Hardware

[gonzalezgjaime]

Hi all, one question, how can i determine what hardware i need for a certain amount of agents on the call center, i am looking on buying a server to install vicidialnow, i have around 100 agents, any help is very much appreciated.

Jaime Gonzalez.

[mflorell]

1 server will most likely not be enough.

Inbound, outbound, blended?

lines to agent ratio?

recording of all calls?

[gonzalezgjaime]

Thank you for your reply, its only outbound predictive dialing, what type of server would you recommend for this???

thanks in advance.

[williamconley]

lines to agent ratio?

recording of all calls?

I don't see answers to either of these. They're kind of important.

If you don't know ... you can always tell us what the call type will be (collections, vacation sales, charitable donations, satellite tv, etc.)

Also: are you going to "broadcast" a message or transfer calls to live agents immediately upon answering by the prospect?

[gonzalezgjaime]

Thanks for your reply, i honestly dont know about the ratio option, as i am trying to get the company to buy the manuals so i am not that familiar with certain terms, but the types of calls we will be making are surveys, and we will not be recording any calls.

We will not be doing any voice broadcasting for now, we will just transfer the call to the agent upon answer.

If i am missing something please let me know, i appreciate your help very much, as i can not make any mistake as to buying this server for the company, thanks again for your support.

Jaime Gonzalez

[williamconley]

OK. Fair enough. Now, what kind of telephone lines will you be using? (VOIP/Sangoma or Digium cards ...?)

How much bandwidth will you have available (if you have VOIP as your trunk choice)?

[gonzalezgjaime]

I will be using VOIP lines SIP trunks, i have 2 dedicated mega of bandwidth, right now i have 35 agents, but i am planing on growing to 100 tops.

Thank you for your help.

[ykhan]

Here's is a very simple analysis method that I use for basic capacity planning:

Evaluate the following

1. Codec to be used: Ulaw (least load), GSM (more load), G729 (most load)

2. Number of Simultaneous calls = Number of agents X Lines per agent

3. Bandwidth Required; Ulaw (90 kbps/call), GSM (30 kbps/call), G729 (24 kbps/call using free version) or (15 kbps/call using paid version)

4. Call recording (All/on demand/never)

Now here are some examples on how to use this information:

Scenario A:
1=Ulaw, 2=20X2=40, 3=90X40=3600 kbps, 4=Never
One server (all in one) with Core 2 Duo or equivalent, 4 GB RAM, 3.5 Mbps bandwidth connection

Scenario B:
1=GSM, 2=20X2=40, 3=30X40=1200 kbps, 4=Never
One server (all in one) with Core 2 Duo or equivalent, 4 GB RAM, 1.5 Mbps bandwidth connection

Scenario C:
1=G729 (free), 2=60X2=120, 3=24X120=2880 kbps, 4=All
Two servers with Quad Core (Asterisk), 6 GB RAM each, 3.0 Mbps bandwidth connection in total
One server with Quad Core (Core 2 Duo might be sufficient for MySQL, Apache and FTP), 4-8 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD or better for recordings

Basically if you are going for more than 50-60 simlutaneous calls on a lower codec like G729, you should look at load balancing multiple servers. I hope this was helpful.

[williamconley]

Build one box now (while you have 35 agents) and when you exceed the limits on that box and that bandwidth, build another box and get more bandwidth.

Buy the manager's manual, and if you have any problems come on here and ask for some help linking the two servers together.

You will need a fairly decent box (Quad at least). With over 30 lines on 2M bandwidth, you will likely need to compress calls (via gsm or g729) which will put a little more load on your server. As you add more agents, this will increase. But you should be ok for up to 50 calls at a time easily, probably closer to 70 without too much of a problem.

If you can get more bandwidth so you do not need to compress your calls, a Core2 Quad 2.3 GHz will easily handle 80 calls at a time (uncompressed, no recording). Faster CPU, more calls.

[gonzalezgjaime]

Thank yoy very much for your reply, this was very helpful, i will try to get a hold on the manuals so i can learn more as i am a noob.

thanks again.