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what are limits of platform?

Posted by AEMCOM_VOIP on Sun, 10/24/2010
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Thirdlane platform General Questions

Hi experts, I'm a technician of an italian Internet and telephony service
provider. We are using an IP Centrex solution based on Comverse NetCentrex
platform. This platform use an MGCP core to manage hundreds of multi virtual
PBXs with Thomson ST2030 MGCP phones.
We are evaluating different alternatives to our actual platform. The new
platform must be a SIP based solution.
We are also trying your product (Thirdlane Multi Tenant PBX) and it is a
possible candidate.
To take a decision we must know what are the limitations or restrictions of
Thirdlane in Multi Tenent version.
If we use a DELL BLADE server with multi processor and 48 GB of RAM, how many
extensions we can register on Thirdlane? How many tenant can we configure?
Actually, our tipical virtual PBX has about 10 users but we have about 100
PBXs.
A mandatory feature of the new platform is scalability. Our goal is to reach
1000 tenant pbxs with about 10 extension.
Can Thirdlane support 1000x10 extensions on a single server installation?

An answer will be appreciated.

Best regards.

Submitted by mattdarnell on Mon, 10/25/2010 Permalink

Even if it could support 1,000x10, I doubt anyone has ever had it in a real world scenario, why would you want to?

10,000 phones generates a lot of revenue, you should break it into 3-4 systems so failures are not so catastrophic.

-Matt

Submitted by eeman on Tue, 10/26/2010 Permalink

I personally know of a system with 3k extensions using Dell R710's. Your policies play a bigger role in scalability than hardware does in some cases.

for example.. choosing NOT to implement sip proxies or edgemarc devices will force asterisk to divert a LOT of resources having to update the registration table 20 times per second at 1500 extensions trying to do the b.s. work-around of re-registering every 60 seconds. That will cause a lot of phones to go unavailable in a 'rolling blackout' manner.

in contrast, not having to add extra load to your server, and instead push that task at each customer location will allow more scalability.

things that impact scalability:

1. Bandwidth and quality of network controllers
2. Trans-coding, recording, and other processor and i/o tasks
3. extra traffic not pertaining to phone calls (applies rules 1 and 2)
4. Processor speed (diminishing returns after a point but go for Xeon E5530)
5. Memory min 8gb but as of now I see no reason to go beyond 16gb

1 and 2 strategies are trade-offs. If you're going to do g729 I would recommend stacking the hardware transcoder cards into your server so that enhancing #1 doesn't cause more problems at #2.

The current tested limits of sip, not in terms of extensions but concurrent calls, is 5000 concurrent calls using the Packet2Packet feature of asterisk on a HP DL380 (generation 6) with 16gig ram.

Submitted by AEMCOM_VOIP on Tue, 10/26/2010 Permalink

I've another question. The last question.
Are there other restrictions in a "natted" environment?
In my actual IP Centrex implementation, PBXs and phones are placed in different subnet. Phones are placed behind NAT router without ALG features.

I think that Thirdlane can support this scenario using "NAT" and "Can Reinvite" options. Right?

In this case, with a powerfull server (multi CPU, 16 GB RAM), how many extensions can be managed? more or less then 1000?

Thanks.