asterisk users - Oct 2004 - high-capacity systems / trouble with Tyan

Hi.  We're looking for a reliable platform to run 12 or more T1s in a
single system.  Very little or no transcoding.  Mostly IVR and some
conferencing.

We have been been running 12 spans using Dual Athlon systems on an
older Tyan motherboard and 1500 MP CPUs.  This works for about
9 or 10 spans before trouble starts.

We wanted to try the new AMD MP 2800 chips on the newer Tyan S2466
motherboard, but the systems hang or panic (with DMA errors) after
starting the zaptel drivers.  We tried putting the older slower CPUs on
the new motherboard and had the same trouble.

We've tried to find other Athlon MP motherboards, but no one seems to
have any non-Tyan boards in stock.

I know there are no simple answers to questions like this.  But we'd
like to find a platform that can support as many spans as possible.

Any suggestions?  Should we try dual Opteron?  Dual Xeon?  Anyone have
a source for non-Tyan dual Athlon motherboards?

Thanks...

Jim Gottlieb wrote:
> Hi.  We're looking for a reliable platform to run 12 or more T1s in a
> single system.  Very little or no transcoding.  Mostly IVR and some
> conferencing.
> 
> We have been been running 12 spans using Dual Athlon systems on an
> older Tyan motherboard and 1500 MP CPUs.  This works for about
> 9 or 10 spans before trouble starts.
> 
> We wanted to try the new AMD MP 2800 chips on the newer Tyan S2466
> motherboard, but the systems hang or panic (with DMA errors) after
> starting the zaptel drivers.  We tried putting the older slower CPUs on
> the new motherboard and had the same trouble.
> 
> We've tried to find other Athlon MP motherboards, but no one seems to
> have any non-Tyan boards in stock.
> 
> I know there are no simple answers to questions like this.  But we'd
> like to find a platform that can support as many spans as possible.
> 
> Any suggestions?  Should we try dual Opteron?  Dual Xeon?  Anyone have
> a source for non-Tyan dual Athlon motherboards?
> 
> Thanks...
Jim,

	I am running Asterisk and Zaptel on a S2466-4NM with no problems.  1 
gig Kingston ECC, 2200 MPs.  No T1 boards, though...

	I really like their Xeon boards as well, but I haven't tried * on them yet.

--
Kristian Kielhofner

On 03:47 PM 10/29/2004, Jim Gottlieb wrote:
 >We wanted to try the new AMD MP 2800 chips on the newer Tyan S2466
 >motherboard, but the systems hang or panic (with DMA errors) after
 >starting the zaptel drivers.  We tried putting the older slower CPUs on
 >the new motherboard and had the same trouble.

I currently have a development system I use when developing configurations 
for my clients.  It's a Tyan 2466 motherboard with the latest bios 
revision, running with two AMD 3000 MP processors.  RedHat 9 is the system, 
but I have a non-redhat 2.6.6 kernel.  I have had many versions of asterisk 
running on it with no issues whatsoever.  I have had X100P, TDM4XX, and TE4 
cards in it with no issue.  I never even tried the 2.4 kernels in the 
system, I built the 2.6 kernel before installing asterisk.

You may want to migrate away from the redhat kernel, and build your own 
kernel whether you build a 2.4 or a 2.6 is up to you, but from what I 
understand the 2.6 kernel is more efficient in SMP form.

Chris

--On Friday, October 29, 2004 17:02 -0700 "Chris A. Icide" 
<chris@netgeeks.net> wrote:
> You may want to migrate away from the redhat kernel, and build your own
> kernel whether you build a 2.4 or a 2.6 is up to you, but from what I
> understand the 2.6 kernel is more efficient in SMP form.
I concur with this statement, had nothing but issues with RH, especially 
the RH9 kernels.

On October 30, 2004 10:37 am, Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists
wrote:
> The X100P is not only an FXO device. Many folks use it as a Zaptel
> timing source only.
Yes you are of course correct; but that then raises the question of why he 
wants two in there.

-A.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:59:22 -0400, Andrew Kohlsmith
<akohlsmith-asterisk@benshaw.com> wrote:
> On October 30, 2004 10:37 am, Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists wrote:
> > The X100P is not only an FXO device. Many folks use it as a Zaptel
> > timing source only.
> 
> Yes you are of course correct; but that then raises the question of why he
> wants two in there.
Does he? Oh well, .... I guess you could have two for redundancy ;-)

rgds
benjk

-- 
Sunrise Telephone Systems, 9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya,
Tokyo, Japan.

NB: Spam filters in place. Messages unrelated to the * mailing lists
may get trashed.

Hello,

I've had a Tyan dual Athlon MP(2800) machine for a year now and have had
several lockups for strange reasons on stock redhat kernel and on custom
compiled kernel off of Slackware. I've tried every combination of BIOS
settings and changed out all assiciated hardware and found the problem: It's
the Tyan. I've also had issues with a couple of SCSI RAID cards when I tried
using them with the Tyan card.

This all would have really upset me if the Athlon MP platform performed
better than the Intel platform, but it doesn't. This Dual Athlon MP system
actually handles LESS total Asterisk load than a single P4 3.2 GHz, and the
P4 has a lot more Motherboard options and cost much less.

This is just my experience, I'm sure I am using Asterisk a little
differently than you, I don't have 3 Quad T1 cards in any of my machines,
but if that's what you're looking for, I'd suggest the PowerPC(Mac)
platform. Asterisk installs just fine right on top of Yellow Dog Linux and
the bus speed of a Mac mops the floor with most x86 motherboards, meaning
more bandwidth for those bus-hungry Digium boards.

MATT---


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Gottlieb [mailto:jimmy@nccom.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 5:05 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Cc: chris@netgeeks.net
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] high-capacity systems / trouble with Tyan


On 2004-10-29 at 20:49, Chris A. Icide (chris@netgeeks.net) wrote:
> The culprit is the RedHat kernel.  I don't know what redhat does with
their 
> kernel or sources.  But If you build your own kernel from non-redhat 
> source, asterisk will compile perfectly.
I did as instructed and recompiled a kernel from kernel.org and rebuilt
asterisk.

However, the problem remains.  I can run one or two cards with no
problem.  But once I enable the third card, the system locks up within
a few minutes.

I tried getting Athlon MP motherboards other than the Tyan S2466, but
no one has any anymore.
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>From my experience the Tyan Tiger MPX is a great board. I've never used
it with *, but I have been using it as a high volume samba server for
over a year and its never even hicupped. 

16:24:30 up 197 days, 20:45,  2 users,  load average: 0.94, 0.92, 0.89


-Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of mattf
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 4:23 PM
To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion'
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] high-capacity systems / trouble with Tyan

Hello,

I've had a Tyan dual Athlon MP(2800) machine for a year now and have had
several lockups for strange reasons on stock redhat kernel and on custom
compiled kernel off of Slackware. I've tried every combination of BIOS
settings and changed out all assiciated hardware and found the problem:
It's
the Tyan. I've also had issues with a couple of SCSI RAID cards when I
tried
using them with the Tyan card.

This all would have really upset me if the Athlon MP platform performed
better than the Intel platform, but it doesn't. This Dual Athlon MP
system
actually handles LESS total Asterisk load than a single P4 3.2 GHz, and
the
P4 has a lot more Motherboard options and cost much less.

This is just my experience, I'm sure I am using Asterisk a little
differently than you, I don't have 3 Quad T1 cards in any of my
machines,
but if that's what you're looking for, I'd suggest the PowerPC(Mac)
platform. Asterisk installs just fine right on top of Yellow Dog Linux
and
the bus speed of a Mac mops the floor with most x86 motherboards,
meaning
more bandwidth for those bus-hungry Digium boards.

MATT---


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Gottlieb [mailto:jimmy@nccom.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 5:05 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Cc: chris@netgeeks.net
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] high-capacity systems / trouble with Tyan


On 2004-10-29 at 20:49, Chris A. Icide (chris@netgeeks.net) wrote:
> The culprit is the RedHat kernel.  I don't know what redhat does with
their 
> kernel or sources.  But If you build your own kernel from non-redhat 
> source, asterisk will compile perfectly.
I did as instructed and recompiled a kernel from kernel.org and rebuilt
asterisk.

However, the problem remains.  I can run one or two cards with no
problem.  But once I enable the third card, the system locks up within
a few minutes.

I tried getting Athlon MP motherboards other than the Tyan S2466, but
no one has any anymore.
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You will always want a good over-capacity power supply for an AMD server(or
any production server for that matter) I always buy nice heavy 500W+ power
supplies for all of my servers whether they be AMD or Intel-based. For AMD
I've used TTGI power supplies mostly and for Intel I usually use Antec.

MATT---

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris A. Icide [mailto:chris@netgeeks.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 9:26 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] high-capacity systems / trouble with Tyan


one other question:

What kind of power supply do you have in the AMD system?  On my 2466, I had 
alot of problems until I upgraded my power supply to a high quality 500W 
unit.  I seem to remember a while back reading that AMD systems were much 
more sensitive to power issues that comparable Pentium units.

On 02:23 PM 11/10/2004, mattf wrote:
 >Hello,
 >
 >I've had a Tyan dual Athlon MP(2800) machine for a year now and have
had
 >several lockups for strange reasons on stock redhat kernel and on custom
 >compiled kernel off of Slackware. I've tried every combination of BIOS
 >settings and changed out all assiciated hardware and found the problem:
It's
 >the Tyan. I've also had issues with a couple of SCSI RAID cards when I
tried
 >using them with the Tyan card.
 >
 >This all would have really upset me if the Athlon MP platform performed
 >better than the Intel platform, but it doesn't. This Dual Athlon MP
system
 >actually handles LESS total Asterisk load than a single P4 3.2 GHz, and
the
 >P4 has a lot more Motherboard options and cost much less.
 >
 >This is just my experience, I'm sure I am using Asterisk a little
 >differently than you, I don't have 3 Quad T1 cards in any of my
machines,
 >but if that's what you're looking for, I'd suggest the
PowerPC(Mac)
 >platform. Asterisk installs just fine right on top of Yellow Dog Linux and
 >the bus speed of a Mac mops the floor with most x86 motherboards, meaning
 >more bandwidth for those bus-hungry Digium boards.
 >
 >MATT---

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