tenant, it is super easy and
>> surprisingly efficient to use kernel level virtualization to run
>> multiple instances of asterisk (and even FreePBX).  We use LXC to do
>> this.  The "host" runs an instance that has the dahdi hardware, drivers,
>> and upstream connections.  The "clients" have SIP connections to the
>> host for all inbound/outbound, so you have a central place to
>> collect/process CDR records for billing.  Getting your phones to connect
>> to each instance is an exercise for the network admin ;)
> Any quirks / observations you have running LXC? We run OpenVZ now with
> the same setup and it works very well. But as Debian will not support
> OpenVZ in the next version we are looking for alternate solutions..
>
> Do you run Dahdi run Dahdi for timing / meetme on both the "host" (HN)
> and the "clients" (VE)?
>
> Distribution?
>
> Any other pitfalls or recommendations with LXC?
>
>

Since moving to Ubuntu 12.04 server, LXC mgmt has been much simpler and 
stable.  Had some troubles with Ubuntu 10, though that was our 
proof-of-concept, and mainly just with getting a template finalized.  
Shutting down a container, back then, was a scary and often fatal thing 
to do.  WIth 12.04 I have had zero LXC related issues in roughly six 
months.  Have a few dozen companies running on the platform and getting 
ready to white label the infrastructure to several resellers.  In our 
lab we have managed to get 200 instances, with FreePBX, running 
simultaneously (though idle) on one host. Each (optimized!) container 
seems to eat about 75M of RAM.  Our latest tweak is to make all of the 
containers internally addressed on an OpenVPN-only accessible virtual 
LAN, and are only distributing telephony hardware that can connect to 
the platform natively (still on a search for the right ATA, though 
getting by with DD-WRT router in front of Cisco ATA).

Cheers,

j