Run Asterisk on Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2)

Description

Part 1: VoIP in a Cloud

(This is the first of a two-part series on using Amazon’s cloud services to meet your business telephony needs. In this part, we look at Amazon EC2 and how it is used in a VoIP setting. In Part 2 , we’ll cover all the steps necessary in getting the open-source Asterisk PBX to work on Amazon’s cloud.)

Businesses looking to upgrade their telephony systems to more cost-effective and powerful IP-based PBXes generally limit their choice to two approaches: in-house and out-sourced.

An in-house solution is often more powerful, gives the business much more control, is more secure and is less costly on an on-going basis to maintain. On the down side, an on-premise PBX, however, requires some specialized knowledge, is tricky to scale as your needs grow and requires a significant up-front investment.

An out-sourced service, often called a “virtual PBX,” is much easier to use and manage, can easily scale and costs less up front. The trade-off comes in the form of reduced customizability and significantly higher on-going costs.

With the recent growth in use of cloud computing, internet based pools of servers that can be dynamically configured to meet a businesses variable needs (i.e.: an office telecommunications system gets much greater use during business hours than on a weekend), an interesting third option for the office PBX has developed.

Why would I want to run my server in the cloud?

Cloud computing has lower upfront capital costs. Rather than spend a few thousand dollars on a Dell server that will take weeks to arrive and days to configure, you can configure a virtual machine in the cloud, pay for the server as you use it, and be up and running in under an hour.

Original URL

http://voxilla.com/2009/02/12/amazon-ec2-voip-1096

http://voxilla.com/2009/02/12/amazon-ec2-voip-1096