“BioCluster is a clustering platform for Asterisk. It is installed alongside Asterisk on several machines and can turn them into a VoIP cluster.

BioCluster doesn’t require changes to the Asterisk code, but communicates with it as needed by using Asterisk-Java. Although the peer-to-peer protocol used by BioCluster was originally designed to make Asterisk clusterable, it is separate from any Asterisk-dependent parts and can be adapted to make other platforms clusterable.

All data is shared across nodes in the cluster. This includes extensions, trunks, dialplan data, AGI scripts, configuration and many other types of data. Thus there’s no single point of failure. Expanding a cluster with another machine is just a matter of connecting it to the network and giving it the right shared network secret. When a new node connects to the network, it discovers other nodes in the cluster and retrieves all relevant data.

BioCluster uses Asterisk-Java for several uses. It is used to monitor events, for example for keeping track of active channels on a local machine and sending updates about these channels to other nodes in the cluster. We also use it for sending events to Asterisk, e.g. hanging up a channel. Another feature used is the FastAGI server functionality provided in Asterisk-Java to support AGI scripts.

Using the Asterisk Management Interface would have normally been inconvenient and prone to trouble, but Asterisk-Java turned it into a simple task. Its API is extensively documented, which helped easily find the right classes for the task.”

Meni Livne, BioCluster Maintainer, Atelis PLC