DISASTER RECOVERY &
BUSINESS CONTINUITY:
THE ASTERISK ADVANTAGE
Dennis Little, ReliAvail I.T. Company
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Presentation Overview

Dennis Little
ReliAvailSM I.T. Company
MyBusinessTelephone.com
@KeyCruncher (.com)


Disaster Recovery:
The Asterisk Advantage
Goal: Share, provoke thought
& feedback
Presentation Overview

Dennis Little
ReliAvailSM I.T. Company
MyBusinessTelephone.com
KeyCruncher.com
@KeyCruncher


Disaster Recovery:
The Asterisk Advantage
Goal: Share, provoke
thought




Business & engineering
questions
How VoIP beats
traditional telecom
Disaster-tested solutions
Examples, tips & tricks
along the way
Why believe in Asterisk?

Engineering support for a large,
proprietary (Avaya) installation
 $458M
organization, $40k benevolent
care / day
 Supporting 2,200+ staff and 3,000+
seniors in PA, MD & DE
 Serving 70,000+ families & children per
year
IRC: keycruncher
KeyCruncher.com
dennis@tapestrytech.com

A lot of FOSS software underneath…
Rewind a bit, first…
Disruptive Streak
Disruptive Streak
Steve Wozniak is asked…
Q: What are some of the biggest barriers
to innovation today?
Steve Wozniak is asked…
Q: What are some of the biggest barriers
to innovation today?
A: Our education system. Innovation!
Innovation: HP & the Apple I
Hewlett-Packard turned down Steve
Wozniak’s working Apple I prototype…
Innovation: HP & the Apple I
Hewlett-Packard turned down Steve
Wozniak’s working Apple I prototype…
5 TIMES!
Asterisk & VoIP

Innovative
Asterisk & VoIP

Innovative

Disruptive

Merriam-Webster®:
a : to break apart : rupture
b : to throw into disorder
Synonyms: break, fracture, bust
Asterisk & VoIP

Innovative

Disruptive

Merriam-Webster®:
a : to break apart : rupture
b : to throw into disorder
Synonyms: break, fracture, bust

Asterisk & VoIP is disruptive on one hand, helps
mitigate risk on the other
We Have Some Work Left…

Olle Johansson’s Challenge:
1.
Encrypt Everything: We need to make the cost of
listening in as high as possible, by default.
2.
Integrate IPv6 everywhere
3.
Adaptive audio
4.
Federate or die
We Have Some Work Left…

Olle Johansson’s Challenge:
1.
Encrypt Everything: We need to make the cost of
listening in as high as possible, by default.

2.
Integrate IPv6 everywhere
3.
Adaptive audio
4.
Federate or die
Let’s help each other! Start a dialogue.
Past decade+ of telephony



History of paying too much for reliable and
available communications
Economy which is driving innovation towards
efficiency and cost-savings
More distributed customers & operations
Past decade+ of telephony


History of paying too much for reliable and
available communications
Economy which is driving innovation towards
efficiency and cost-savings

More distributed customers & operations

We need innovative solutions…
Is a D.R. Plan Really in Place?

Is it documented? Well documented?

Is it practiced?
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Is it living?

Answered “no” anywhere? Work left to do…
Trust and Verify


Are you monitoring / alerting today? In levels?
Do you even know when a “disaster” has
happened?
 Reliability
 Fraud
 Outage
and availability, sure….
Trust and Verify

Alerting
 Nagios,

Icinga, Cacti, Zenoss, paid tools, etc.
Trending
 Visualize
abnormalities – we are very visual beings,
with bad memories

Weakness: recognize, mitigate, document and follow
Design Questions: Before You Start
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Capacity?
Design Questions: Before You Start

Capacity?

Interfaces (PRI, analog, VoIP-only)?
Design Questions: Before You Start
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Capacity?

Interfaces (PRI, analog, VoIP-only)?

Life lines?
Design Questions: Before You Start

Capacity?

Interfaces (PRI, analog, VoIP-only)?

Life lines?

Remotes? Security?

Acceptable behavior during disaster?
Design Questions: Before You Start

Typical disasters
Design Questions: Before You Start

Typical disasters
Design Questions: Before You Start

Typical disasters
Topology Overview
Design Questions: Before You Start

Failover / reduced capacity plans?
 Your
systems and processes
 Provider support, certification & testing

Auto or manual failover?

Do eliminated risks justify increased investment?
Design Questions: Before You Start

Expected life of the system
 20,

10, 5 years?
Gradual or rip/replace?
 Digium
VoIP gateways ~$1,300+
 Edgewater Networks 4601 – T1 PRI, MOS syslog
~$1,200+

Keep questioning/reviewing/adjusting.
Fact:
Voice over IP & Asterisk beat
traditional telephony, when
considering disaster recovery.

Asterisk Advantages (D.R. & other):




Deliver / fail anywhere
with quality internet access
Agnostic – device, provider

Least-cost provider routes

Eliminated contracts /
commitments in some scenarios
Agile – change in minutes
vs. hours or days
1:n wire pair to calls
Asterisk Advantages (D.R. & other):




Deliver / fail anywhere
with quality internet access

Call clarity

Scalability – up & down!

Self-service

Allows gradual cutover
Agnostic – device, provider

Least-cost provider routes

Eliminated contracts /
commitments in some scenarios
Agile – change in minutes
vs. hours or days
1:n wire pair to calls
Asterisk Advantages (D.R. & other):

Increased business intelligence that is affordable, makes sense:

Real-time: CDR, MOS, ad tracking
Asterisk Advantages (D.R. & other):

Increased business intelligence that is affordable, makes sense:


Real-time: CDR, MOS, ad tracking
Privacy
 Awareness – pole vs. packet
 Availability, control of privacy
 Asterisk 1.8 > SRTP, TLS authentication
Asterisk Advantages (D.R. & other):

Increased business intelligence that is affordable, makes sense:



Real-time: CDR, MOS, ad tracking
Privacy
 Awareness – pole vs. packet
 Availability, control of privacy
 Asterisk 1.8 > SRTP, TLS authentication
Dream it. Build it. Afford it.
Provider Failover & Redundancy

Commodity internet basis or Service Level Agreement (SLA)




SOHO / SMB appliance – NETGEAR, Barracuda
Vyatta on whitebox (Foxconn) $150
Squeeze / Gluster last Astricon
Patton.com BODi rS
Analog and Digital Failover Solutions

Hardware: Digium, Xorcom (analog or digital, USB)
Analog and Digital Failover Solutions

Hardware: Digium, Xorcom (analog or digital, USB)
VM-based Failover Solutions

Premise-based & Hosted Virtual Machines
 Xen, KVM, VMware
Provider Failover Solutions


Failover if your environment is not available, at the provider
level
Failover at the provider-level, if they are experiencing issues:
RespOrg / SMS800
Use the Tools Available


Vitelity API – http://apihelp.vitelity.net
Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG)
http://iase.disa.mil

Asterisk 12! REST API http://wiki.asterisk.org

Internet Society Deploy360 – IPv6, DNSSEC, etc.
Before we wrap up…
any questions?
A few things to remember…




Security (least-privilege, fail2ban, VoIP best
practices, etc.)
Test, test, test
Lean on the work already
done:
wiki.asterisk.org
http://tinyurl.com/VoIPSecurityReliability
Short Review: Disaster Recovery



Design questions &
considerations
How Asterisk & VoIP
beat traditional
telecom / telephony
Solutions

More questions?
 Dennis
Little
ReliAvailSM I.T. Company
IRC: KeyCruncher
support@ReliAvail.com
(877) 372-6782
MyBusinessTelephone.com
Resources
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
wiki.asterisk.org
iase.disa.mil
Digium.com
Patton.com
EdgewaterNetworks.com
APIhelp.vitelity.net
Vyatta.org
Linux-KVM.org
DRBD.org
Internet Society
Deploy360

More questions?

Dennis Little
ReliAvailSM I.T. Company
@KeyCruncher (.com)
support@ReliAvail.com
(877) 372-6782
MyBusinessTelephone.com

SLIDES: keycruncher.com