Hello, On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 10:24:32 -0600, David Gomillion wrote > I can understand the size concerns for putting it in an > appliance or what-not. However, my opinion is that, due to > the low cost of hard disk space, it is cheaper for the > company to go out and buy another hard disk to replace the > extra 500 MB they wasted on a sub-optimal installation than > to pay me to try to get the installation as small as possible. you're absolutely right here, for the cost of a 128mb cf card i can get a 40gb hdd, where the space is not a concern
> > What are the benefits to a really tiny installation, aside > from possible appliance applications? Moreover, won't you > still need a sizable hard disk for voice prompts, voicemail > messages, sound file to direct people to dial the correct > extension, etc? what i thought about was a closed box with some web interface that could serve as a voip gateway (and possibly as, say, web proxy/cache held on tmpfs?) not being a full blown server (there's a difference between convincing people to put a 30x30 box somewhere and making them put a high-tech server with raid, streamers & whatnots. having the system run from a read-only medium (like a cf card with a tmpfs overlay - see http://translucency.sourceforge.net though haven't tried it yet) removes the need for backups & extended reliability (nothing changes and if the data is somehow lost, restoring it is trivial). furthermore, if the fs is on a solid state device (not a hdd or cd), there are no moving parts (except for a cpu/sys fan), improving hardware robustness and reducing noise level. as for voicemail, etc. you can put another hdd (capacity!) in there just for that or keep it in ram (speed+no moving parts+cheaper than cf and voicemail tends to have rather short life-time - or doesn't it?). if the hdd breaks or you get a blackout, oh well, you lose at most some voicemail. if i could fit an * distro in 20mb (seems reasonable if started from a floppy-distro), it leaves me 100mb for voice prompts, which should be enough. > > Again, I may be WAY off track, but one of the things I > really like about * is that I can update it easily. > Wouldn't you lose some of the beauty by putting it in an appliance? you can build asterisk on another machine and update it via, say, scp to your heart's desire > > Moreover, I HATE Nortel because they have a user-unfriendly > interface, proprietary controls, non-standard connections, > and the like. It seems to me that by appliance-izing we > would be inviting the same abuses that the current systems > enjoy. I could see it becoming an issue of open-source > software on extremely proprietary hardware, meaning the user > can modify their system if they can figure out how to get in > it. what about ssh? the sshd isn't *this* heavy, is it? putting * in a closed box is appliance-izing it [nice word :)] in the eyes of the end-user (clicks here and there w/o all the *.conf voodoo), but leaves full power to the more competent users who can figure their way through ssh and asterisk's conf files > > Of course, all of this is in the assumption that the end- > user wants to own their PBX. I know I do. I think that we > should be focusing on a useful administrative interface, > database-based extension definitions, and other features > that will advance the power, flexibility, and usability of * > instead of shrinking the distro as much as possible. i think we should aim both to scale up (like, 10k+ phone systems running *) and down (home pbx system with a fritz or x100p and zero initial knowledge required). btw, my shrinking of the * distro to a few dozen mb doesn't stand in the way of expanding your server farm, does it? > > What am I missing? I see many people much smarter than I am > excited about this, so I am sure I simply failed to consider > how it will revolutionize everything. Not that it'll revolutionize anything, it's simply opening another (however niche) market for *. > > Awaiting your enlightenment (preferably sans-flame), > David Gomillion > regards, grzegorz nosek _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
