System requirements

From TeleFlow

Revision as of 19:01, 28 May 2008

Generally speaking, any computer made in the last couple of years will be more than adequate for TeleFlow application development.

Unfortunately, there is no "one size fits all" description of an ideal TeleFlow production system, as system requirements vary greatly, for a variety of reasons. Here are some points to consider when determining system requirements:

• "Basic IVR" functionality is resource-light. So, if you have a handful of ports running an application that answers calls, responds to touch-tones, and performs some light database work, for example, you require little(if anything) more than what you would use for a TeleFlow development system.

• Be mindful of what your applications do, and how much they do it. For basic IVR, even a few hundred channels of TeleFlow servicing calls simultaneously isn't likely to be very taxing on system resources. Dozens of TeleFlow application instances that perform frequent polling operations(polling a database, downloading large xml documents and parsing them, etc) might well be very resource intensive, particularly if they written to do this work in as efficient a manner as possible.

• Text-to-speech and speech recognition are very resource intensive.

• The operating system you choose, and additional 3rd party software(database; internet/network services; antivirus software; etc) each take a share of the system resources. So if, for example, your operating system alone requires 1GB of memory, and you also intend to run TeleFlow with text-to-speech and speech recognition, a total of 2GB of memory is unlikely to be enough to service these features.

All these points aside, the only REAL test of your applications is how they run in production. If you find that your system resources are taxed by only a few calls, it is likely that you have developed some highly inefficient algorithms, or that your applications are dependent on something external that is a resource drain. (Eg. If your application frequently queries extremely large database tables with no indexes, you might find calls are slow, and the system resources are overwhelmed.)

Below are some minimum guidelines (some of which are light enough that you can't even find them anymore) for both development and production servers, in addition to some suggestions for more productive systems. In each case below, keep in mind that anything "newer" or "more powerful" than what is suggested will be more than adequate(Exceptions: For TeleFlow Designer, be sure the operating system is listed as being supported. For TeleFlow Server, ensure the operating system is supported by the telephony hardware you intend to use, and the software TeleFlow currently supports for it).

TeleFlow Designer, minimum system requirements

• Intel Pentium 4 CPU or better (dual-core recommended), or equivalent AMD

• Sound card, speakers, a microphone (for recording audio & testing)

• 80 GB Hard Drive or better

• Windows 2000 / XP Pro / Server 2003 / Vista operating systems.

TeleFlow Designer, effective full-time developer setup

• A good sound card (we've never gone wrong using Creative/Sound Blaster cards) is highly recommended if you will be doing your own recordings, and for testing using TeleFlow Simulator. Many computers come with integrated sound by default, and although the sound they produce is usually more than adequate, they often make lousy recordings.

• A higher quality microphone can make a difference if you are using your own recordings in production.

• 19"+ dual monitors, and a video card that supports them running side-by-side. (Flowcharting requires more space than other development...)

• 1 GB RAM, or better.

TeleFlow Standard Server (not including SR or TTS)

For small to medium port densities, without Speech Recognition, Text-to-Speech, etc.

• at least one full length PCI-X expansion slot

(note: must have room for full-size card: 32 cm x 10 cm (or 30 cm x 10 cm, without backrest)

• Intel Pentium 4 CPU or better (dual-core recommended)

• 1 GB RAM

• 80 GB Hard Drive or better

• Windows 2000 / Windows Server 2003

TeleFlow Media Server (with SR and/or TTS)

For high port density and/or Speech Recognition, Text-to-speech, etc.

• 2U or 4U rack mount chassis

• at least one full length PCI-X expansion slot

(note: must have room for full-size card: 32 cm x 10 cm (or 30 cm x 10 cm, without backrest)

• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz CPU, or better

• 2 GB RAM or better

• 160 GB Hard Drive or better

• Windows 2000 / Windows Server 2003

Additional System Considerations

Database applications will also require a database management system. MySQL for Windows is a good choice, although most any database accessible using ODBC will work. We highly recommend against using MS Access, as we have encountered numerous problems with Access and ODBC connections to it.