[asterisk-users] Amazon, Asterisk and reliability beyond a hobby system?

[Brian]

On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:41:45 -0500
Ron Wheeler <rwheeler at artifact-software.com> wrote:

> If you have no analog lines, Amazon/Rackspace/...  will probably beat 
> your local ISP on bandwidth to your SIP/IAX carrier.
> 
> If your users are not in the same building as your in-house hosted 
> Asterisk, Amazon might have a lot better connectivity with your users.
> 
> You certainly have a lot more flexibility in adding power to your
> setup at an Amazon.
> 
> I guess that one can decide what are the critical points that need to
> be tested (call volume, call quality, user connectivity) and devise a
> test setup.
> 
> Ron
> 
>

I've setup Asterisk in the past on VMs (Linode, VMware, Xen, etc.) and
IIRC the biggest issue we had was with RTC. As in Real Time Clock
since Asterisk requires an accurate timing source. It's been a very
long time since I've dealt with Asterisk on a VM so perhaps it's not
uncommon to have the zaptel kernel modules (ztdummy among others?)
available on most VMs these days.

It's certainly an option for some use cases but not all. I'd recommend
running MTR or a similar tool to determine any latency issues along the
way. In any case good luck with your project. If anyone else has more
recent experience regarding RTC please feel free to correct me. I'm
inclined to fiddle around with a VM based Asterisk install again if
it's gotten simpler to implement.

Brian

> On 22/11/2013 1:18 PM, Todd R. wrote:
> > I would have said the same thing a while back but, I can't ignore
> > the fact that there have been what seems to be many
> > "Virtualization" success stories.
> >
> > The idea that Asterisk just likes to be on it's own dedicated
> > hardware has always caused me to prefer dedicated hardware.
> >
> > But, is the possibility of a single piece of hardware failing
> > "better" than something that will likely never just flat out die?
> >
> > I know there are high availability solutions out there and it's not 
> > that I don't have backups and disaster recovery plans in place.
> >
> > I just want to make things far better regarding redundancy,
> > recovery and scalability and virtualization is hard to beat when
> > you start talking about these things.
> >
> > There are definitely people/companies using virtualized Asterisk 
> > solutions successfully, so I feel like it can be done.
> >
> > Asterisk has come a long way since I first starting messing with 
> > Asterisk and so has Asterisk itself.
> >
> > So, I am trying to determine what is bad, what to look out for in 
> > terms of virtualizing. If it's still as bad of an idea as it was
> > say 5 years ago, then I need to understand why and if there is a
> > work around.
> >
> > At this point, the benefits of virtualizing my Asterisk boxes are
> > too many to count. So, if I can't find any concrete reasons to NOT
> > do this beyond "That's a bad idea" then I am going to give it a go.
> > If I do, I am looking for any advice good or bad from those that
> > have gone down this road successfully or with miserable failure.
> >
> > My opinion all along has been Asterisk + Virtualization + Real Live 
> > Production Use = BAD IDEA!
> >
> > Now, I am trying to figure out if that's just the opinion of an old 
> > man (sort of old) who just doesn't want to accept that
> > virtualization if a better way (in terms of Asterisk).
> >
> > So, I am hoping for people to tell me why Amazon AWS specifically
> > is a good or bad idea with as much detail as possible.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > > To: tjrlist at live.com; asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> > > Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Amazon, Asterisk and reliability 
> > beyond a hobby system?
> > > Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:04:44 -0500
> > > From: covici at ccs.covici.com
> > >
> > > I would thinktwice about Amazon -- and virtual in general is not
> > > a good idea for this sort of thing. I have seen messages about
> > > bad results with amazon specifically.
> > >
> > > Todd R. <tjrlist at live.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Just checking one more time to see if anyone has an opinion on 
> > this. I am primarily interested in using a cloud type setup such as 
> > Amazon AWS for the redundancy, easy backup and recovery options.
> > It's not about price but the idea that it will be very hard for a
> > single piece of hardware to ruin my day.
> > > >
> > > > From: tjrlist at live.com
> > > > To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> > > > Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:33:38 -0600
> > > > Subject: [asterisk-users] Amazon, Asterisk and reliability
> > > > beyond 
> > a hobby system?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Took me a while but I have finally embraced cloud computing and 
> > all the benefits.
> > > > The only thing I have yet to feel comfortable about putting in
> > > > the 
> > cloud is real live Asterisk boxes to be used in production. I know 
> > it's being done because as far as I know Twilio is using Amazon for 
> > their Asterisk boxes.
> > > > I have read all the fun articles on building hobby type systems 
> > and that's all great.
> > > > What I really need to hear is from those that have deployed 
> > Asterisk in Amazon or Digital Ocean and how many simultaneous calls 
> > they are pushing through it and what the call quality and
> > reliability has been.
> > > > Right now I am still using dedicated hardware but I could
> > > > become 
> > much more redundant and scale much faster using Amazon or Digital
> > Ocean.
> > > > Thanks in advance for any information from those that have
> > > > already 
> > been down this road...
> > > >
<snip>