Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute Network

[thekidd]

I am thinking of running a small server instance of ViciDialNow on Amazon's EC2 platform. I am wondering if anyone here has any experience with ViciDial, ViciDialNow, or even Asterisk running on EC2.

I've used EC2 for other things like hosting or C# apps but am wondering how it would handle VoIP. An EC2 representative says he has read about a few people running Asterisk so apparently it is possible.

Oh, almost forgot. I plan on running this with SIP lines for the dialing system. If you have not used EC2, do any of you host your ViciDial servers at a hosted/co-lo company? How does that work for you compared to onsite with PTSN/T1 line type setups (which I do not want to do). Would like to be straight VoIP.

Any ideas or views on this?

--TheKidd

[mflorell]

VICIDIAL typically doesn't run very well on virtual server platforms, especially with the more load you put on the server. You will also run into timer issues which will cause audio issues.

[thekidd]

What is a great, inexpensive timer?

I'd prefer to get a dedicated server setup then at a co-lo. Is there a way to do this without additional hardware?

[mflorell]

You could try the Sangoma USB VoiceTime timer, otherwise on a colo rental server you could use ztdummy, but you will not be able to get the same capacity out of that as you can witha dedicated timer.

[speedal]

VICIDIAL typically doesn't run very well on virtual server platforms, especially with the more load you put on the server. You will also run into timer issues which will cause audio issues.

ViciDial works much more well in an amazone EC2 Instance then in a bare metal server

I have installed several instances of a vicidial installation in the Amazon cloud...

If anybody here need some consultancy or need help on vicidial over virtualization, email me or PM

[gardo]

How many live seats are you running? Inbound or outbound calling? Are there any modifications to Asterisk to bypass the timer requirement issue?

[speedal]

How many live seats are you running? Inbound or outbound calling? Are there any modifications to Asterisk to bypass the timer requirement issue?

Actually the last installation of Vicidial we deployed is, in the biggest instance of Amazon EC2 can offer, 64 Bit Debian system, 8 Cores CPU, 8GB Ram
this system actually has 110 live seats running outbound and the system load is about 40 - 60 %, this special call center works with 8 carriers and we have developed a percentage load balancing for the carriers, so the outbound calls are going to each of this carrier and distributed in a percentage basis.

Regarding your question about the timer issue, there is a customization, but not in asterisk. The modifications are in the Linux Box.

If you need some support for such solutions please let me know

[gardo]

This is really cool and handy. What kind of changes were made to the Linux Box? Amazon EC2 offers great flexibility. Just don't know yet if it's cost effective for a call center that big specially when bandwidth and disk space are at a premium price.

[williamconley]

i'd like to get this straight: you have an entire vicidial server (mysql, admin web, agent web, agent registration/conferences and outbound calls) in ONE Virtual computer in the Amazon Cloud? With 110 live seats running outbound?

How many simultaneous calls?

[vccsdotca]

I am curious as to his response. I dont see why this isnt possible with a monster server like that.

[williamconley]

It's not a "monster server", it's a Virtual server. Which means it does not have ALL of even a single CPU. Timing is what Vicidial Runs On.

Although: I have a client with functional meetme rooms (realtime, even) in a smallish cloud server.

[gardo]

Technically this can be done by modifying Zaptel or Dahdi to provide accurate clocksource/timer for Asterisk's meetme rooms on virtualized environment. Or if it's possible to totally remove the need for a clocksource on meetme rooms. Callweaver (a fork of Asterisk 1.2) doesn't have any timer/clocksource dependencies on it's conferences.

[williamconley]

all of which will get meetme online, which is easily done with some already built and available items. but vicidial still crashes when loaded. meetme is not the only thing requiring timing.

[mflorell]

Music-on-hold, IAX trunking and recording also use timing.

[williamconley]

and if i recall, most vicidial scripts invoke hi-res timing as they fire up. yes?

[mflorell]

That's not really the same thing. If Hi:Res timing is slightly off it won't really cause any problems.

[williamconley]

Interesting. So if the meetme room, MOH and IAX timing is resolved, you think vicidial would work virtual? But that does not explain why it has not yet worked. I have a client with a small cloud server that easily handles 50 meetme rooms ... but so far noone has been able to virtualize Vicidial. (So Far. )

[mflorell]

The timing that Asterisk uses really is a complicated thing to get working very well in virtualization.

People have had success with OpenVZ, but that is really just container-based Linux, not really virtualization. There are also some people who have gotten somewhat-accurate timing to work under virtualization, but under medium load the meetme audio can get pretty bad.

Since meetme requires Asterisk to stay in the audio path, the timing has to be pretty near to perfect, and virtualization cannot do that, because a virtual Linux kernel is not in control of the hardware that it is running on, it can always be preempted so the possibility for missing timer ticks is always there.

[williamconley]

Interesting. I had a client with a virtual system that seemed fairly cheap, but held 50 Meetme Rooms (rotating in and out via the 60000 vicidial sample leads, each room staying active for a little over a minute with constant rotation) while I made and listened to nearly perfect sound with my personal soft-phone in a meetme room with my cell. No quality issues at all (as long as we stayed UNDER 50 rooms with two calls each!). All the rooms/users were playing recordings, of course.

Maybe the time of the Virtual Vici is getting closer.