[on-asterisk] Asterisk as a reduntant/fail over solution

[Robert Brock]

Coming from the Nortel world (well Avaya now) I have integrated an Asterisk server to all our Meridian PBX systems to support VOIP and interoffice calls using G729 and it actually works better than the Nortel solution.

Over the next few years we are planning to retire our Nortel PBX systems, however these system are rock solid from reliability point of view; I have not had any problems with the Asterisk servers that I setup and they are working much better than expected. With that said I would like to hear/know about what people have done to make the asterisk server a high availability solution.

With Nortel large PBX systems you have two CPU cores, two network shelves that connect to IPE shelves that control the phones.

Can you build something the similar in Asterisk? Can you setup Asterisk on a Red Hat Cluster?

I would love to setup 2 servers as Core/Gateway servers that only deal with inbound and outbound connections (not phones)

We have 4 PRI's - I would like to setup 2 PRI's in Gateway 1 and 2 PRI's in Gateway 2, then a third server "PhoneServer" that all the sets are programmed up on which then connects to both gateways VIA isolated network (direct connect), that way either of the gateways can be down for maintenance and you will still receive inbound and outbound calls. This I feel is pretty simple, but I don't see an easy way to make the PhoneServer a failover server - Thought using Red Hat Cluster may work.

I like the idea of this setup as I would like to have a fax server and a call center server each as a separate machine.

Has anyone setup asterisk in this way?

Thanks.

Robert Brock
Telecom Administrator, MKS Inc., www.mks.com<http://www.mks.com>
Waterloo, ON, Canada
Tel: 519-883-3243 or 800-265-2797 x3243
Fax: 519-884-8861

[Philip Mullis]

Hey Robert, if your using PRI's you might as well get something solid
state that will aid you in load balancing and act as a primary
aggregation gw, you should look into items such as a REDBRIDGE device.
It will convert your pri's to tdmoe and act as a gateway with failover
settings. You can then simply make yourself two virtual boxes or two
physical app servers that feed from it via ip (rync'ing the
confs/mailboxes).

Thats a quick and dirty method for ya :)

Phil

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[Dave Donovan]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Robert Brock <Robert...@mks.com> wrote:
> Coming from the Nortel world (well Avaya now) I have integrated an Asterisk server to all our Meridian PBX systems to support VOIP and interoffice calls using G729 and it actually works better than the Nortel solution.
>
> Over the next few years we are planning to retire our Nortel PBX systems, however these system are rock solid from reliability point of view; I have not had any problems with the Asterisk servers that I setup and they are working much better than expected. With that said I would like to hear/know about what people have done to make the asterisk server a high availability solution.
>

Hi Robert,

You might get some good ideas from a presentation that Bill Sandiford,
one of our members, made to the group a couple of years ago.

http://taug.ca/node/68

[Andrew Heagle]

On Wednesday 10 February 2010 15:33:24 Dave Donovan wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Robert Brock <Robert...@mks.com> wrote:
> > Coming from the Nortel world (well Avaya now) I have integrated an
> > Asterisk server to all our Meridian PBX systems to support VOIP and
> > interoffice calls using G729 and it actually works better than the Nortel
> > solution.
> >
> > Over the next few years we are planning to retire our Nortel PBX systems,
> > however these system are rock solid from reliability point of view; I
> > have not had any problems with the Asterisk servers that I setup and they
> > are working much better than expected. With that said I would like to
> > hear/know about what people have done to make the asterisk server a high
> > availability solution.
>
> Hi Robert,
>
> You might get some good ideas from a presentation that Bill Sandiford,
> one of our members, made to the group a couple of years ago.
>
> http://taug.ca/node/68

Hi,

If one were to implement this, would current calls be dropped or would they
get re-established after the fail-over from the master to the slave was
completed?

It didn't mention this in the presentation. I'm guessing current calls would
still be dropped.

Thanks,
Andrew

[Bill Sandiford]

Hi Andrew:

You are correct, current calls are still dropped.

Bill