asterisk users - Dec 2005 - Production Upgrades

OK,  I did some testing with asterisk 1.0.7.
I went into production with asterisk 1.0.9.

I am using a 2 PCI slot 1U Dell 1750 server.
I am using 2 TE110P cards. 1 PRI to Telco. 1 E&M to Panasonic DBS PBX with 
150 people on it. (all Panasonic people reach Telco via asterisk)
I technically put the asterisk server into full production a little earlier 
than I wanted. I used to have Telco into Panasonic and E&M to asterisk from 
there, but my PRI card in the Panasonic died and since we were intending to 
replace it, I didn't want to spend the money on the card, so I swapped the 
cables and put the asterisk first.

Needs:
I need to add a 4port FXO/FXS card. (911 failover and fax)
I need to upgrade to a newer server.
I would like to go to the 1.2 branch of Asterisk.

Questions:
How are other upgrading asterisk on production systems?
Are you buying duplicate Digium cards to test configs and reduce downtime? 
(do you have spares on the shelf anyways?)
If I do buy duplicate cards, would I be better served to get a 2 or 4 port 
T1 card instead of 2 1port cards? (actually considering hardware echo can 
anyway)

I intend to recompile on the new server, copy over configs, VMs and retweak 
my faxtoemail, etc.
But I would still need to test my configs to make sure that all previous 
options are still supported with the 1.2 branch, right?

I know that I could have some redundancy in SIP if I use a SER server or 
two, but this is the server with my T1/PRI links.

Please post how you folks are upgrading your production systems.



-- 
-- 
Steven

May you have the peace and freedom that come from abandoning all hope of 
having a better past.
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Steven wrote:
>Questions:
>How are other upgrading asterisk on production systems?
>Are you buying duplicate Digium cards to test configs and reduce downtime? 
>  
>
We have purchased a duplicate server (with a spare TE410P Digium card). 
Our primary interface to the telco is a T1 and we use channel banks for 
our phones. We are using the low tech, unplug the T1 cables from one 
server and plug them in the other server to cut to our backup system. 
Depending on what we are doing we may cut over to our backup phone 
server during the changes. If we don't and something goes wrong, it 
would take just a few minutes to cut over.

We do not have voicemail on our backup server, but since our upgrades 
happen after hours it has not been a problem. We have a channel bank 
dedicated for testing any changes. It seems to work for us.

Don Pobanz