Asterisk maximum channels

[muyousif]

Hi experts, due to power, cooling and space issue it is not possible for us to implement small telephony servers each containing small number of agents, I have read on many topics as this is a recommended way to distribute agents. What if I use a big server for large number of agents like 100 on 16 core processor with amfeltec pcie card, what are the techcinal issues / possibilities in doing this?. Currently I have 65 agents on a 16 core processor and asterisk is running fine (it has not been crashed for a single time), we are only having voice distortion issue despite the fact network is fine. So 500 channels or more on single server can cause voice distortion?? any experience about such situation..

VERSION: 2.12-493a
BUILD: 150703-2105
© 2015 ViciDial Group

One DB, one Web, 4 Telephony servers with no extra card. Default vicibox installation. Total agents 200

[mflorell]

How much space do you have exactly?

Yes, you will see voice distortion and other issues using a single Asterisk server at high load levels, because Asterisk does not scale well on a single server.

[muyousif]

Space is enough. 250 GB and only 40 GB is used.

but if server load is only 2 out of 16 then we can assume there should not be any issue of voice distortion because of server no matter how many channels are in use on asterisk like 1000?

[mflorell]

LOL, not storage space, I meant how much physical space do you have. You said you didn't have enough space for more servers.

The load is somewhat irrelevant when it comes to open ports on the machine, you can only have 65000 per machine, so that is one of the limitations. Also there are other resources that are limited on a per machine basis.

[muyousif]

ah sorry. Actually space is not a single issue, Pakistan is in serious power crisis, we have too much power load shading on daily basis, low voltage and etc so It is easy for us to look after minimum number of servers instead of caring about large number of servers. Our server room is already crowded enough. Lol

Really the thing I am trying to catch is "the ability to get the maximum performance of a machine" like people do with stress testing using sipp etc. Is there any general recommendations / guidelines to test the machine load / performance so we can be sure up to these number of agents and with xyz dialing ratio and xyz maximum trunks this machine going to perform well... We are two part of a team one is related to Network and second is related to Servers. So in voice distortion case we are trying to specify the problem either it is related with network or server. Network is stable, no packet loss, very low latency, maximum upload and download, so the rest remaining is Server. As you mentioned limitation of ports also can you guide me how to test such resources??

[williamconley]

Have you verified that the distortion is not the carrier? IE: Using at least one other carrier for confirmation ...

What codec are you using?

Core count is only part of the server ... what about Speed? Memory? Memory Speed? Front Side Bus Speed? Buffer sizes for CPU? Temperature of Cores and chassis interior?

Number of agents is good information, but only part of the picture. How many lines per agent? How many lines total on the server with 65 Agents? And note that the number of active lines can greatly impact call quality even if the number of agents remains stable, so the number of the lines During Distortion is worth checking.