Server capacity recomendations

[ambiorixg12]

Hi I'm plaining to install vicidial for a 40 seat inbound outbound blended solution with calls recording on VPS I want to use a single server for this task

I really appreciate your recomendations for example CPU, RAM etc and any other technical aspect to take under consideration

thanks in advance!

[ambiorixg12]

Any thought ?

[MJCoate]

Hello,

1) VICIdial will not virtualize so you shouldn't use a VPS. It has to run on bare metal or you will encounter problems.

2) The minimum requirements for a server are a quad-core 2.4 GHz processor, 4 GB RAM, two 70 GB HDD in hardware RAID 1, 10/100 ethernet and a CD-ROM drive for installation (though you could just load the ISO into a bootable USB and forego the CD drive).

3) You're going to need several servers to support 40 agents. The rule of thumb to follow is 25 agents per server and you'll need to make a cluster for anything over 25. So you'll need at the least a web/DB server and two telephony. Though if you're going to grow I would suggest making a full cluster and have 1 DB, 1 web and 2 telephony servers.

[williamconley]

Hello,

1) VICIdial will not virtualize so you shouldn't use a VPS. It has to run on bare metal or you will encounter problems.

2) The minimum requirements for a server are a quad-core 2.4 GHz processor, 4 GB RAM, two 70 GB HDD in hardware RAID 1, 10/100 ethernet and a CD-ROM drive for installation (though you could just load the ISO into a bootable USB and forego the CD drive).

3) You're going to need several servers to support 40 agents. The rule of thumb to follow is 25 agents per server and you'll need to make a cluster for anything over 25. So you'll need at the least a web/DB server and two telephony. Though if you're going to grow I would suggest making a full cluster and have 1 DB, 1 web and 2 telephony servers.

The minimum requirements are Pentium III with 500M RAM at 1.0Ghz. I know this because we ran that server for six years. However, that's only if you have 1 or 2 agents. But we have a couple Celeron single CPU systems and several dual core systems still in operation. Our Standard Servers, however, are 2.33+ Ghz, 2G RAM, 150G HD, Quad Core Intel-based systems and work (rule of thumb) for up to 25 agents.

There is NO minimum requirement that has anything to do with RAID. Mirror slows down operations and RAID10 is what should be used if you really want to RAID at all and intend to push the server(s) hard. There are plenty of suggestions, including system buildout suggestions, in the Vicidial Manager's Manual available FREE at EFLO.net (although if you intend to build a call center around this software, the best investment you can make is a copy of the FULL Manager's Manual which will allow you to avoid paying someone for 300 pages worth of "how do I do this?")

[jbs00023]

Following on this discussion. Our current setup:

GoAutoDial CE 2.0
Asterisk 1.4.27.1-1 RPM by demian@goautodial.com built by root @ go-desktop on a i686 running Linux on 2010-07-21 12:11:31 UTC
Server: Core i5 3.10GHz, with 8GB Ram

For the past few years we've been running in a virtualized environment fine until now. Our number of agents have increased from 20 to 30 (we are planning on doubling that in the next year), and encountering constant issues, such as:

[Apr 28 09:10:12] WARNING[32091]: channel.c:953 __ast_queue_frame: Exceptionally long voice queue length queuing to Local/8600073
and
MySQL connection attempts exceeded
etc.

I realize this is hardware resource related and my plan is to install a ViciBox cluster ie. 1 x DB, 1 x Web, 2 x Telephony. I have the following server which I want to virtualize to run this cluster:
Dell PowerEdger R710, 2 x Xeon QC 2.25GHz, 32GB Ram, 5 x 300GB SAS 10k drives (RAID 10 with 1 hot spare)
DB VM: 12Gb Ram
Web VM: 2GB Ram
Telephone x 2 VM: 8Gb Ram each

I've read multiple posts suggesting not to run it virtualized, so my questions are:
1. How imperative is it NOT to run it virtualized?
2. Is my config above for the cluster optimal?

[williamconley]

The concept of building a multi-server cluster in a single piece of hardware is ... completely bonkers. It's like putting walls in your car (almost literally). You will not get more seats by building walls. But you will make it more difficult for people to climb through the extra doors to get to their own compartment.

Attempting to save $$ by skimping on the server hardware for a call center is best referred to as "penny wise and pound foolish" IMHO.

Sharing the CPUs via virtualization is designed to allow many applications/servers that often have serious idle time to share the same physical hardware. Vicidial will take up the entire system when using a single server solution without any waste.

Is there a reason you don't just build out a Two or Three server physical cluster? Of course, if your present physical server is holding 20 agents with virtualized Vididial before it breaks down, it's entirely possible it would hold 40-60 agents if you put Vicibox directly on the server and removed the virtualization.

[Scripts]

the last post was 2016 ... and it's already 2018


may i know with the latest version of Vicidial, what is the minimum hardware requirements then?

[williamconley]

the last post was 2016 ... and it's already 2018


may i know with the latest version of Vicidial, what is the minimum hardware requirements then?

Technically, this will run on a PII with 512M RAM. But ...

Same concept as a car, once again. Depends on your personal usage. A person who needs a fast car for commuting on the autobahn would hopefully realize they don't really need the same car as a worker in NYC who will never exceed 35MPH on the inner city streets while trying to find parking as they get closer to work.

There are hundreds (thousands?) of models available. Knowing which one you need requires information about ... YOU.

So, start here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=36123

And consider the installation PDF on Vicibox.com. It has some detailed information which may interest you. You may want to start with a virtual/sandbox server to get an idea of what this software is all about. You can use the virtual server for a single agent to "proof of concept" this system before diving in to your actual hardware purchase.

Install with the PDF instructions at Vicibox.com. Then configure with the Vicidial Manager's Manual available at EFLO.net.

[Scripts]

thanks williamconley for the info

[Op3r]

There was a problem with dell servers before so we stayed away from that. I think its because asterisk doesnt like dell (circa 2006 or so)

The main rule is: since vicidial is free, you don't skimp out on the hardware. if you do heavy dialing like having a dial ratio of 4 with full recording you gotta mitigate the risk of downtime.

[Scripts]

There was a problem with dell servers before so we stayed away from that. I think its because asterisk doesnt like dell (circa 2006 or so)

The main rule is: since vicidial is free, you don't skimp out on the hardware. if you do heavy dialing like having a dial ratio of 4 with full recording you gotta mitigate the risk of downtime.

wow!!

really, i didn't know that ... i mean in my own understanding that Dell doesn't like opensource but only branded lol


well, this is new to me ... and good thing most of our servers are Cisco then we have recently purchase an HP Proliant. it's only in the workstation that we use Dell ..


i just keep this in mind

[williamconley]

we use ONLY dell for everything above "standard" server. never had a compatibility problem. We have several clients who HP and we haven't seen a difference at all during installation or daily use.

of course, since we have a single server family all our parts are interchangeable (and most are hot-swap in the Dells).

our standard servers are all hand-built with the same motherboard (and of course interchangeable stock parts for the rest). we chose that motherboard specifically because it was compatible with Vicibox's installation .iso image "way back when".

[mflorell]

There have been a whole host of issues that plagued Dell over the years, I could go on and on for quite a few typed pages about all of the Dell-specific problems we've run into, which is why we steer clear of them now. We only use SuperMicro servers in our hosted infrastructure. They are better made and have a much lower failure rate than Dells, which is what's most important to us.

[williamconley]

There have been a whole host of issues that plagued Dell over the years, I could go on and on for quite a few typed pages about all of the Dell-specific problems we've run into, which is why we steer clear of them now. We only use SuperMicro servers in our hosted infrastructure. They are better made and have a much lower failure rate than Dells, which is what's most important to us.

LOL: We've had the exact opposite here. We've had three SuperMicro servers sent by clients (and one we purchased because it seemed like a good idea at the time). All have died horrible miserable deaths. Motherboard issues. Memory issues. Core system failures - not HD or fan stuff.

We have had about a dozen clients with SuperMicro servers at their location (still have a few). Three or four have had to send them back for service. One specifically has had to send the same server's motherboard back for service more than once and had to flash the bios on the final server immediately upon receipt to get the latest Vicibox installer to run on it.

But we've never had a problem with our Dells. Admittedly, like our Standard Servers, we don't experiment with a lot of Dell models. We've only had four models tested, all succeeded, and we don't buy random models. So we may have just gotten lucky by sticking with the "dang there are a lot of this model on the street!" models and avoiding anything brand new/cutting edge.

This includes our new favorite 40-core servers (80 core with hyperthreading turned on). We love those.

[dspaan]

We've always been running fine on Dell and now we're running without problems on SuperMicro but of course we don't have as many servers as the Vicidial group or Poundteam