Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 23:41 +0100, Michiel van Baak wrote: Forget about virtualization! This system is running linux as base os (I conclude by the tone of your mail) Just install asterisk on it besides the monitoring software and be done with it. What do you gain by running virtualisation on it ? Nothing. snapshots are not bound to virtualisation. Just redo the box with lvm and you can make snapshots with that. Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. I don't agree with that. Virtualisation has many benefits in the real world (eg ease of deployment and management, hardware fault tolerance when using vSphere with vMotion etc, more effective hardware utilisation, power savings, the list goes on). Having said that, I don't see the benefit of virtualisation in this particular situation unless there's a need to want to test an OS upgrade or Asterisk upgrade on the same hardware and be able to easily roll back if it didn't work. Would the VM be able to address the ISDN card directly? Not sure how well the time critical bits would work in a VM. -- Cheers, Kingsley. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
We have been successfully using Asterisk (1.6.0.x) in a heavily loaded Virtuozzo (= commercial OpenVZ) environment for over a year. I'm sure we aren't the only ones to do so. We had some terrible problems with random one-way audio a few minutes into some calls to start with, which I was worried were to do with the virtualisation/timing. But after much hair pulling and investigation it turned out to be down to some serious firmware bugs in the routers we were using, combined (if I recall correctly) with an IAX bug-ette. At any rate we've had no problems at all since these things were corrected. This is all without a timing source too, but then we don't use conferencing. We never handle more than 4 simultaneous calls though, and everything is IAX/SIP based so there's no hardware interfacing issues for us to worry about either. There's actually a commercial Asterisk-based product, 4PSA VoipNow (www.4psa.com), that specifically supports Virtuozzo and VMWare and also Amazon EC2 (!!). Indeed, they even provide VMWare images, Viruozzo Templates and an Amazon EC2 AMI for ease of installation in these environments. There's a free version too with a 10 extension limit. I should point out that although I've tried Voip Now, it was only to the extent of installing it to look at the GUI - I didn't try making any calls or registering any phones etc. I'm very familiar with the company through their Plesk add-on products though, so I have no doubt it works. I don't know which version of Asterisk it is based on. I am also unsure about hardware interfacing with this product - which I think is really going to be one of the main problems you will face for your project. Faris. Now my big question: What kind of virtualization should I run on the Server? I have already used VMware ESXi and Proxmox. It would be very nice if there was a way to make snapshots (for backup purposes). I read about clock problems (physical time != virtual time) and so on. If I'm right this does not matter when using OpenVZ but when using KVM, XEN, ESX, ... Please tell me your opinion. I definitely want to run the Asterisk via virtualization - so we have to find a solution for this ;-) Thank you very much! felix -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 17:06 -0800, Jim Dickenson wrote: My development system for asterisk is a virtual CentOS 5.4 world running under Fusion on my MacBook. I am usually only doing a few calls at a time. I have an IAX trunk to our office Asterisk PBX so I can access the PRI line there. I do meetme rooms and recording of calls and all seems to work well. I have even used a Xorcom Astribank on my virtual world for testing. Virtual worlds do have a place even in the Asterisk world. For a very small office like the OP was talking about things will likely work. I do agree that as the system he is thinking of using is a low use system adding asterisk to it in its current state will likely be a good solution. I'm the first to agree that a small via/soekris/fit2-box is more then enough for running asterisk (perhaps even with your firewall and mailserver) otoh I have 1.2, 1.4, 1.6.0, 1.6.1 and since lastweek also 1.6.2 versions running happily in a XEN dom-u. Works without a problem... Only snag is that is rather hard to use fxo/fxs/pri cards in them, and one needs a rather powerfull server for it. As the O.P. said it's a small company, i would opt for a tiny box, capable of running 24/7. Easier to maintain, cheaper to run (power) hw -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
-Original Message- From: Felix Tiefenthaler [mailto:tiefenthale...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 4:29 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation Hi all! I've been reading this list for a few weeks and now this is my first post. :-) I'm planning to build a new VoIP telephone system at our company. It's just a small company with not more than 3-4 employees. The telephone system is not so important for us because each employee has it's own mobile phone. Because our company is a small one, we don't want to/we can't buy an expensive phone system. So we are going to use Asterisk. Additionally we don't want to obtain extra hardware. We have already a Server running with Linux (for Network monitoring). Because it's a waste to use this Server just for monitoring I thought about virtualizing. Now I want to run a machine with monitoring and a machine with Asterisk on this Server. I already bought a ISDN Card (berofix 400) with a S0 module. Now my big question: What kind of virtualization should I run on the Server? I have already used VMware ESXi and Proxmox. It would be very nice if there was a way to make snapshots (for backup purposes). I read about clock problems (physical time != virtual time) and so on. If I'm right this does not matter when using OpenVZ but when using KVM, XEN, ESX, ... Please tell me your opinion. I definitely want to run the Asterisk via virtualization - so we have to find a solution for this ;-) Thank you very much! felix OpenVZ seems to work well. I have a customer with an Asterisk server in a production environment running in OpenVZ. I am aware of many other Asterisk servers running in OpenVZ without a problem. _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
[asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
Hi all! I've been reading this list for a few weeks and now this is my first post. :-) I'm planning to build a new VoIP telephone system at our company. It's just a small company with not more than 3-4 employees. The telephone system is not so important for us because each employee has it's own mobile phone. Because our company is a small one, we don't want to/we can't buy an expensive phone system. So we are going to use Asterisk. Additionally we don't want to obtain extra hardware. We have already a Server running with Linux (for Network monitoring). Because it's a waste to use this Server just for monitoring I thought about virtualizing. Now I want to run a machine with monitoring and a machine with Asterisk on this Server. I already bought a ISDN Card (berofix 400) with a S0 module. Now my big question: What kind of virtualization should I run on the Server? I have already used VMware ESXi and Proxmox. It would be very nice if there was a way to make snapshots (for backup purposes). I read about clock problems (physical time != virtual time) and so on. If I'm right this does not matter when using OpenVZ but when using KVM, XEN, ESX, ... Please tell me your opinion. I definitely want to run the Asterisk via virtualization - so we have to find a solution for this ;-) Thank you very much! felix -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
On 23:28, Wed 20 Jan 10, Felix Tiefenthaler wrote: Hi all! I've been reading this list for a few weeks and now this is my first post. :-) I'm planning to build a new VoIP telephone system at our company. It's just a small company with not more than 3-4 employees. The telephone system is not so important for us because each employee has it's own mobile phone. Because our company is a small one, we don't want to/we can't buy an expensive phone system. So we are going to use Asterisk. Additionally we don't want to obtain extra hardware. We have already a Server running with Linux (for Network monitoring). Because it's a waste to use this Server just for monitoring I thought about virtualizing. Now I want to run a machine with monitoring and a machine with Asterisk on this Server. I already bought a ISDN Card (berofix 400) with a S0 module. Now my big question: What kind of virtualization should I run on the Server? I have already used VMware ESXi and Proxmox. It would be very nice if there was a way to make snapshots (for backup purposes). I read about clock problems (physical time != virtual time) and so on. If I'm right this does not matter when using OpenVZ but when using KVM, XEN, ESX, ... Please tell me your opinion. I definitely want to run the Asterisk via virtualization - so we have to find a solution for this ;-) Forget about virtualization! This system is running linux as base os (I conclude by the tone of your mail) Just install asterisk on it besides the monitoring software and be done with it. What do you gain by running virtualisation on it ? Nothing. snapshots are not bound to virtualisation. Just redo the box with lvm and you can make snapshots with that. Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. -- Michiel van Baak mich...@vanbaak.eu http://michiel.vanbaak.eu GnuPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x71C946BD Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users? -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
I'll second that notion - next up, why bother with POTS/PSTN when Asterisk offers chan_mobile that would allow a dedicated cell-phone to be your line? -Original Message- From: asterisk-users-boun...@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-boun...@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Michiel van Baak Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 4:42 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation On 23:28, Wed 20 Jan 10, Felix Tiefenthaler wrote: Hi all! I've been reading this list for a few weeks and now this is my first post. :-) I'm planning to build a new VoIP telephone system at our company. It's just a small company with not more than 3-4 employees. The telephone system is not so important for us because each employee has it's own mobile phone. Because our company is a small one, we don't want to/we can't buy an expensive phone system. So we are going to use Asterisk. Additionally we don't want to obtain extra hardware. We have already a Server running with Linux (for Network monitoring). Because it's a waste to use this Server just for monitoring I thought about virtualizing. Now I want to run a machine with monitoring and a machine with Asterisk on this Server. I already bought a ISDN Card (berofix 400) with a S0 module. Now my big question: What kind of virtualization should I run on the Server? I have already used VMware ESXi and Proxmox. It would be very nice if there was a way to make snapshots (for backup purposes). I read about clock problems (physical time != virtual time) and so on. If I'm right this does not matter when using OpenVZ but when using KVM, XEN, ESX, ... Please tell me your opinion. I definitely want to run the Asterisk via virtualization - so we have to find a solution for this ;-) Forget about virtualization! This system is running linux as base os (I conclude by the tone of your mail) Just install asterisk on it besides the monitoring software and be done with it. What do you gain by running virtualisation on it ? Nothing. snapshots are not bound to virtualisation. Just redo the box with lvm and you can make snapshots with that. Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. -- Michiel van Baak mich...@vanbaak.eu http://michiel.vanbaak.eu GnuPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x71C946BD Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users? -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 11:41:48 PM, Michiel wrote: Forget about virtualization! ... Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. Well. Why do you use computer? There're slide-rule. You can calculate anything with that... -- Best regards, Gergomailto:csi...@gmail.com -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Gergo Csibra wrote: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 11:41:48 PM, Michiel wrote: Forget about virtualization! ... Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. Well. Why do you use computer? There're slide-rule. You can calculate anything with that... Pretty crappy analogy. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean it is production ready. But then the OP said it wasn't all that important, so I would say go Xen and tell us how it works out. I think you will only have trouble with conferencing, and maybe not even then if the machine is beefy enough and unloaded. Monitoring servers are usually pretty unloaded. I'm playing a lot with OpenVZ, but you won't have access to your PSTN hardware... at least I haven't been able to make that part work. j -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
Jeff LaCoursiere wrote: On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Gergo Csibra wrote: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 11:41:48 PM, Michiel wrote: Forget about virtualization! ... Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. Well. Why do you use computer? There're slide-rule. You can calculate anything with that... Pretty crappy analogy. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean it is production ready. But then the OP said it wasn't all that important, so I would say go Xen and tell us how it works out. I think you will only have trouble with conferencing, and maybe not even then if the machine is beefy enough and unloaded. Monitoring servers are usually pretty unloaded. I'm playing a lot with OpenVZ, but you won't have access to your PSTN hardware... at least I haven't been able to make that part work. j Asterisk and monitoring are time sensitive applications. VM's are not good canidates for these types of services. Go to the MRTG discussions and you will get the same answer, stay away from VM. The time shift that VM's introduce cause huge issues when mapping time sensitive data. And Asterisk is time sensitive. A webserver or database server are not time sensitive applications where time shifts of a few milliseconds are not noticed. But with Asterisk if the time is shifting 20 or 30 ms frequently, it will cause all sorts of issues. Use VM's where and when useful. This scenerio is not a good candiate for virtualization. Lyle -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
Thursday, January 21, 2010, 12:53:09 AM, Jeff wrote: On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Gergo Csibra wrote: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 11:41:48 PM, Michiel wrote: Forget about virtualization! ... Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. Well. Why do you use computer? There're slide-rule. You can calculate anything with that... Pretty crappy analogy. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean it is production ready. Yes. It was an exaggeration. But saying virtualisation isn't for any real job is ROTFL. Every computer system is bigger than a PC is virtualised. Yes for asterisk virtualisation is not an option because of context switching, but for a webserver, other file and application server or database is OK. -- Best regards, Gergomailto:csi...@gmail.com -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
My development system for asterisk is a virtual CentOS 5.4 world running under Fusion on my MacBook. I am usually only doing a few calls at a time. I have an IAX trunk to our office Asterisk PBX so I can access the PRI line there. I do meetme rooms and recording of calls and all seems to work well. I have even used a Xorcom Astribank on my virtual world for testing. Virtual worlds do have a place even in the Asterisk world. For a very small office like the OP was talking about things will likely work. I do agree that as the system he is thinking of using is a low use system adding asterisk to it in its current state will likely be a good solution. -- Jim Dickenson mailto:dicken...@cfmc.com CfMC http://www.cfmc.com/ On Jan 20, 2010, at 4:50 PM, Gergo Csibra wrote: Thursday, January 21, 2010, 12:53:09 AM, Jeff wrote: On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Gergo Csibra wrote: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 11:41:48 PM, Michiel wrote: Forget about virtualization! ... Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. Well. Why do you use computer? There're slide-rule. You can calculate anything with that... Pretty crappy analogy. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean it is production ready. Yes. It was an exaggeration. But saying virtualisation isn't for any real job is ROTFL. Every computer system is bigger than a PC is virtualised. Yes for asterisk virtualisation is not an option because of context switching, but for a webserver, other file and application server or database is OK. -- Best regards, Gergomailto:csi...@gmail.com -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Felix Tiefenthaler tiefenthale...@gmail.com wrote: Now my big question: What kind of virtualization should I run on the Server? I have already used VMware ESXi and Proxmox. It would be very nice if there was a way to make snapshots (for backup purposes). If you are dead set on virtualization, you can use Xen and a paravirtualized Linux install (either CentOS or Debian). In your Xen setup, you can assign the TDM card to your Asterisk virtual machine, and you can either draw your timing from that, or you can use the internal timing mechanisms of asterisk 1.6.1 or later (res_timing_pthread or res_timing_timerfd). Additionally, you can easily obtain Xen-ified kernel headers which will allow you to compile DAHDI on your virtual machine. For a good resource, check out Saghul's Xenified Asterisk presentation from Astricon 2009. ( http://www.astricon.net/2009/astricon/presentation/irontec/index.htm) However, if you've got nothing else running on that linux box except the network monitoring, it's rather easy to setup asterisk to run alongside the the netmon software. This will eliminate alot of potential headaches you may run into down the line, as well as allow you to follow several of the simple how-to guides out there. -- Thanks, --Warren Selby http://www.selbytech.com -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 4:41 PM, Michiel van Baak mich...@vanbaak.infowrote: Virtualisation is nice for test-setups, but thats it. for any real job it's a major pain in the ass and makes stuff bork beyond imagination. You're right, I doubt that whole Amazon cloud thing will ever catch on. ;) Virtualization has it's place in production systems. There are even quite a few people out there (and on this list) which are successfully running asterisk in commercial, virtualized environments. Sure, it takes a lot more work to get working properly, but once it is working properly, you're set. It's just not the easiest path to take, and not necessarily the path the OP should go down unless he's looking for a challenge. -- Thanks, --Warren Selby http://www.selbytech.com -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Jeff LaCoursiere j...@jeff.net wrote: Pretty crappy analogy. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean it is production ready. But then the OP said it wasn't all that important, so I would say go Xen and tell us how it works out. I think you will only have trouble with conferencing, and maybe not even then if the machine is beefy enough and unloaded. Monitoring servers are usually pretty unloaded. I probably should have put all my thoughts on this matter into one email, but that's what I get for reading down the line and replying as I get to things. Sorry for the multiple posts from me on the same topic! I just wanted to add that in Asterisk 1.6.1 and 1.6.2, new internal timing mechanisms were introduced (res_timing_pthread and res_timing_timerfd) which allow you to get away from using DAHDI as your timing source. DAHDI is still required for the MeetMe conference bridge application however, which is why in Asterisk 1.6.2, the new ConfBridge() application was introduced, which is not supposed to depend on DAHDI. I haven't had a chance to play around with this new application yet, but from all reports, it seems to be working as intended. -- Thanks, --Warren Selby http://www.selbytech.com -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] Virtual Asterisk Installation
On 01/20/2010 11:28 PM, Felix Tiefenthaler wrote: Hi all! I've been reading this list for a few weeks and now this is my first post. :-) I'm planning to build a new VoIP telephone system at our company. It's just a small company with not more than 3-4 employees. The telephone system is not so important for us because each employee has it's own mobile phone. Because our company is a small one, we don't want to/we can't buy an expensive phone system. So we are going to use Asterisk. Additionally we don't want to obtain extra hardware. We have already a Server running with Linux (for Network monitoring). Because it's a waste to use this Server just for monitoring I thought about virtualizing. Now I want to run a machine with monitoring and a machine with Asterisk on this Server. I already bought a ISDN Card (berofix 400) with a S0 module. Now my big question: What kind of virtualization should I run on the Server? I have already used VMware ESXi and Proxmox. It would be very nice if there was a way to make snapshots (for backup purposes). I read about clock problems (physical time != virtual time) and so on. If I'm right this does not matter when using OpenVZ but when using KVM, XEN, ESX, ... Please tell me your opinion. I definitely want to run the Asterisk via virtualization - so we have to find a solution for this ;-) Thank you very much! felix i never tried it for real, but i'm in the progress of setting up a PBX system and decided to go with a dedicated box since i need more pci slots then my regular virtualised box could provide. However, i have heard that many have succesfully used asterisk on a VServer, which i usually use when installing new services. have some old notes in the link below and the testing setup worked fine. VServer is more an advanced chroot so i don't think you will have the problems some mentioned when going for the heavier virtualisation types like Xen. just make sure the card is reachable inside the guest http://doku.songshu.org/doku.php?id=debian_lenny_asterisk -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
