RECOMMENDATIONS Small Office Setup

[Alex Hackney]

I'm getting ready to do my 3rd install with piaf. I absolutely love it. My clients are happy and I am too.

So far I have a 60 ext system at one place and a cloud based setup in another that supports 2 users.

This next install is for a busier client who rely's on their phones heavily but there are only 5 people in the business and only 2 take calls normally during the day.

I can't decide if I want to do a raspberry pi install for them or do it cloud based. We have them on a static ip cable internet connection 50/50. So I know that speed wont be an issue, I just wonder if I get any advantage using the pi over just having the cloud unit. I would do a dedicated vps for them and use security to lock it down to their ip only and the trunk. I do have a pair of landlines I leaving there as well for emergencies as well. I use cloud for my business and it's fine. I use softphones and haven't had any issues.

I've already discussed back up with them and if their system goes down, we'll route calls to their cells.

Thoughts?

 

[BeerCan]

Personally I think the pi is great for home use but I would be hesitant to use it in a business situation. Imagine one day the get a larger than normal phone load, could the pi handle it?
I would do a low power atom or cloud based. I have a d510 atom running now in a 20 extension office and it works great.

 

[nightstryke]

I wouldn't use a Raspberry Pi or anything ARM based for a Small Office/Home Office PBX. Mostly because if you buy newer phones and want to use the Commercial Endpoint Manager you'll need to run the PHP Extension "Zend Guard Loader." Of which Zend only has it for Windows, Linux, Mac, IBM i x86 & x64. And since it's a proprietary extension and not open source no one can reverse engineer it and build an ARM version of the extension so you can't run Commercial Endpoint Manager on the Pi.

I just bought new phones and the endpoint manager and found this out. Luckily I was only using the Pi as a test bed before I switched from my Quad-Core x64 system. Right now I'm looking into one of the mid-range to higher end Intel Nuc's which can mount a 2.5" HDD so I can just kinda yank the drive I have in the current system and load it in the new smaller system.

 

[AndyInNYC]

Alex,

Lots of choices:

With a coupon, RentPBX is $15/month forever - lots of uptime and you will have easy access to the server from wherever you might be (assuming you set up your whitelist correctly and use a dyndns address on your laptop for TM3). I have OpenVPN configured on 2 RentPBX machines for friends with Yealink phones; they can drop the phone anywhere and use it and my laptop gets access from the 10.8.x.x VPN IP.


For $65 delivered you can get an off-lease Dell from eBay. Given that you are leaving 2 POTS lines at the site, you could get a Dell which takes full size PCI boards to add a Digium/Sangoma/etc. board - then you could actually have the POTS lines on the PBX and used as the (not very often) backup to your primary VOIP providers. Get a board with hardware EC (I learned this the hard way before upgrading). Remote access may be more difficult this way - you'll need them to have a modem forwarding ports for access beyond 5060 and 10K-20K (not a great idea). Or, the modem/router needs to run a VPN service (like OpenWRT or Tomato).

If you go the used route, be prepared for hardware issues (spare power supplies, disks, etc. or at least make sure your local Staples/Best Buy has late hours). New stuff breaks too, though <g>.


I actually configured a Pi to run PIAF and OpenVPN as a test - it seemed to run but I didn't have a second flowroute account/backup provider so I couldn't/didn't do much testing. I could connect via softphone and place a call, but had to turn it off since it conflicted with my actual PBX trying to grab the same incoming numbers.

One great thing about the Pi is that you can buy several along with a few extra SD cards and still be under $80. Not sure how much call recording or other activity it takes to kill an SD card, but I've never had one go bad in my machines/cameras. You might want to teach them to do an image backup on Friday or Monday with Win32DiskImager (or some other comparable program) - then they will have a 'bare metal' restore without loss of too much activity (think recorded calls).

I'm not sure the lack of Zen should be a deciding factor in avoiding the Pi - you describe the office as having 5 people and 2 real phone users - not a lot of time will be saved using the commercial end point manager; if they grow, that would be a good time to grow the hardware on the phone system.

You'll have the same remote access issues with the Pi; they will be compounded due to the slow interface for freepbx.


My provider allows me to automatically forward to my cell if it loses registration - great feature.

Andrew

 

[hbonath]

Raspberry Pi sounds very dangerous to sell to a client for production use. Cloud would be the better bet - but watch their internet connection and make sure you are doing proper QoS using a real router at their internet border. Cloud VoIP and crappy cable modem connections will be the death of your VoIP business if not properly controlled.

 

[nightstryke]

As I said myself don't use a Pi, use an Intel Dual/Quad-Core Nuc with a 2.5" HDD tray. Though you can use the Rented PBX or Virtual PBX price, but the issue is you still have to pay for a SIP Provider and in most cases unless the Provider supports it you can't have PSTN or POTS as a backup. Plus you also have to consider the amount you have to pay for the RentedPBX even if just at $15 a month you will eventually over pay for it. Since, buying an in-house PBX or Small X86/X64 Computer initially may cost a bit, if you use it for over 2 years straight you'll have paid less for it considering the RentedPBX at that pricing.

 

[Alex Hackney]

This was a great conversation by the way. I guess it comes down to in house or rental. I just picked up a supermicro server for 90 bucks from a friend who decommissioned it out of a data server. I think I'm going to use it with a 2 port (if i can find one cheap?) dahdi card and just stick it in their office. I have an 8port card with ec for my office and its great. It also seems the simplest way to make this happen for them fast and easy. I use flowroute so if the internet goes down I can just reroute calls automatically to a land line. This seems the best course of action.

I personally use my cloud based phone server which is an install on a 4$ a month ssd vps. I've had 0 problems with it running travellin man and just locking down access.

I'm leaning towards grandstream 1400s cause they are cheap and have good reviews. Anyone contradict this?

 

[hecatae]

I have a pi running freepbx 2.11 serving 12 phones for a charity.

They dont use voicemail or system recordings, so a lot of the freepbx bells and whistles are wasted