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composedTitleInfrastructure Advice for VoipNow Cloud Communications Platform
keywordscloud communications, cloud communications platform, voipnow, distributed environment
titleInfrastructure Recommendations for Cloud Communications Platform

VoipNow is a cloud communications platform that scales infinitely. This area gathers infrastructure advice for both single and distributed environments.


Excerpt
This document covers the infrastructure recommendations for VoipNow.

Table of Contents
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4psafasttrack
NameFast Track

If you want to skip reading this, keep in mind that you can choose:

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  • 2,000 users soon

Both options can take advantage of High Availability.

Overview

VoipNow is designed to maximize the cloud advantages. The cloud concept is built into the platform from bottom to top.

VoipNow uses raw computing resources such as CPU power, memory, storage space (the so-called IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service) and transforms them into a powerful Unified Communications communication and collaboration service. The Unified Communications communication and collaboration service is designed to be delivered as SaaS (Software as a Service), enabling you to serve:

  • private users in small business or large enterprise environments
  • the general public (private or business users) in a service provider environment

No VoipNow uses the same cloud concepts no matter if you deploy VoipNow it for your own company or in order to provide deliver services to third-parties, in a public or private cloud, VoipNow uses the same cloud concepts.

The service levels you would want to enforce may vary, but however the principles described in this document here are universal.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure recommendations are made considering These recommendations take into consideration the type of infrastructure you are going to use.

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Your own infrastructure

We consider that you are running your own infrastructure when:

  • You have low-level management access to the infrastructure - you have access to server hardware to install virtualization OS on them.
  • The location of the infrastructure is not important - can be on-premises or hosted in a third-party Data Center.
  • You pay for raw resources - this means that you are not paying for computing instances on a pay-as-you-go mode.

It does not matter if you have already built a private IaaS cloud with management facilities.

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  • All you can see and manage in the infrastructure is the computing instance(s) and storage.
  • You lease computing instances (hourly, monthly , etc.) and you do not have management access to the hardware they run on.

This is the modern view on the infrastructure services, with Amazon cloud services being most likely the most popular service of this typemany similar popular services like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud etc.

Service distribution

Any private or public cloud service provides CPU power and memory on computing instances. Software needing requiring more CPU power and memory must be able to use these computing instances efficiently. And this is where service distribution comes in.

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VoipNow can be run in two deployment modes:

  • on a single computercomputing node
  • distributed on multiple computerscomputing nodes

Of course, How you run it is entirely your choice , but ideally on how you run VoipNow. Ideally, this choice must should be made at installation time, due to the infrastructure requirements. Even later, assuming that you understand all implications, you will be able to switch from a single computer installation to a distributed one, but under no circumstances will it be possible to switch from a distributed environment to a single computer.

VoipNow 3 features advanced service distribution and cloud management. Thus, VoipNow is able to use the cloud resources in order to scale infinitely with the number of customers.

Tip
Running a distributed system is not trivial, even if the software provides highly integrated management features. It requires advanced knowledge about system administration, security , and infrastructure monitoring. The distributed setup is not appropriate for all deployments, therefore we try to guide you in this chapter on how to make the right choice.

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There is a common confusion between service distribution and high availability. The general perception is that, when a system runs on multiple computerscomputing nodes, it is also more resilient to failure. In most cases, this is not true. In fact, statistically, service distribution statistically increases the chances of some failure.

If you are looking only for high availability only, you should not embrace service distribution. Instead, follow the recommendations below.

Your own infrastructure

Physical level

High Availability availability must be built starting with the physical environment. Your minimum requirements should be:

  • redundant power supply
  • redundant L2 network connections
  • redundant L3 routing in on the premises
  • multi-homed Internet connections
  • infrastructure monitoring and incident detection
  • reliable server hardware with redundant components
  • redundant storage system

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We do not recommend virtual machine OS level high availability due to the management overhead this configuration imposes, especially on migrations. While it is possible to provision VoipNow this way, it is not recommended.

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The only reason to run a distributed system is because you need massive scaling capabilities and you still want to manage a single system. If you have to scale and you do not mind to manage managing multiple systems, it is possible to provision multiple VoipNow systems with each of them running on a single computer computing node independently.

Before anything else, it is necessary to understand the limits of the software running on a single computercomputing node.

The resources used by the system scale with the number of users and the features used. Therefore, it is impossible to give exact figures for the VoipNow system performance on a single computernode. However, generally speaking a powerful machine with eight computing cores and 16 GB or memory , a modern computer can provide services for more than 102,000 users. Public clouds provide such instances (e.g. Amazon Extra Large instance).

When VoipNow is employed in applications that use intensively telephony functions such as SIP trunking, more than 1,000 concurrent calls can be provisioned.

Tip
titleWhen Distributed?

If you think that your system will have to handle more than these figures this on a short term and you still want a single system, it is recommended to start with a distributed setup. Otherwise, a single computer node deployment will reduce your operational costs.

Storage

While database layers require a fast local storage, it's better to rely on cloud storage for storing file resources like images, documents, recordings, voicemails, faxes etc.

VoipNow implements an easy to setup Amazon S3 compatible client interface. It makes files storage very economical, scalable and fast.

What's next?

Based on your infrastructure of choice, the next step is to understand the requirements in order to implement it:

We are hoping hope that you have already decided what infrastructure is most suitable for you.

4psahelpbox
NameGet Help

If you still have trouble in making that decision, do not hesitate to ask for advice from our Professional Services team and follow VoipNow administrators in

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our community.

If you need more help, our expert engineers are waiting for you in the

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Support Zone.


Except where otherwise noted, content in this space is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.