Vicidial Hardware Recommendation - Detailed!

[henry]

Hi,

I've been looking into the optimum, current, hardware to setup Vicidial in a production environment and am looking for some advice from the experts!

I have looked at the Dell and HP rack servers which are comparable hardware. The HP server is similar in price when you look at the link below but that does not include the SAS hard disks or the extra 1Gb of RAM to bring it to the 2GB included with the Dell.

Both have dual integrated Ethernet cards and PCI SAS controllers - any tips on whether these could cause IRQ latency problems?

They also have 15,000RPM SAS disks with dual core xenons and I would run them with 2Gb of RAM in each machine.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm ... 48235.html

http://www.vcconnect.co.uk/The_PowerEdge_860.htm

I would look to buy 5 of these in total (3 Asterisk/Vicidial servers, 1 database and 1 webserver, though I may move 1Gb of RAM from the web server to the database server). These would be mounted in a rack with a dedicated PSU and connected to a gigabit Ethernet switch.

It's also quite likely that I would get a single quad E1 card with echo cancellation for one of the servers if we need to connect to PRI lines, otherwise I'd get cheaper hardware cards for each of the asterisk/vicidial servers. (would the X100P still match up to this hardware?)

I would greatly appreciate any tips on the hardware selections I've made if anyone has experience with these or similar models of Dell/HP hardware.

Also, when reading Asterisk: TFOT there is a great deal of the early chapters devoted to discussing hardware optimisation for asterisk machines including removing any IRQ devices using the BIOS. Any ideas about how that might apply to the servers above or will APIC control in the kernel be the place to look for this activity for these machines?

In total I would expect these machines to support around 60 concurrent users with full call recording. External dialling would take place over IAX2 trunks using GSM with internal users on a/ulaw.

I'm not completely sure how to hook the internal users up yet due to the following considerations:
- the existing PCs have onboard sound cards which are untested. I saw that enjay had to purchase PCI sound cards to get an acceptable sound quality in 1 installation.
- Do hardware phones offer significant improvements in sound quality (even if you’re using cheap analogue phones with ATAs/Channel banks) or can you obtain the same voice quality by using high quality PC headsets?

Any advice you can give me on my plan would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Henry

[mflorell]

Hi,
I have looked at the Dell and HP rack servers which are comparable hardware. The HP server is similar in price when you look at the link below but that does not include the SAS hard disks or the extra 1Gb of RAM to bring it to the 2GB included with the Dell.

Both have dual integrated Ethernet cards and PCI SAS controllers - any tips on whether these could cause IRQ latency problems?

Shouldn't cause any noticable issues

They also have 15,000RPM SAS disks with dual core xeons and I would run them with 2Gb of RAM in each machine.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm ... 48235.html

http://www.vcconnect.co.uk/The_PowerEdge_860.htm

I would look to buy 5 of these in total (3 Asterisk/Vicidial servers, 1 database and 1 webserver, though I may move 1Gb of RAM from the web server to the database server). These would be mounted in a rack with a dedicated PSU and connected to a gigabit Ethernet switch.

The database server should have the most RAM, I would recommend 4GB minimum for a 100+ seat call center.

The web server can be a lower powered machine, even a single core P4 1.6 GHz can handle 100+ seats if eaccelerator is installed.

It's also quite likely that I would get a single quad E1 card with echo cancellation for one of the servers if we need to connect to PRI lines, otherwise I'd get cheaper hardware cards for each of the asterisk/vicidial servers. (would the X100P still match up to this hardware?)

The X100P does not work in newer Dells as I found out on one of my client's machines, also it's not available in PCIExpress. For your PCIexpress machines you would have to get something like the Sangoma A200X analog adapter(you wouldn't actually be using the analog ports) or about $300 for each machine.

I would greatly appreciate any tips on the hardware selections I've made if anyone has experience with these or similar models of Dell/HP hardware.

I don't recommend Dell, I've recently burned up two Dell servers that were brand new(yes they were on power conditioning) they just couldn't handle high load. I usually recommend custom built Supermicro or Asus servers. I've had very good luck with them.

Also, when reading Asterisk: TFOT there is a great deal of the early chapters devoted to discussing hardware optimisation for asterisk machines including removing any IRQ devices using the BIOS. Any ideas about how that might apply to the servers above or will APIC control in the kernel be the place to look for this activity for these machines?

A lot of that is based on earlier problems with Digium PCI cards, they have gotten better, but Sangoma offers a compatibility guarantee if you want to go that route. One other note is that Digium currently does not offer PCIexpress cards.

In total I would expect these machines to support around 60 concurrent users with full call recording. External dialling would take place over IAX2 trunks using GSM with internal users on a/ulaw.

How many lines-per-agent would you want? Is this inbound/outbound/blended?

I'm not completely sure how to hook the internal users up yet due to the following considerations:
- the existing PCs have onboard sound cards which are untested. I saw that enjay had to purchase PCI sound cards to get an acceptable sound quality in 1 installation.
- Do hardware phones offer significant improvements in sound quality (even if you’re using cheap analogue phones with ATAs/Channel banks) or can you obtain the same voice quality by using high quality PC headsets?

For softphones, what are the specs on the agent computers? Will they run windows or Linux? how fast/how much RAM?

For agents in a single call center I recommend channelbanks, you get great voice quality and almost no configuration or maintenance costs, no configuring of anything if a single phone goes down, just replace the cheap analog phone.

Any advice you can give me on my plan would be greatly appreciated!

Just need some more information on how you will be taking/placing calls. For an outbound call center dialing at 3-lines-per-agent you will not be able to sustain 60 agents per server if you are recording all calls and using GSM codec for your outbound lines.

[Op3r]

Here's a suggestion which I also applies to my clients.

get a dual xeon for your database

get a pentium dual core for your httpd

and now

1 Core 2 duo asterisk server per 12 agents.

it works for me and minimizes my problems and it is ultrastable.

one catch though, I have a lot of servers to administers to

[henry]

Hi Matt, 0p3r,

Thanks for all your help with this one. I’m sure you can understand I want to get the hardware right first time!

I don’t think I explained very well how the calling would take place in my last post. I would aim for the 3 vicidial/asterisk servers, 1 web server and 1 database server to cope with 60 agents in total with 20 on each asterisk/vicidial box. They would mostly be making outbound calls at a ratio of between 1 and 4 but there will likely be times when they are also blended with inbound campaigns.

Thank you for pointing out that the x100p cards aren’t PCIe or PCI-X compatible. The Sangoma A200x does look like the best value PCIe card around. An alternative would be to balance E1 connections out to each of the 3 asterisk/vicidial servers and put a more expensive card like the Sangoma A101 SINGLE (1 PORT) T1/E1/J1 in each of them to hook them up to the E1 lines. This card doesn’t appear to have hardware echo cancellation as an option though, is that likely to write off the value of using single port E1 cards in each server as opposed to a dual or quad port card in one server and redundant timing cards in the others?

Another question I have from reading more about the telephony cards is the size and way they fit into rack mountable server chassis. The Sangoma A200x specification states "Dimensions: 2U Form factor: 120 mm x 55 mm for use in restricted chassis. Short 2U compatible mounting clips available for installation in 2U rack-mount servers." – (this might be a stupid question, but) does that mean it won’t fit in a 1U rack server? Even if the PCIe/x riser allows the card to be mounted horizontally?

I’ve also looked into the Supermicro and Asus servers you suggested. They do look like good quality machines, I guess the price will reflect that but the cost of system downtime can quickly exceed hardware costs! Was it the processor that burned up on the Dells you had trouble with? How long had they been running for? Did Dell replace/refund them? I’ll ask a UK distributor for a quote on Supermicro and Asus servers with similar specs to the Dell and HP.

The client PCs that will be using the server are a range of 3 types of HP machines with the following specs:
- 1.5GHz to 2.5GHz processors
- Windows XP SP2
- From 128MB to 512MB memory

I can see that the level of confusion for staff would be less using analogue phones and you seem to have had positive experiences using them so far. The problem I’ll find is that this would add significantly the cost of the project since we would only need decent headsets for the softphones whereas we would need channel banks (possibly with telephony cards too?), analogue phones and headsets with the alternative structure. The best idea might be for me to test the sound quality on each of the types of PCs with a decent headset using a development asterisk box first. I guess vicidial itself won’t be affected by the differences between softphones and hardphones.

Thanks again for all your help.

Henry

[aster1]

If your asterisk machines and agent machines are on same lan then you can definitely use softphones and good quality headsets .Sound quality is pretty good on them too .

[mflorell]

I don’t think I explained very well how the calling would take place in my last post. I would aim for the 3 vicidial/asterisk servers, 1 web server and 1 database server to cope with 60 agents in total with 20 on each asterisk/vicidial box. They would mostly be making outbound calls at a ratio of between 1 and 4 but there will likely be times when they are also blended with inbound campaigns.

OK, that is better, I thought you meant 60-per-server. you should be able to handle 20 agents on those servers with no issues.

Thank you for pointing out that the x100p cards aren’t PCIe or PCI-X compatible. The Sangoma A200x does look like the best value PCIe card around. An alternative would be to balance E1 connections out to each of the 3 asterisk/vicidial servers and put a more expensive card like the Sangoma A101 SINGLE (1 PORT) T1/E1/J1 in each of them to hook them up to the E1 lines. This card doesn’t appear to have hardware echo cancellation as an option though, is that likely to write off the value of using single port E1 cards in each server as opposed to a dual or quad port card in one server and redundant timing cards in the others?

Hardware echo cancellation is usually not needed if you are using PRI circuits, the A101s do not currently offer EC, but they also are not available in PCIexpress either.

Another question I have from reading more about the telephony cards is the size and way they fit into rack mountable server chassis. The Sangoma A200x specification states "Dimensions: 2U Form factor: 120 mm x 55 mm for use in restricted chassis. Short 2U compatible mounting clips available for installation in 2U rack-mount servers." – (this might be a stupid question, but) does that mean it won’t fit in a 1U rack server? Even if the PCIe/x riser allows the card to be mounted horizontally?

They will fit vertically in a 2U chasis if the chasis even supports this, horizontally they will fit just fine with a riser in a 1U or 2U.

I’ve also looked into the Supermicro and Asus servers you suggested. They do look like good quality machines, I guess the price will reflect that but the cost of system downtime can quickly exceed hardware costs! Was it the processor that burned up on the Dells you had trouble with? How long had they been running for? Did Dell replace/refund them? I’ll ask a UK distributor for a quote on Supermicro and Asus servers with similar specs to the Dell and HP.

One was a quad processor dual-core-Xeon(8 CPU cores) and two of the CPU cores burned out within 5 weeks.

The other one literally started billowing smoke, it was from something buring out on the motherboard. Of course Dell replaced them, and quickly, but with the time it takes to re-install everything and get it all working again you would save that time and money buying a better quality machine to start with.

The client PCs that will be using the server are a range of 3 types of HP machines with the following specs:
- 1.5GHz to 2.5GHz processors
- Windows XP SP2
- From 128MB to 512MB memory

128MB RAM is not enough, you need 256MB as a bare minimum on WinXP and that is with nothing but the browser and softphone running. One other issue with Windows and a softphone is what happens when the Anti-virus system starts running while on a call, the audio goes to hell.

I can see that the level of confusion for staff would be less using analogue phones and you seem to have had positive experiences using them so far. The problem I’ll find is that this would add significantly the cost of the project since we would only need decent headsets for the softphones whereas we would need channel banks (possibly with telephony cards too?), analogue phones and headsets with the alternative structure. The best idea might be for me to test the sound quality on each of the types of PCs with a decent headset using a development asterisk box first. I guess vicidial itself won’t be affected by the differences between softphones and hardphones.

a good set of USB headsets run about $40, while an analog phone and headset can run about $20, when you factor in $500 for a T1 card and $200 for a channelbank, the channelbank approach is about $10 more expensive, but over time it will save you thousands because of configuration time and the cost of replacement headsets is $10 for the channelbank solution and $40 for the USB headset solution.

One other issue we ran into when we tried headsets and softphones was when an agent stood up and did not take their headset off, they bent the port on the front of the computer which meant it was out of comission for a day and had to be fixed(this happened several times), no such problem with channelbank solution.

You are correct that VICIDIAL doesn't care one way or the other.