Mitel E1 failover Cards

[Mitelmike2010]

Hi All,

I have a scenario where i have 2 separate sites. One is the main site and the other a backup site for phone resiliency. My suggestion was to have trunks at both sites (the carrier is local and can send the send PRI to both sites) which should provide sufficient resilience in the event of a controller failure.

Issue is, one of the engineer in our office insists that we use PRI Failover which i have had previous poor results as when the controller has failed it never actually completely went down. My understanding is that the controller has to be pretty much power off for the relay to changeover??

Please can i have your opinion or thoughts on the better solution?

Much thanks in advance!!

 

[kwbMitel]

My experience as well.

I had a site where PRI resilience was critical. 2 Sites where each site had 2 MXe's. Each pair of MXe's each had a PRI connected with failover to the paired system.

It was completely useless. As you've noted, only a complete power down of the controller would cause failover. (Note: These MXe's had redundant power supplies)

Additionally, a relatively minor programming error with respect to the failover programming brought both controllers to their knees for several weeks. The systems continued to function but processor use was so high that nothing could be programmed and no backups made.

Waste of time - completely!

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What's most important is that you realise ... There is no spoon.

 

[Supernova99]

T1/E1 failover is only a quick a dirty failover mechanism
The very nature of ISDN will only allow it to be physically switched from one system to another.
E1 combo card uses a set of relays to switch the ISDN over to the second controller.
There are quite a few commands to manually switch it over 'EDT' including a schedule switchback.

If I was you, and had the option of 2 links in 2 physical locations I would use this. (you wouldn't be able to use the T1/E1 failover anyway)
If you have resiliency setup for your users, then everything will work normally in a primary controller failure. You might want to consider getting the trunks ringing in a round robin fashion.


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