Understanding the value of decentralization in a centralized, hosted world. Large scale Asterisk deployment. Realizing the cost of supporting features that are little used and not needed.

1. © 2019 Target Corporation
The Upside Down
Decentralization and
the Feature Funeral
Jason Park
Lead Engineer
Target Voice Engineering October 30, 2019

2. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
Introduction
1
Jason Park
• Asterisk since 2003
• Open source since 1995
• Missouri boy living in Minnesota
• Target since May 2018
jason.park@target.com
@jrpark

3. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
Agenda
2
• The Right-Side Up
• The Upside Down
• The Feature Funeral
• Decentralization
• DevOps, Deployment and Management
• Review and Questions

4. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
The Right Side Up?
3
The Incumbent – Cisco
• SBCs for PSTN and cross-platform connectivity
• Cisco Call Manager SME (routing, translation)
• Cisco Call Manager
• Cisco Unity (voicemail, auto attendants)
• Cisco CER (emergency calling)
• Multiple centralized CUCM clusters in our enterprise data centers
• Cisco IP Phones
• Cisco Voice Gateways – How many ports?
• MyDevice softphones

5. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
The Upside Down
4
The New Champion
• SBCs for PSTN and cross-platform connectivity
• Kamailio centralized in our data centers
• Asterisk VMs deployed to all of our 1,800+ stores
• Asterisk ”Feature PBXs”
• Poly IP Phones
• Audiocodes Voice Gateways
• MyDevice softphones

6. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
SIP Proxy Layer
5
• SIP Proxy
• Deployed centrally in HA pairs in our data centers
• Number translation
• Inbound and outbound call routing
• Emergency calling callback management
• Store PBX failover routing
• Feature PBX routing

7. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
Asterisk Store PBX
6
• Asterisk VM deployed to our edge compute in all 1800+ stores
• Endpoint SIP registration
• Inbound and outbound call routing
• Ring group routing and membership management
• Registration based today, Subscribe based in the future

8. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
Asterisk Feature PBXs
7
• Asterisk VM clusters deployed centrally in our data centers
• Auto attendants and voicemail for non-store locations
• Centralized failover for stores that are experiencing hardware
failure

9. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
The Feature Funeral
8
• What is the feature funeral?
• The advantages of slimming down
• Simplicity
• Support
• Nightbell
• BLF
• Future – Call park

10. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
Decentralization
9
• Decentralize in a cloud’s world?
• We already have edge compute, micro data centers in all
of our stores
• Allows us to fail in very small chunks
• Turns a centralized scaling exercise in to a DevOps and
management exercise
• Our edge-based PBXs are self-contained from a
configuration standpoint and only require SIP trunking
for calling

11. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
DevOps, Deployment and Management
10
• How do you deploy over 1,800 Asterisk VMs?
• We have a team for that!
• Kickstart based ISOs that self-bootstrap to Chef
• Self aware of store based on network environment
• Registration to our management system
• Chef orchestrates the full deployment and configuration
• Metrics, logging and CDRs are fed in to Target developed
systems that use ELK, Kafka and Grafana
• Management by an internally developed web application

12. © 2019 Target Corporation
Target Voice Engineering
Questions?
11
Jason Park, Lead Engineer, Target Voice Engineering
jason.park@target.com – @jrpark