Asterisk Virtualization: PiaF + Proxmox

We’ve invested weeks and months over the years wrestling with virtualization technologies searching for the perfect fit for the Asterisk PBX platform and especially for the turnkey solutions provided by PBX in a Flash and our latest Orgasmatron V installer. Why virtualization you might be asking? As with most computer applications, it comes down to flexibility and, of course, cost savings.

In the flexibility department, VoIP virtualization lets you choose options such as Cloud Computing and hosted solutions from various providers. It also provides a terrific training platform as well as your own managed Cloud Computing solution. You can build and host a dozen or more virtual Asterisk systems on a single $500 to $1,000 server and have a transportable solution ready to deploy in a couple of hours. And then there are those of us in the technology business that need to test all sorts of new operating systems and applications without having to dedicate a standalone machine to each experiment.

As far as cost savings, $500 to $1,000 says it all. When you can run a dozen dedicated systems on such a hardware platform, it reduces the individual cost of each turnkey system deployment to well under $100. And the performance penalty for implementing this multitasking solution is only a 1 to 3 per cent performance hit compared to using comparable standalone systems for similar computing tasks. Om Malik recently noted that:

More than half of new servers in 2009 will be virtualized, compared with 30 percent in 2008, according to a new survey by TheInfoPro.”

Comparing 2009 to 2008 deployments, that’s a 70% increase in just one year. When there is comparable performance, 90% cost savings, and greatly enhanced deployment flexibility, you have to ask yourself why wouldn’t you deploy virtualized solutions. With the solution we’re providing today, you get some other benefits as well: snapshot backups and cluster computing, both of which actually work. And the cost of this virtualization technology… it’s FREE!

Hardware Requirements. For full KVM virtualization support, you’ll need either an Intel VT or AMD-V capable CPU/Mainboard. Also strongly recommended are a multi-core CPU and as much RAM as your budget can afford. Our favorites (primarily because of cost) are the Dell T105 (with either dual or quad core AMD Athlon processor) or the Dell T300 (with quad core Intel Xeon processor). Both are on sale for the next few days starting at $249 up to about $1,000 with $350-$549 off the retail prices. You can save more by using our Dell coupon in the right margin. We recommend purchasing larger hard disks from other suppliers so stick with the default setup in drives. Dell has gotten more competitive on RAM pricing so that’s your call. For a point of reference, a dual core AMD with 8GB of RAM can support about 8 simultaneous Asterisk servers.

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