Server Specs help... Intel Pentium D or i3?

General Help
1

I’ve read a lot of things and just can’t believe the tiny specs for the huge amount of calls people say they’re getting. I was speccing out:

Intel Core i3 2120 3.3ghz Sandy Bridge
8gb of DDR3 PC3 10666 RAM
Crucial M4 64gb SSD
Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 Motherboard

but now that I’ve done some more reading I’m looking at:

Intel Pentium D 820 Smithfield 2.8ghz
4GB DDR2 800 RAM
same SSD
ASRock G31M-S Motherboard

The first was about $700, the second about $430. We’re running 10 extensions right now (on our current key system)… What kind of load do you guys think those two configs will handle?

I greatly appreciate your input, thanks in advance.

2

Asterisk was designed to run on a Pentium 3 if that answers your question.

A phone system doesn’t take much.

The only thing that skews is massive call recording or transcoding.

For 10 extensions I would lean toward a dual core Atom and SSD’s to save energy.

The Pentium D can handle at least 100 concurrent calls. Registered extensions really doesn’t matter.

3

I’m not used to building systems for this type of work, a Pentium D seems like a slug and Atom too compared to the systems I’m used to speccing, so it’s hard to wrap my brain around how little power it actually needs.

Where can I pick up an Atom+MoBo? The only things I’m seeing on Newegg are prebuilt little mini boxes.

Thanks much

4

I can understand, just realize it’s a phone system.

Anyway, the Supermicro is a really nice box:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5015/SYS-5015A-EHF-D525.cfm

It has an IP KVM on board and is a true server class machine. This is our (my companies) standard PBX offering.

5

How many concurrent calls should that box handle? Do you recommend 2 or 4gb of ram? Most calls won’t be recorded but some will, how does that affect it (like take twice as much resources as a call without recording)? And how bad does IVR and MoH, voicemail to email and such affect it?

And what’s the name of your company?

6

Also, will that handle a Digium 1TDM800PELF Analog PCI Card?

7

The specs say it has a PCI-E slot so you will need a PCI-E card. If you already have a PCI-X card it will not work with this system.

8

Oops, my bad. PCI-E then. My worry is the card length… 1AEX800ELF It says it’ll handle a half-length card, which that is, so it should work.

I’ve heard those cards can get quite hot. Would it be an issue?

9

Also in the FreePBX Store you can buy prebuilt systems with FreePBX all preinstalled and ready to go. Options are a small Dual Atom system or a larger 4U with Supermicro.

10

Oh, cool. Where are these on the store? All I can find is PBXact stuff on schmooze.com, but that sounds different than freepbx. And there isn’t any pricing available on there to purchase?

11

The Supermicro Atom might be too small for your card. They do have options for the different PCI riser cards.

I don’t mention the name of our company in the forums, to me it’s a conflict of interest. I am here to support the project and my vision not my business.

I had forgotten about the new products in the store. The Schmooze server uses the same Atom board in a different enclosure. It’s a great box. I am not sure if it has the virtual KVM. If the machine is not at a data center this is not a big issue.

12

Yeah the virtual kvm isn’t necessary. I’m also looking into grabbing a case from newegg and an atom motherboard, looking at the intel mobo now, it’s like $80… There’s a gigabyte one but it’s around $150, iirc.

13

Oops was wrong, Intel board was 80 and gigabyte is 100.