Asterisk: The Future of Telephony

Environment

Your system’s environment consists of all those factors that are not actually part of the server itself, but nevertheless play a crucial role in the reliability and quality that can be expected from the system. Electrical supplies, room temperature and humidity, sources of interference, and security are all factors that should be contemplated.

Power Conditioning and Uninterruptible Power Supplies

When selecting the power sources for your system, consideration should be given not only to the amount of power the system will use, but also to the manner in which that power is delivered.

Power is not as simple as voltage coming from the outlet in the wall, and you should never just plug a production system into whatever electrical source is near at hand.^[11] Giving some consideration to the supply of power to your system can provide a far more stable power environment, leading to a far more stable system.

Properly grounded, conditioned power feeding a premium-quality power supply will ensure a clean logic ground (a.k.a. 0-volt) reference^[12] for the system and keep electrical noise on the motherboard to a minimum. These are industry-standard best practices for this type of equipment, which should not be neglected. A relatively simple way to achieve this is through the use of a power-conditioned UPS.^[13]

Power-conditioned UPSs

The UPS is well known for its role as a battery backup, but the power-conditioning benefits that high-end UPS units also provide are less well understood. ...