Media servers

A media server, called a node in the product, is a machine that carries the audio of your calls. The call service runs on each node, places calls through the carrier and mixes the voices: the person, the bot, your agents and a supervisor listening in. One call lives on one node from start to finish.

What you see

Open Setup, then Numbers and carriers, then Media servers. Each row shows:

• the name and a status badge,
• the type: Simulator or FreeSWITCH, and the region,
• “room for N calls at once” (its capacity) and “N on the phone now”,
• “Last checked in” with the time.

If nothing has reported, the page says “No media servers have reported yet”. Once the call service starts, its node appears by itself.

Capacity

Capacity is how many calls one node takes at once. By default it is 2000 for the simulator and 250 for FreeSWITCH. It is a setting of the call service, not a measured limit. When a node is full, new calls are not placed on it.

Status

Status	Badge	Meaning
active	Taking calls	Reporting in and accepting calls.
draining	Finishing its calls	Takes no new calls and stops once its calls end.
down	Not working	Silent for 60 seconds. Not taking calls.
	Not reporting	Shown when it has not checked in for a few minutes but is not yet marked down. It may have stopped.

Servers that stopped reporting more than a day ago are hidden. Press Show N older servers that stopped reporting to see them.

Do this: drain a node

Drain a node before you restart or update it.

1. Open Media servers.
2. Press Drain on the node.
3. Read the box titled “Drain” and the node’s name, then press Drain server. The message says “Draining. Live calls will finish first.”

The node stops taking new calls at once. Calls already on it keep going until they end, for up to 10 minutes. Then recordings still waiting finish uploading and the node stops. Campaigns keep dialing only if another node has room. A node that is shutting down drains itself the same way.

Note

The screen has no button to bring a drained node back. A node that starts up always registers as active, so restarting its call service puts it back to work. Platform operators can resume it without a restart.

Who can drain

The screen is open to owners and admins. Supervisors can use the API.

Note

Tenant admins can currently drain a shared media node. A node serves every company on the platform, so one company’s admin can stop new calls for all of them. This is a known open item. Draining is meant to be a platform operator’s action.

Platform operators also have their own list of nodes and a Resume action. See operations.