VICIdial/VICIbox setup and scale

[Rudolfmdlt]

Hi All,

My linux/asterisk background is set in asterisk and PBX's. I install these from scratch on Centos and add FreePBX where required and convenient. I have done one Vicidial setup as a favor for a friend, 15 agents on predictive dialing. I have now been asked to do a proof of concept for 50 agents with the aim of scaling to 100 agents.

My questions relate to what is the best way to install a Vicidial system (scratch compiling or preconfigured Iso's) and how well it scales. Like I said, I am used to doing things from scratch, but I've hit my head twice now trying it from scratch so I've downloaded the Vicibox Server disc.

How well does Vicibox server play with things like software raid1 or other custom partitions? Do I need to set these up before the os-install script or during the install? (I had to dd my 1 TB drive again last night. )
How hard is it to change the IP Addresses of the Vici cluster after the setup is done? My reasoning was that if I did everything from scratch then I could change the cluster configuration ect. But now that I have resorted to the ViciBox disc and all the "magic" happens in the background I feel powerless as to how to modify the setup? The reason I ask is that i have a dedicated development subnet that I use for all setups, but I will have to change all of this on the customer site. The Vicibox Install guide makes it clear that it is incredibly hard to modify a system once it is configured.

Thank you for your feedback and time, I really appreciate any advice or pointers!

Regards,

Rudolf

[Vince-0]

You're going to need at least 3 servers for 100 agents - 1x beefy DB/Web, 2x Asterisk and consider a large FTP storage server for recordings and backups.

Here's the install manual from vicibox.com:
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... nstall.pdf

I recommend:
Hardware SAS RAID 10 on the DB, SATA RAID 1 on Asterisk servers.
Vicibox ISO

To change server IP for software:
/usr/share/astguiclient/ADMIN_update_server_ip.pl

Server configs in front-end:
Admin->Servers (This is configured when you install additional servers)

App configs (server IP, FTP, Reports, DB) per server:
/etc/astguiclient.conf - This is automatically configured with initial vicibox-install command or any subsequent upgrades via source directory's install.pl.

--
Vin.

[Rudolfmdlt]

Hello Vin,

I have a HP DL380p for Web and DB (Raid1 with hot spare) and two DL 320's for dialers. After the PoC we will redo the system with an archive server.

I have read a lot of what you have mentioned - it just seems too easy! Thank you for your reply.

Have you or anyone else done a software Raid on Vici - it's my first time ever dealing with the Yast installer and it's not quite clear. The recordings are important to us, so I want to raid all the dialers. Does Vici play well with software RAID's?

Thanks again for your time and your reply!

Regards,

Rudolf

[Kumba]

ViciBox v.5.0 is based on OpenSuSE v.12.3. There is nothing intrinsically unique about the operating system other then it having a few seeded configuration files and some perl programs to make sure that ViciDial gets installed correctly. It would be like if you had a bash script to download, compile, and install Asterisk that you ran on top of your scratch-built installs. It does make setting up and using ViciDial/ViciBox easy but that kind of was the point. If you really want to dive in head first then there is a document included in the SVN source code called scratch install that goes over all the steps and gotchas to get ViciDial running. Most people look at it then decide to just use ViciBox instead. OpenSuSE has a few installer quirks, most notably with the automated partitioner, but once it's installed it has a history of being as solid as the hardware it's on. This is taken from my own experience with around 300 servers under my direct control as well as all my client experiences.

There are no magic hoops or hurdles put in your way when changing the IPs used on a cluster. You will need to use /usr/share/astguiclient/ADMIN_update_server_ip.pl and follow it's queues. You will need to manually edit /etc/astguiclient.conf to point to the new archive server if you are using one, and if your telephony servers are behind a firewall then you will need to edit the externip directive in /etc/asterisk/sip.conf to have the correct external IP. These are all steps you would have with ViciDial regardless of whether it was a scratch-built system or built with ViciBox. The only vicibox specific steps you would have would be editing the 'vicibox' table in the database to have the correct IP addresses of all the servers in the cluster. This table is used by the installer to pull in settings and make sure that the new servers have the correct SVN revision installed. It's for this reason that we recommend you install ViciBox Clusters in their final network environment. You can do the Phase 1 setup which is installing the OS remotely but Phase 2 we recommend you have the servers in place ahead of time. If you have your own sandbox it might be easy enough to set-up a network similar to the clients for the install. That way you don't have to re-ip them when you move them.

If you read the documentation that was already linked on this thread it had a dimensioning guide in it along with recommended server specs. ViciDial and ViciBox work just fine with Linux MD RAIDs. Here is the OpenSuSE documentation for creating software raids with the partitioner: http://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/h ... ystem.raid

Basically all you do is create the Linux RAID partitions on the disk per the instructions above, then go to the RAID tab where you can create the various software RAIDs. It's pretty straight forward once you know you have to define the partitions to use for a RAID first.

[Rudolfmdlt]

Hello Kumba,

In short, Thank You. I've got my cluser up and running. Hardware raid on the DL 380 DB and Webserver, and two dialers on the DL 320's in software raid. Yast was something to get used to.

Anyway, a big thanks again Vince, Kumba! It was more an issue of trust than technicality at the end of the day!

Thanks for your time and information,

Regards,

Rudolf