Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : VOIP etc : Asterisk reliability / mission critical implementation

[bhost-limited]

What are people's thoughts on Asterisk and reliability? Would you use Asterisk for a mission critical phone system? Though it is highly flexible and configurable, I do not rate its reliability.

Has anyone successful implemented it with a failover server? How difficult is doing so?

Any thoughts?

Nick

[ydonchenko]

Nick, I would not trust asterisk, look at Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

[GCM]

It is nice for something open-source. but, I would recommend going with something more established like Cisco and or Microsoft Response Point.

[mgphoto]

I have a client that has run two asterisk servers with zero downtime in 19 months as far as I know. He provides phone service for two condo complexes.

I don't really know how many users he has and I think that can be a big factor. He also runs these with plenty of ram and 6 drive raid system.

I've had other guys who ran them on cheap servers with little or no redundancy and they had plenty of problems.

[team-vps]

Asterisk is very reliable. There are a lot of major companies and government agencies that run Asterisk. Last I checked, Vonage's voicemail was Asterisk based.

[jNive]

inphonex uses asterisk I believe (I could be wrong on that one though hehe)

[25GigPak]

Asterisk is very stable, We have a few installs running with no downtime other then a few yum updates and reboots.

We even have 2 installs running at this time on our Windows Hyper-V VPS network running on cent-os, these also have proven to be stable but its not suggested to run asterisk on a vps for mission critical phone systems.

Asterisk is only as good as the system admins that install and maintain it and the hardware placed on it.

[Wisherdaking]

asterisk is very very stable. Going with Cisco himm well if you have the money sure, but just because you give money dont expect reliability you can hire a full time asterisk guru to watch over your setup for that money

[blessen]

We use Asterisk as our Software PBX for our US office. We have been using it for some time now. Its stable and being open source its very flexible

[wb-Jay]

We have been using Asterisk for a while now and haven't had an issues. The real issue is finding Experienced Asterisk System Administrators to setup/maintain/monitor your Asterisk install which we haven't been lucky in the past but now everything is good

[bhost-limited]

Thanks for all these words of advice.

We will be going for Asterisk, but will probably look to employ an expert administrator to maintain the system properly.

Thanks

Nick

[AventureRichard]

We've been using Asterisk between our offices in the UK and for our primary IVR system for about 6 months, and found it to be extremely reliable. The most important thing is the quality of the connection TO the server running Asterisk, ie the DSL connection in the remote offices.

[techwebhosting]

We have two asterisk boxes at our office, running phone numbers for multiple phone companies. Other then power outages we have not heard a peep out of them. Good Luck!

[Kusai]

In my opinion Asterisk is THE most stable and reliable platform for ip-pbx, we have implemented over 80 installations and successfully running them without a glitch. And being open source it gives more flexibility.

[KC-JRPark]

Asterisk is very stable and reliable as long as you have an experienced and capable admin working with it. You would be surprised how many guys are out there who have worked with since early on and can get oyu the stability and reliability you are looking for. If you are new to it or don't have someone with the skills to lean on, I would go with something else.