A point of clarification. The "get started video" on asterisk.org says that running asterisk on a virtual platform is a popular option. "Go for it!" the presenter says. However, the 2011 third edition of Asterisk, The Definitive Guide says they don't recommend it for production use, though many do so successfully. I also don't find may recent discussions of this topic online. I don't expect to need to use any special hardware, just a sip trunk over our broadband connection. We have about 150 phones at present. Is ESX a viable platform for us? And second, what is the recommended virtual configuration (mem, cpu, etc.)? Any other considerations? Thanks, Richard Hiers Director of IT Services Covenant Theological Seminary -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120608/47454657/attachment.htm>
For 150 phones I would suggest you dedicate a machine, mebbe a Core 2 Duo. Voice quality on virtualized platforms is troublesome, hence not recommended for production usage. Home usage for less then 2-5 phones it works perfectly fine in virtualized env. Regards, Mitul Limbani, Chief Architech & Founder, Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. 110 Reena Complex, Opp. Nathani Steel, Vidyavihar (W), Mumbai - 400 086. India http://www.enterux.com/ http://www.entvoice.com/ email: mitul at enterux.in DID: +91-22-61447605 Cell: +91-9820332422 On Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 1:47 AM, Hiers, Richard < Richard.Hiers at covenantseminary.edu> wrote:> A point of clarification. The ?get started video? on asterisk.org says > that running asterisk on a virtual platform is a popular option. ?Go for > it!? the presenter says. However, the 2011 third edition of Asterisk, The > Definitive Guide says they don?t recommend it for production use, though > many do so successfully. I also don?t find may recent discussions of this > topic online. **** > > ** ** > > I don?t expect to need to use any special hardware, just a sip trunk over > our broadband connection. We have about 150 phones at present. Is ESX a > viable platform for us? And second, what is the recommended virtual > configuration (mem, cpu, etc.)? Any other considerations?**** > > ** ** > > Thanks,**** > > ** ** > > Richard Hiers > Director of IT Services > Covenant Theological Seminary > > ** > > ** ** > > -- > _____________________________________________________________________ > -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- > New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: > http://www.asterisk.org/hello > > asterisk-users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120609/b3f8e005/attachment.htm>
On 8/6/12 9:17 pm, Hiers, Richard wrote:> I don't expect to need to use any special hardware, just a sip trunk over our broadband connection. We have about 150 phones at present. Is ESX a viable platform for us? And second, what is the recommended virtual configuration (mem, cpu, etc.)? Any other considerations?I think the concern expressed about running Asterisk on a virtualised platform is more to do with the impact the other load on the host machine might have on your Asterisk VM. If you're using ESX in a shared hosting environment where you have very little control over the other workload on that host, then sooner or later there's a risk your VM is going to experience spikes in latency. On the other hand, if you're running a virtualised platform internally where you can control precisely the load on the host machine, then you'll probably find you're fine. FWIW, we run Asterisk under Xen in production. Some of the VMs have well over a thousand connected SIP devices and we've yet to encounter significant problems. But we're able to control the other VMs on the hosts very precisely: the only other VMs running on those hosts provide low-load services such as rsync for remote backup (which is only used late at night when call load is low on the Asterisk VMs). Running Asterisk in a VM, even if it's the only VM on that host, does give you some considerable benefits in the event of host machine failover: hardware independence and live migration are the two that spring immediately to mind. Kind regards, Chris -- This email is made from 100% recycled electrons