SUGGESTIONS Renting Virtual Servers

[Brandon Lucas]

Hello-

I am a very small shop and have setup a few on-site PIAF servers in a few locations. All works well with this type of setup and vitality providing my service. However, I am interested in getting into a virtualized server scenario. I have a couple of questions on how to approach this?

Would I approach this on a scenario where I would buy a different virtualized server instance for each customer that I could sell the hosted PBX service to? I can see this eating into some profit.
or
Could I buy one decent sized Windows VM and run several instances of the PIAF VM from that one Windows instance? Would I run into IP address issues or is this even an option?


I'm not 100% familiar with VM's and Virtual environments but if you wouldn't mind letting me know how you do it and what provider would be best, I would great appreciate the advice!

Thanks in advance!

 

[rossiv]

Welcome to the forums, Brandon Lucas!

There are a number of different ways you could do this. I'll address them by your options:

Option A: This is possible. You could use RentPBX (rentpbx) for each one, or DigitalOcean, or other VPS providers. Those two have been tested and work well with PIAF. DigitalOcean is less expensive (depending on what plan you choose), but RentPBX does the base install for you. Depends on how involved you want to be in the installation.

Option B: Running multiple PIAF instances with Windows as a hypervisor/host would be about the last thing I personally would do. I'd be much more apt to use something like Proxmox or ESXi to host the VMs. I currently use both of those without any issues whatsoever. Each hosts one active PIAF and I spin up development boxes occasionally for various purposes. I've never had any IP address issues with those two. You just bridge them to the same network as the host. Nothing special.

I'd go for Option A in your case unless you have the facilities to reliably host Option B so that a power outage or network outage or something else doesn't take your customers offline. Option A, though, is heavily dependent on your customer's connection to the internet. I'd spin up a D.O. or RentPBX instance and take a phone to each potential site to test beforehand. No sense in hosting the PBX offsite if the customer only has 512k/512k DSL or some such.

 

[rjm]

To throw in my two cents, I agree with rossiv in that I believe outsourcing is a good option. I chose RentPBX and they do make it easy to spin up a server. Most of what they do works out of the box.

Tech support is solid, but is typically not 24/7. It takes a little while for them to get back to you, but they always do. Until this weekend, I have never had a problem with them and I have been running with them for years. (currently working through a lag issue but I am not sure if it is them or comcast). The good news is that it appears that they added to the tech support staff.

I have never tried DigitalOcean.

At least for me, I did not want to hauling out the generator every time the power went out. Or have the expense of redundant internet connections. Or the extra expense of running dual 450 watt power supplies.

It's just more efficient to run virtual. It's reliable, convenient, and with a coupon code inexpensive. Check them out!