Noah,
Thanks for the input. I'm thinking the problem with the stop
gracefully is that it would confuse the auto fail-over appliance, in
that it would either detect the server is dead and hard switch the
T1s or keep sending calls there which Asterisk would reject.
I'm thinking a better method may be the fail-over switch coupled with
some logic in the client and server, perhaps using SIP NOTIFY to
inform clients they should disconnect when idle, and reconnect to the
specified alternate server. Once everyone is off, then taking that
box down and upgrading. Asterisk supports SIP NOTIFY, so that may be
the most workable.
-Norman
Hi Norman -
To add to what Edgar said, yes, use linux-ha. It works nicely in
combination with DRBD. DRBD uses a dedicated network interface on
each box with a crossover cable between the two. It does a block
level copy of the entire filesystem, so you have two machines
that are
identical. The you use the linux-ha heartbeat to monitor the OS and
asterisk. If anything goes wrong, it can fail over to the second
machine.
This is pretty easy to set up with Analog lines. With PRI's you'd
need the fonebridge or the FSV-4PFS from http://www.failsafevoip.com
Thanks, I wasn't aware of the FSV-4PFS box. Can one switch it
remotely (e.g.
over the network?)
From what I understand, it has its own heartbeat-type monitoring of
asterisk. If asterisk fails, it will automatically fail the PRI over
to your backup machine. Can you manually force the failover? I think
so, but I'm not positive. You can ask the failsafevoip people
directly. I've exchanged emails with them before and they are
knowledgeable and responsive.
It would be nice to have a way to gracefully switch boxes, e.g.
all new
calls to the backup box, wait until all calls on the primary
normally end,
and then take server down for an upgrade.
If you're using heartbeat, and it's directly monitoring the asterisk
process, you should be able to issue a "stop gracefully" command.
That will bring asterisk down when all the calls are complete. Then,
heartbeat should fail over to the other machine. Of course, if
someone is on a long call and you've already issued a "stop
gracefully" command, your "asterisk cluster" won't accept any new
calls until that long call is finished.
- Noah
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