hardware recommendation

[Holg]

Hi,

We want to setup vicidial on a rootserver with only SIP Trunks and IAX-softphones.

For that we'll rent a rootserver from our provider.
What hardware would you recomment for a call center with up to 60 agents logged in at once.

We were thinking to have two servers - a asterisk/vicidial server and a server for the webapplication. Does this make sense, or is it better to build a load balance enviroment (2 asterisk/vicidial servers)?

And I've read somewhere in the forum that it's better to use a x100p card instead of ztdummy. What will be better/faster with this card?

Thanks in advance
Holger

[mflorell]

What is the maximum number of lines per agent you will be using?

Will you be recording all calls?

Will you be using any codec besides ULAW?

[Holg]

Will you be recording all calls?

Right now we don't want to record the calls... but maybe later ... and for that it would be interesting to know how "bigger" the server should be.

What is the maximum number of lines per agent you will be using?

Lines per agent... hm as we want to use the predictive dialing that depends on the drop rate - or did i get something wrong?
But to answer the question... in maximum this would be 60 lines (if all agents are speaking) plus the lines the predictive dialer needs.

Do you think it is in this case better to have 2 Servers with load balancing?

Will you be using any codec besides ULAW?

As we are also calling cellphones we are also using gsm.
As I said this is going to be an ip-only solution so no zap devices.

On voip-info.org I read that especially for as astersk server there is no difference between using a single core or multicore system - what about that statement?

[mflorell]

Recording calls impacts the drives and the RAM, if you will be recording all calls you will want more RAM and SCSI drives. If not you can make due with SATA Raptor drives.

As for the lines per agent, this is something that is often limited by your bandwideth or what your VOIP termination provider can provide. How many total lines do you want as your maximum capacity?

Multi-core is much better than single core, in fact I saw almost a doubling in performance when I switched a server from a single core P4 to a PentiumD(dual core) and the Intel Core 2 Duo processors are even better.

For 60 agents doing predictive dialing I would recommend 2 Asterisk/VICIDIAL servers and 1 database/webserver. All should be at least Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM. The Database should have more RAM and SCSI RAID 10 if possible.

[Holg]

As for the lines per agent, this is something that is often limited by your bandwideth or what your VOIP termination provider can provide. How many total lines do you want as your maximum capacity

I think the max will be around 65 channels. As I said the server is a hosted rootserver so there should be no problem with the bandwidth.

For 60 agents doing predictive dialing I would recommend 2 Asterisk/VICIDIAL servers and 1 database/webserver

What has to be on the webserver? Only the php files?

Should we split it 30 agents on one server and the other 30 on the other server? Or what's the best way to use 2 servers?

And annother question as you are a site admin I think you have something to do with the coding
We would like to add the german translation - the one provided with astguiclient is not very good and also do a little redesign of the admin and vicidial section. Is it possible to add the changes to the official release. If yes what is the fastest way to communicate?

[mflorell]

65 channels for 60 agents isn't going to give you much predictive dialing ability.

The web server just needs to have PHP scripts on it for basic operation, if you want to use the super lead loader you will need Perl and some perl modules loaded as well.

I would recommend splitting the servers at 30 agents each, but as long as the server can take it you can put any amount of agents on either server and just have the other server do more dialing since VICIDIAL does load-balance calls.

Yep, I have something to do with the coding, I wrote about 98% of the code in the 2.0 tree. As for German translation, I would love to get a better translation from some German speakers. I have actually been approached about this just this week from one of the consultants listed on the project site: Explido. It would be great if you could work with them and use the SVN 2-X german translations files to work off of to generate your new translations.

Also, there have been several changes to the admin interface since 2.0.2 release. What kind of changes do you have in mind?

[videanuadrian]

how many agent can i have with this piece of hardware :
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz
cpu MHz : 3192.299
cache size : 2048 KB

processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz
cpu MHz : 3192.299
cache size : 2048 KB
Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82541GI/PI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Memory: 2GB DDR2
Storage: 2x 73GB SCSI drives

I want to record all calls and i use ulaw codec.
This server also run Mysql Apache Dns and other services.

[mflorell]

How many lines per agent do you want to dial?

[videanuadrian]

well i think that i want 1 line /agent

[mflorell]

At 1 line being dialed per agent you will be limited only by the recordings. I only recommend recording 50 agents at one time on a single server, unless you get more RAM and use a RAM drive and an archive server to do the recording.