High CPU usage on Asterisk 16

[RBecker]

Hey all,
Just set up a new cluster a couple weeks ago and have been having issues with CPU usage/load once the system gets busy. I have three agent servers, scratch install on AlmaLinux 8.9, with Asterisk 16.30.1-vici, chan_sip, MeetMe, and on SVN 3805. They are VMs with 8GB RAM and 16 vCPU. Campaigns are dialing on Ratio with dial levels between 5-8, AMD is on, and all agents are using ViciPhone. Once one of the servers has about 10 agents and 90-110 channels on it, Asterisk's CPU usage tends to spike up repeatedly and stay high, sometimes causing load of 10-20 or more for brief periods. Once a few agents sign out and channel counts drop back down, the system performs fine again. This high load is causing choppy audio and some delays on 3-way/transfer calls. Wondering if there's anything specific I need to be doing for Asterisk 16 that might help alleviate this. Interestingly, I noticed that the install.pl script does not load a modules.conf for Asterisk. I copied one over from one of my ViciBox systems with Ast 13, and that seemed to calm load down significantly with less agents signed on.

As a point of reference, I have a much larger cluster running a mix of ViciBox 9 and 10, all on Asterisk 13, and I'm not seeing the same issues under similar agent counts.

[carpenox]

Its the VM, stay away from them altogether

[williamconley]

you know, you can downgrade asterisk. or you could install a fresh server in the same cluster with an older vicibox to get the lower asterisk without the learning curve. any version of Vicibox (old or new) can install the latest viciDIAL to maintain cluster compatibility for testing. if you think it's asterisk 16 vs 13, it's worth a shot.