asterisk users - Jan 2007 - Voicemail personalised greetings using DB/IMAP backend?

Hi all,

I am attempting to build a horizontally scalable Asterisk deployment and 
am getting very close to achieving that goal.  With Asterisk 1.4 I now 
have an IMAP backend for Voicemail messages which is great as users can 
check the same messages either through the voice portal or using 
Webmail.  However, I'm not sure the best way of dealing with 
personalised greetings such as a user's unavailable/busy message etc. 
Despite the IMAP backend these greetings appear to be stored on the 
local file system under /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail/default, which 
means if I build a farm of Asterisk servers - each will have it's own 
spool directory.  My aim is to have *nothing* stored locally at all...

If there a way of storing these greetings in a database table or using 
IMAP?  I saw the ODBC voicemail storage module, but I would prefer to 
stick with a REALTIME/IMAP backend?  If I mount the 
/var/spool/asterisk/voicemail directory remotely using a shared NFS 
mount on a NAS device will this work okay or lead to problems/race 
conditions etc.?  Any advice would be welcome!

Regards,
Ray

Ray,

Have you considered using a VM architecture?

Bryan M. Johns
Partner
Shelton | Johns Technology Group
office: 678:248:2637 x:1500
direct: 678:229:1809
mobile: 404.259.9216
iaxtel: 700:248:2637 x:1500
http://www.sheltonjohns.com


On Jan 5, 2007, at 5:17 PM, Ray Jackson wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am attempting to build a horizontally scalable Asterisk  
> deployment and am getting very close to achieving that goal.  With  
> Asterisk 1.4 I now have an IMAP backend for Voicemail messages  
> which is great as users can check the same messages either through  
> the voice portal or using Webmail.  However, I'm not sure the best  
> way of dealing with personalised greetings such as a user's  
> unavailable/busy message etc. Despite the IMAP backend these  
> greetings appear to be stored on the local file system under /var/ 
> spool/asterisk/voicemail/default, which means if I build a farm of  
> Asterisk servers - each will have it's own spool directory.  My aim  
> is to have *nothing* stored locally at all...
>
> If there a way of storing these greetings in a database table or  
> using IMAP?  I saw the ODBC voicemail storage module, but I would  
> prefer to stick with a REALTIME/IMAP backend?  If I mount the /var/ 
> spool/asterisk/voicemail directory remotely using a shared NFS  
> mount on a NAS device will this work okay or lead to problems/race  
> conditions etc.?  Any advice would be welcome!
>
> Regards,
> Ray
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Ray Jackson wrote:
> If there a way of storing these greetings in a database table or using
> IMAP?
The current implementations of ODBC and IMAP for voicemail use it only
for voicemail, not for greetings. However, there is still work being
done by community members on both methods of storage, so I'd encourage
you to find the issues in the bug tracker where that is happening and
get involved.

For Asterisk 1.6 there is work underway to put in a generalized storage
subsystem that will abstract all this away from app_voicemail, so
storage of greetings in the database/IMAP server will be relatively easy.