asterisk users - Apr 2005 - Monitoring B chans and G.729 High Water Marks

In capacity planning for production Asterisk servers it is essential to 
have an accurate statistical picture of the utilisation of finite 
resources such as disk space, CPU utilisation, B channels on PRIs, and 
G.729 codec licences.

The first two have well defined measurement tools.

The last two (B channels and G.729) can be measured in real time using 
"show channels" and "show g729" but there appears no way to
obtain from
Asterisk the maximum number of B channels that have been in use or the 
maximum number of g729 codecs that have been in use. Also there seem not 
to be any tools for collecting this information over time for 
statistical analysis.

What do people do to monitor increases in channels/g729 licences so to 
plan ordering more of each?

Thanks for your suggestions.

-- 
George Pajari, netVOICE communications    604 484 VOIP (484 8647 x102)
Open Source VoIP/Telephony Specialists  1 877 NET VOIP (638 8647 x102)
                  www.netvoice.ca  www.ip-centrex.ca
      www.digium.ca www.grandstream.ca www.sipura.ca www.snom.ca

George Pajari wrote:
> In capacity planning for production Asterisk servers it is essential to 
> have an accurate statistical picture of the utilisation of finite 
> resources such as disk space, CPU utilisation, B channels on PRIs, and 
> G.729 codec licences.
> 
> The first two have well defined measurement tools.
> 
> The last two (B channels and G.729) can be measured in real time using 
> "show channels" and "show g729" but there appears no
way to obtain from
> Asterisk the maximum number of B channels that have been in use or the 
> maximum number of g729 codecs that have been in use. Also there seem not 
> to be any tools for collecting this information over time for 
> statistical analysis.
> 
> What do people do to monitor increases in channels/g729 licences so to 
> plan ordering more of each?
> 
> Thanks for your suggestions.
> 
Just write something that runs the commands you want and puts the result 
in a database.  Then use php or something to display the values.  If you 
want it to look nice, use JPGraph...pretty simple.  I have these types 
of set-ups for pings, peer times, etc.

You could also do something like:

read max value from astdb (database get x)
compare to current value
if current is larger, write it to astdb (database put x)
create an extension which does SayNumber on the max value in astdb.

I use this second method so that I can call in and find out how many 
emails are waiting for me (a little silly seeing as I have no way yet of 
filtering the messages and sending 800 emails to festival may be a bit 
of overkill!).

-- 
Cheers,

Matt Riddell
_______________________________________________

http://www.sineapps.com/news.php (Daily Asterisk News - html)
http://www.sineapps.com/rssfeed.php (Daily Asterisk News - rss)

George Pajari wrote:
> In capacity planning for production Asterisk servers it is essential 
> to have an accurate statistical picture of the utilisation of finite 
> resources such as disk space, CPU utilisation, B channels on PRIs, and 
> G.729 codec licences.
>
> The first two have well defined measurement tools.
>
> The last two (B channels and G.729) can be measured in real time using 
> "show channels" and "show g729" but there appears no
way to obtain
> from Asterisk the maximum number of B channels that have been in use 
> or the maximum number of g729 codecs that have been in use. Also there 
> seem not to be any tools for collecting this information over time for 
> statistical analysis.
>
> What do people do to monitor increases in channels/g729 licences so to 
> plan ordering more of each?
You can pretty much graph this stuff with MRTG.  Take a look at: 
http://karlsbakk.net/asterisk/  for your channels, and just modify the 
code a bit for the G729 licenses output.
>
> Thanks for your suggestions.
>
-- 
Andres
Network Admin
http://www.telesip.net