Redundant SBC's / SBC reliability issue

[OCWI]

We are a reseller with a typical system size of 20 extensions.

All of our PBX's are OVH based cloud hosted.

We started doing our first few installs using a windows SBC on the client's site(s). This turned into a disaster as out of about 20 phone systems we have 1 or 2 a day where the service unexpectedly crashes, or the computer restarts, or ............

We then decided to start using raspberry pi's instead of windows. We only have 3 or 4 of them in the field so far. This poses two questions.

1) Are the pi's actually more reliable in practice? Is there anything i should know about / tips/tricks on configuring them?

2) Is there any way (i guess this applies to windows too) to make redundant SBC's? I would assume not since you would need two boxes on the same ip address which would cause a conflict.

Any help on this is appreciated, as a young company in the VoIP world it feels like we are missing a major piece here with how un reliable these SBC's are...

 

[Taff3333]

One thing I have noticed using the Pi3, if the network goes down the pi will not auto connect.

Have to set the network boot at delayed start.

To do so log into the terminal and type:


sudo raspi-config

select: Wait for network at boot and then: Slow wait for network connection before completing boot

click ok and finish and restart the Raspberry Pi


sudo shutdown -r now

This has worked well so far for me

 

[leejor]

If you were really concerned (paranoid?) about providing a backup Pi, something simple could be set-up (using a relay) where the power supply could be toggled so that only one were powered at a time. Both Pi's could therefore have identical settings. This could be activated with a simple switch or button by anyone at the customer end, if required. You could even have it switch automatically in the middle of the night so that every day it switched and was running on the other Pi. Perhaps for a remote location that was more than a few hours drive away.
Other than the above mentioned issue, I don't recall hearing of reliability problems. They are probably as reliable as any other computer system.

 

[OCWI]

Taff -

Thanks for the reply!! We do indeed employee that fix, and it works well. (I was actually the one who started the thread that came up with that fix )

Leejor-

Very interesting strategy, with the hot plugging. I think ill give that a try in a test environment, thanks so much for the idea!


I dont expect them to be a world different from other computer systems, and i do get power/internet limitations. Im soliciting more of an opinion in a direct comparison with the windows one - or at least my experience of the windows SBCs 2-3 crashing per day out of a data set of about 20.

 

[DSXVOICE]

Windows SBC vs Raspberry? No contest with V15+. Earlier versions were single threaded and so the PI was at a disadvantage. But the multi-threaded version changes all that. The PI makes a very effective appliance. My suggestion is that you work out a scheme to be able to remotely access the PI (there are many ways & tools out there to do this). Once you have a perfect system, you can use it to create an image and then you can just punch them out by copying the SD card and updating the 3CXSBC.CONF file.

Kirk

 

[OCWI]

This is an excellent suggestion, thanks alot Kirk!!!

 

[DSXVOICE]

You can contact Medi ([email protected]) to order PI 3 kits with case & power supply. We order them in 10x quantities to save some $$$. Canakit will create a custom "kit" for you if you need something different. Say "Hi" to Medi from Kirk if you do order from them

 

[OCWI]

Hey Kirk! Will do! Thanks for the point in the right direction!

 

[3CXDude]

What version of SBC are you using ?

We have a couple of them and have not experienced what you are describing !!!

 

[NTB Inc]

I would highly recommend actually getting an enterprise grade SBC to use especially if you are doing these with multiple customers across internet. The 3cx SBC is just another single point of failure. A true enterprise SBC will have redundancy features and solve a lot of the common NAT issues for the customer without having mini-PCs/Raspberries laying around. Something like NatPass which is interop tested with 3cx would fit the bill and can be virtualized (http://www.natpass.com), Sangoma and many others have them as well (http://www.sangoma.com/products/sbc)

If you don't want to do this in-house I know George Bardissi from BVOIP has a hosted SBC offering: https://www.bvoip.com/cloud-sbc