asterisk users - May 2008 - New Asterisk Deployment - Need some tips

I'll be doing a new Asterisk deployment soon, and would like to gather your
thoughts.

Here are some items that need to be kept in mind:

Support 800 phones (400 of which are analog)
Concurrent calls ... ? but need to guess high so that the server can handle
this.
Voicemail will be required along with sending voice mail attachments to email
server.
Flash panel for switchboard operator.
Needs to be a distributed server design for redundancy and fail-over.
Will need to be integrated into an existing PBX until each building is switched
over to use the Asterisk servers.
If calling 911 from a building among multiple buildings, how can EMS find that
person based upon the call?
What type of data line should be used in this setup? T1?
The physical network will support QOS and the like, so that is not an issue.


What type of design/setup do you recommend for this? How about server
resources...ie...CPU, RAM, Disk space.

How about backups? Does imaging work best if a server were to fail?

Any thing else you can think of?

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On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Matthew Ratliff
<mratliff at nauticalthinking.com> wrote:
> I'll be doing a new Asterisk deployment soon, and would like to gather
your thoughts.
>
> Here are some items that need to be kept in mind:
>
> Support 800 phones (400 of which are analog)
> Concurrent calls ... ? but need to guess high so that the server can handle
this.
> Voicemail will be required along with sending voice mail attachments to
email server.
> Flash panel for switchboard operator.
> Needs to be a distributed server design for redundancy and fail-over.
> Will need to be integrated into an existing PBX until each building is
switched over to use the Asterisk servers.
> If calling 911 from a building among multiple buildings, how can EMS find
that person based upon the call?
> What type of data line should be used in this setup? T1?
> The physical network will support QOS and the like, so that is not an
issue.
>
>
> What type of design/setup do you recommend for this? How about server
resources...ie...CPU, RAM, Disk space.
>
> How about backups? Does imaging work best if a server were to fail?
>
> Any thing else you can think of?
>
If this is a project for your work and it's your first Asterisk
deployment then definitely don't go the big bang approach in the way
you've outlined. If you do you could well be out of that job in 6
months!

The first thing I'd recommend you do is find 10 or 20 people who are
suitable as early adopters. The set up a single Asterisk server and
give the early adopters a SIP phone each thats in addition to their
normal desk phone and ask them to see how they go using the SIP phones
for calls to each other, external calls and whatever else would make
sense. Then 6 months and a lot of learning/experience/frustration
later you'll know whether to get answers to your original questions or
not.

Regards,

Greyman.