asterisk users - Mar 2006 - RE: [on-asterisk] Brainstorming dual-core and Asterisk

I believe you can assign processors in vmware, and xen as well.
So you could probably do something funky like that to try to reduce
load.
The only thing that probably becomes difficult is trying to manage
physical hardware between virtual machines. 

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Van Meggelen [mailto:jim.vanmeggelen@coretel.ca] 
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 7:47 PM
To: 'TAUG'
Subject: [on-asterisk] Brainstorming dual-core and Asterisk

Let me run something that's been floating about in my noggin by
everyone:

Given that Asterisk does not make use of dual core CPUs or dual
processors,
I was contemplating whether running Asterisk in two (or more) VMWare
sessions on a system might actually allow for more total performance.
For
example, set up one VM to handle incoming lines, echo cancellation and
all
sets, and then set up the other VM to handle VoIP, including
transcoding.

A bit kludgy, to be sure, but would VMWare allow for both cores/CPUs to
be
more fully utilized?

Very possibly not practical, but it's been floating about my head for a
bit
and I figured I'd send it out into the ether to see what thoughts might
come
back.

So . . . thoughts?

Jim.

--
Jim Van Meggelen
jim@vanmeggelen.ca
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2177

"A child is the ultimate startup, and I have three. 
This makes me rich."
                    Guy Kawasaki
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Jim Van Meggelen wrote:
>Let me run something that's been floating about in my noggin by
>everyone:
>
>Given that Asterisk does not make use of dual core CPUs or dual
>processors...
>
Jim,

That statement bothered me, because we are running Asterisk on a 
multi-processor system to help accomplish our scalability goals.  I did 
some double-checking on it by talking to Matt O'Gorman of Digium.  Here 
is what he had to say:

"Asterisk makes use of both processors for 99% of things.  There are 
some things like IAX parser or SIP parser that only run on one thread 
(although Mark [Spencer] recently did multi-threaded IAX), but the heavy 
stuff like each call spawns a new thread and Linux being awesome like it 
is will share the load across processors.  I mean just run top, you will 
see load should be fairly balanced."

On our production server we are currently handling ~90 concurrent calls 
with digital recording via Monitor as well as ~200 dynamic agents logged 
in.  top shows us running around 80% idle with processor 0 hovering 
around 70% idle, and processors 1, 2, and 3 around 85%.

Your VMWare idea is very interesting, but I think it's unnecessary.  I 
believe that Asterisk *does* perform better with HyperThreading/logical 
processors disabled.

Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer