Hardware Requirements

[medk]

Hello,

What's the typical hardware configuration for a server running vicidial 2.9-441a / goautodial 3.3 with the following:
- 35 seats,
- Call Recording: all force (record every call)
- Auto Dial Level: 6
- Using g729 + uLaw/aLaw

Thanks.

[Vince-0]

Run the latest version.
Here are details on specs:

http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibox/server/ViciBox_v7-Install.pdf

[mattyou1985]

ViciDial scales horizontally for all roles except the Database. For this reason, you will need to spend
extra time deciding on the hardware specifications of your Database server. The specifications we
recommend for a database server up to 150 agents is as follows:
•
Quad-Core CPU 2.0Ghz+
•
8GB ECC Ram
•
2-drive 240GB+ SSD (Intel 530, 730, etc) configured in RAID-1 on a Linux software RAID or
SSD-optimized raid card (LSI FastPath MegaRAID, etc)
•
Redundant Power Supplies with each on a different battery back-up
To add to the above specification for handling up to 300 agents would be as follows:
•
Two Quad-Core CPU 2.0Ghz+
•
16GB ECC Ram
•
Two Separate 500GB enterprise-grade SATA drive for the OS in a RAID-1
For a 500 agent Database server, adding to the specification, would be as follows:
•
Two Hex-Core CPU 2.0Ghz+
•
32GB+ ECC Ram
•
4-Drive 240GB+ RAID-10 on SSD (Intel 530, 730, etc) with SSD-optimized RAID card (LSI
FastPath MegaRAID, etc) or Linux software RAID
•
Two Separate 500GB enterprise-grade SATA drive for the OS in a RAID-1

[williamconley]

Hello,

What's the typical hardware configuration for a server running vicidial 2.9-441a / goautodial 3.3 with the following:
- 35 seats,
- Call Recording: all force (record every call)
- Auto Dial Level: 6
- Using g729 + uLaw/aLaw

Thanks.

You'll likely want:
* 1 DB server, 8 cores @ or above 2.3Ghz, 8G RAM, 4 Drive 15K SAS RAID10 array with at least 150G total available space when built, and a separate 1T or larger drive for archiving of audio files (Technically the audio archive can be on any FTP server in the universe, but local is popular with a remote mirror for backup).
* 2 Dialer/Web servers: at least 4 cores @ or above 2.3Ghz, 8 cores would be better. 2G RAM (8G would be better). 150G HD would be nice so you can avoid FTP of audio files until after hours.

You could also consider a 4th server that would be Web Only and remove web from the dialers. That would only need 4 cores.

[covarrubiasgg]

You'll likely want:
* 1 DB server, 8 cores @ or above 2.3Ghz, 8G RAM, 4 Drive 15K SAS RAID10 array with at least 150G total available space when built, and a separate 1T or larger drive for archiving of audio files (Technically the audio archive can be on any FTP server in the universe, but local is popular with a remote mirror for backup).
* 2 Dialer/Web servers: at least 4 cores @ or above 2.3Ghz, 8 cores would be better. 2G RAM (8G would be better). 150G HD would be nice so you can avoid FTP of audio files until after hours.

You could also consider a 4th server that would be Web Only and remove web from the dialers. That would only need 4 cores.

Sorry for the thread hijack.

Is it better 1 x DB + 2 x Asterisk/Web, than 1x DB/Web + 2 x Asterisk?

Since 2009 I have been using DB/Web and when i start pushing to 100 agents i split DB and Web into dedicated servers, but lately i have to split with less and less agents, 80 agents, then 60 agents, today i struggled with a 50 agents setup, i guess the application is getting heavier and heavier on every release, so, do you think a 1 x DB + 2 x Asterisk/Web would be a better solution (specially if the asterisks servers are an overkill Xeon E5 Octacore)?


Or what do you think about: 1 x DB / Load Balancer HAproxy + 2 x Asterisk / Web ?

[williamconley]

This is more of an individualized thing. Except: ultimately any server that only provides ONE role will be at it's optimum behavior as the roles tend to interfere with each other.

Challenge being that one role rarely fits one server perfectly, so there's waste. Larger cluster, more servers required for each role = less waste. So you have to balance it on your own based on your usage.

I will say that the biggest loads are:
* Dialer
* DB
Keeping the Dialer limited to Dialer Only is usually a first step on a major system as this is the biggest first problem. After your system grows to require more than one dedicated Dialer... the DB is usually the next challenge. So dedicated DB becomes a requirement. And at that point, your Web is dedicated simply because it's not one of the other two. But you CAN still put a couple agents on the web server for "dialer" purposes to help reduce the load on a dialer if you're in the process of adding a new dialer, but have not yet done so and need to reduce the load on a dialer slightly. Eventually, however, you will even need more than one Web server.

Web proxy for load balancing can add extra CPU usage (ie: waste) for the purpose of load balancing, thus defeating the purpose for its existence. Perhaps a more simplistic approach to balance the number of users logged in to each server for agent web, if you actually require more than one web server. Or perhaps a "login check" to see which server has the least load right now ... and forward the agent to that server. Thus each time an agent logs out/in, balancing occurs based on cpu average server load. Similar to the Vicidial Dialer load balancer that's built in.

As a more direct answer: You can certainly try your suggested buildout, but you should be flexible and test it both/several ways and see which is/are best for you. In the end, you will find that dedicated dialers are much more powerful than dialers that share any other process. Much.

[covarrubiasgg]

Thanks for your detailed answers, as usual you are a pro

For sure, with bigger setups dedicated roles is a must, but all this time for setups less then 80 agents i used to have multi-roles servers, usually DB/Web, but i think i have to change my "policy" or my "rule of the thumb" and start thinking in dedicated roles from the very beginning of the cluster to avoid any issues.

For this specific setup i will give it a try with 1x DB + 2 x Dialer/Web (with manual balancing, "this row to server A and this row to server B", two dialers is an overkill for this campaign (less than 80 calls overall) but this was more for redundancy than for load balancing, so i will test if Dialer/Web will work, otherwise, dedicated web server ASAP.

Again, thank you

[williamconley]

You've been here long enough: It's time for you to look at phone aliases and automatic load balancing.

Use the bulk phone adder tool to create 10 aliased phones. Be sure they do not in any way interfere with your existing phone extensions, use a whole new range. You'll then register the agents phones to a sip account on Each Server. The agent will log in ... to the Alias. Then the Vicidial system will determine which server is the least busy and call the agent on that SIP account from that server (the least busy).

You no longer have to manually balance row to row. Vicidial will balance all day long as agents log in and out. (For those 10 agents).

Once you "got it" for those 10, obviously you'll want to spread that out for the entire enterprise.

Next up: Web load balancing. Important when you begin to run low on ports (100+ agents per server tends to hit the limit).