> >> > > Colin, > > > > Would you possibly explain why you prefer Intel based systems over the > > AMD based system for Asterisk? > > > > When you speak of Intel here are you talking about Celerons, Pentium > > 3, Pentium 4, Xeon, Pentium D? > > > > When you speak of AMD are you talking XP, MP, Duron, Sempron, 64, 64 > > FX, X2, Opteron? > > > > I'm quite aware that Opterons et al have gained signifigant market share in the past couple years and AMD and their supporting chipsets have dramatically improved in quality. I'm actually an AMD fan. However, when you are spec'ing a system that a business will depend on (and your Asterisk server is arguably the most important piece of kit in the rack) why would you introduce an unknown variable in the equation just to save, say, 30% on the price of the chip and motherboard? Just to throw out some comparative numbers, let's say for the sake of argument that the Intel chip, a P4, is $500. The AMD is $300 (not far off actually) The mobo's are the equivalent from a reputable manufacturer like ASUS or what have you. For some magic, unknown reason, (who knows, kooky Linux byproduct of using AMD or even user error in compile flags) the AMD system performs poorly or not at all, and the intel box runs OK. Now. let's say that this business is dependent on the phones ( what business isn't?) and it has gross revenues of, say, $10,000 a day and has regular business hours. In this case, the cost of downtime for the phones is $20.83 a minute. That means essentially that whatever price break you got by using AMD for this fictional business will evaporate in the first 10 mins that an AMD based server doesn't do the job as opposed to an Intel solution. Plus, fictional Asterisk consultant will tear his hair out trying to figure out what the issue is and make blind stabs in the dark, when the whole thing could have been avoided just be being conservative on the hardware specs.
The outfit I work for has gross revenues well in excess of $200M a year. Our calculated cost of downtime is $16 a SECOND. At least 50% of that can be directly tied to phones. There is NO DAMN WAY that I would ever put a server on the rack with specs that I got from TigerDirect or Toms Hardware or a "consultant". No friggin way. Not even Dell. It's gonna be a Tier 1 box with Intel. Trust me, you are rolling the dice doing anything else. Ever notice a common thread with all of the "I'm bringing up a new system and I get call disconnects / echo / clicks" posts? It's always whitebox hardware. Other than the cursed Dell and the DL380G4, I never see: "I have a Tier 1 server and I get disconnects / echos / clicks". Of course, it's quite possible to *take* a Tier 1 box and make it perform poorly, but that's a different kettle of fish. Maybe Coalescent should do a poll on it, I'd be curious to see a matrix that shows whitebox hardware or tier 1, what chip/chipset and number of users. Here's another thing to consider: The value proposition of Asterisk is that it runs on commodity hardware instead of something specially engineered for the task. We all agree on that, right? Well, Tier 1 Intel hardware *is* a commodity product, and a proper Tier 1 Intel based solution, while 30-100% more expensive than an AMD whitebox, is 3 to 10 times LESS expensive than a dedicated PBX while giving at least equivalent and (in my case) oodles more functionality than a traditional solution. It's a friggin steal. However, there's no steal to be had if the thing desn't work in the first place. (apologies and props to those running AMD right now) My box? 4 way Xeon. 120 users, more added every day. 3500-4000 calls a day. Zero problems. Takes everything I can throw at it and asks for seconds. In my case, *I* am the weak link in this installation, not the server. _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
