VoIP Mailing List Archives

[stotaro at totarotechn...]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Eve-Ellen Cole <ecole at mail.plymouth.edu> wrote:

[stotaro at totarotechn...]

I did basically the same thing via T1 on the Definity. It took a bit
of tinkering on the Definity to get the coverage path right.

For your use, I would go for a RAID 5, dual power supply box with
quite a bit of storage. RAM and CPU should not be an issue with
anything new. I would go with a T1/E1 card with more than one port
just for future possible growth or options. Echo cancellation is
probably not needed but if in the budget, it can never hurt (never say
never, seldomly or rarely I guess is more appropriate). I would
probably go with an HP DL380.

The dialplan should be very simple. It should actually be pretty fun project.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 3:15 PM, Eve-Ellen Cole <ecole at mail.plymouth.edu> wrote:

[bwentdg at pipeline.com]

You Said "I would probably go with an HP DL380."
would you share what drew you to that particular box ?

When i looked at their WEB page there was something like 9 different
RAID Controllers you could chose from.
Seemed hideously confusing to con fig one just to get a price quote on it.
Please share your experience
Steve Totaro wrote:

[rjoffe at yahoo.com]

On Tuesday 18 March 2008 22:12, Steve Totaro wrote:

[stotaro at totarotechn...]

And I can post a link that shows a bunch of guys think the earth is
flat with a 5/10 google ranking also (like the barf guys).
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm

I usually just call my guy at CDW and give him my needs, he is a
former techie gone sales. He puts together a quote and emails it to
me for approval.

I find HP server are very robust and rock solid at a decent price
point (IBM as well). I like the 380 because you get six hot swap scsi
bays and redundant power supplies in a 2u profile, also, Digium and
Sangoma T1 cards have never given me an issue.

Many on this list love Supermicro, I have yet to try them but I will
in the near future. I have not heard a single complaint, only rave
reviews.

I guess my original point was going for redundancy as far as storage
and power supplies with your dollar, not the fastest proc or maxed out
RAM that will not be needed. Regardless of the actual hardware or
RAID setup, that is the angle I suggest you take. 4k - 6k students
will require quite a bit of storage.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 9:38 AM, Ron Joffe <rjoffe at yahoo.com> wrote:

[rjoffe at yahoo.com]

On Wednesday 19 March 2008 10:36, Steve Totaro wrote:

[drew at oanda.com]

Having ventured high enough and far enough to view the curvature of the
Earth and having stayed up late enough long enough (why do disks only
fail at the weekend?) to rebuild and restore RAID 5 sets, I proffer the
following (not so) Humble Opinion .....

Dual power supplies, two thumbs up

but RAID 5 is only good for reducing storage costs on large volumes of
data. It reduces performance and reliability over RAID 1. Don't put the
OS on RAID 5 unless you like rebuilding servers from bare metal. It's
much easier to rebuild and restore the data on RAID 5 sets if the OS is
already up and running.

Your OS and other system critical files (Asterisk) should be on RAID 1
for performance, redundancy and cost reasons.

More disks = higher cost and higher chance of failure.

Asterisk in general does not need much disk storage. The minimum drive
size available in a new server tends to be overkill. Two drives as RAID
1 gives you redundancy and performance. Adding a third drive for RAID 5
adds cost, increases complexity and reduces reliability just to add
storage capacity that you don't really need. (but the reseller WILL make
more money and impress you with their command of the big words and
acronyms on the spec sheet.)

If and only if you need to store many hundreds of gigs of data (eg.
recording a very large volume of calls) then RAID 5 becomes useful (or
RAID 10 or RAID n). You should add this "bulk storage" IN ADDITION TO
the mirrored pair holding the OS.

regards,

Drew
Steve Totaro wrote:

[stotaro at totarotechn...]

RAID arguments (preference really) aside, 4k - 6k worth of student
voicemails is going to require quite a bit of storage space.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 12:01 PM, Drew Gibson <drew at oanda.com> wrote:

[drew at oanda.com]

Our office averages around 1.5MB / mailbox, call it 10MB for rounding.

6,000 x 10MB = 60GB (n'est pas?)

2 x 250GB drives, mirrored, should cover that and the system quite nicely.

regards,

Drew

Disclaimer: Most of our employees are programmers so probably don't have
any friends to call and leave messages!

Steve Totaro wrote:

[stotaro at totarotechn...]

I use standard wav (most compatible with players) so about a meg a minute.

In my experience, most people (users) use their voicemail similar to
email, they keep everything. Especially love struck college kids. I
think Asterisk has a soft limit of 1,000 (maybe it is 999) messages as
the max per inbox that can be changed in source.

I suppose if you limit the max time allowed and the max inbox limit
it might help but I think your 60GB estimate would be quite low in the
real world.

BUT, that is based on when I was in college and I was one of the very
few to have my own cell phone (dating myself a bit). So in the real
world, I am not sure how much use the system would actually see.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 12:33 PM, Drew Gibson <drew at oanda.com> wrote: