Cisco Call Manager does indeed run on Windows 2000. There are positive and negative facets with this arrangement.
Postive: - Easier for your average IT engineer to install - Easier for the same person to maintain - Using MS SQL Server allows for replication and a workable clustering strategty out of the box - Only supported on certified hardware Negative: - The OS cannot be patched with MS fixes * The issue is support from Cisco, so only MS patches that Cisco certifies and publishes can be applied. - MS SQL Server 2000 is a memory pig - Massive and cryptic log files, debugging odd behavior can be amazing difficult - Only supported on certified hardware Now with these 'facts' in mind, the latest release is extremely stable if you have enough memory to keep SQL Server happy. The management interface is fairly well designed, and allows for granular access, so a companies help desk staff can be trained on performing adds/moves/changes without putting the core dialplan or infrastructure in their hands Cisco's SCCP protocol uses RTP, and allows media re-invites, but stays in the signalling path. So the system does not deal directly with codecs or transcoding, so scalability is releatively good. And should the server crash in the middle of calls, the calls are not interrupted. New calls cannot start, but disconnects do not happen. I listed the certified hardware requirement as both a postive and negative. It does limit choices, but with Cisco's process of validating both the OS and hardware, the is a very limited exposure that a bad driver can be introduced to reduce stability. Even though it is a workable system, Cisco has indicated that a future release MAY be appliance like running on a 'Unix-like' OS. So it is possible to run a telephony system on Windows, and get reasonable performance. It can be a challenge, but no more or less so than on a Unix-like system. It is even likely that if Cisco moved the base OS to 2003 Server, stability would improve. Now after all of that, I would want people to think I am suggesting porting * to Windows would be as successful. It works for Cisco largely because they can afford to certify and validate the platform, something a volunteer community find increasingly difficult. Dan -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wayne Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 2:22 AM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk on windows Hiyall, been following this for a while, just thought I would add a bit to the debate, but doesn't the Cisco system (Call Manager?) run on an Windows 2000 based server - if it was that bad why would Cisco choose to run it? Also 3Com use NT/2000 to run the H323 gateway. Admittedly the call processor runs on VXWorks but to cross the boundary of proprietary 3com and rest of world - they jump onto windows. Curiously Wayne. ps I don't know a great deal about the cisco system - its more hearsay so please jump in on :) Patrick wrote: >Reminds me of an Internet Call Diversion pilot WorldCom did back in 2000 >where Alcatel & some M$ drones brought in 2 very big Alpha servers >running NT. These boxes needed to be rebooted multiple times. They were >surprised WCOM felt having to reboot these boxes all the time was >unacceptable in an environment requiring 5nines availability. Never >laughed so hard when I saw the incredulous faces of the M$ drones. We >brought in a Stratus based solution and won the project. > _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users