So as everyone knows there is no real published upgrade path from Centos 5 to Centos 6 and we have stopped supporting all Centos 5 based FreePBX ISOs with no upgrade path to the new ISOs that have Centos 6.
With that being said Schmooze has thousands of Commercial PBXs running on Centos 5 and we needed to work out a upgrade path to Centos 6. Schmooze has accomplished this task and developed a process and recently began upgrading Commercial systems.
My question is this: the upgrade process takes significant manual work that requires in depth Linux knowledge to make the correct choices throughout the process. This is easy to do for our Commercial PBX’s since we know all the information about their PBX.
Would there be interest in a service, delivered via FreePBX support for a flat fee to upgrade existing Asterisk/FreePBX systems from any 1.xxx.210.58 ISO to the latest 2.210.62 ISO’s? I am thinking of a flat $200.00 to $250.00 per machine. Let me know if there is interest and if so I will spend the time to modify our Schmooze upgrade process to work for FreePBX Distro. It would be done correctly and delivered through the FreePBX paid support that exists already.
I think the idea is good and it’s a matter of working out the price point, and the available times for upgrades which will probably mean a lot of late nights since clients won’t opt for a mid day upgrade.
I think some standard questions / selling points would be the following:
How long does the process take on an average box?
Will you also fix anything that doesn’t work?
Whats the backout procedure should something break along the way?
Some other notes:
Can you do the same for a trixbox install ? ( this could give a way out of TB for some of those people not able to change over because of complexity and bring new people to the FPBX branch )
I know my boxes have all been maintained on the latest 5.x branch so that’s probably a little easier for you but that could be an issue for older branches.
Here is what I have been thinking after a few calls and messages from users.
We would charge a flat 200.00 per system. You would provide the MAC address of the system. We would then give that MAC Address access to install the upgrade script. It pulls down a script only from that MAC Address and only allow you to do it once and modifies grub and does a reboot. Once anaconda starts up the install process of Centos 6 it reaches out to us with your MAC address and grabs a dynamically generated kickstart and then does a install of Centos 6.x over the top and removes all the old el5 packages and installs the el6 ones but does not loose any data while it removes and reinstalls the packages.
The average box so far on a 7-10 MB internet connection taks about 45-60 minutes and if you have a monitor on the box you can watch it install step by step just like a new install does.
This would only work with FreePBX distro systems on the 1.xxx.210.58 release and only if you have not installed any RPMs or packages outside what is in the FreePBX yum repos.
We would recommend doing a PBX backup and storing it on a different server. I have done the upgrade over 100 times now with no issues but they have all been on our commercial PBXs where we know nobody has installed any other packages. If you installed any packages outside our yum it will probably still work but those packages may need to be removed and replaced by you manually after the upgrade.
We would include upto 30 minutes of support to help with any weird issues that might come up with custom changes made that we could not account for but I really dont suspect this to happen.
In the unlikely event the upgrade fails to upgrade your PBX we would refund the 200.00 charge. Please note the scripts are designed to revert back to the Centos 5 install if it detect issues that would make the box non accessible by SSH in as many scenarios that we could come up with.
I am even willing to do 1 or 2 free upgrades for select people here to prove it works but you would need to give me access to the box via SSH and be liable if anything goes wrong.
Ok well I did 2 systems for two different community members that went perfect. I am willing to do 2 more for free please PM me if you would like me to upgrade your system.
I PM’d you right before the forum update and like the other member said PM is nowhere to be found. Is there a secret place or have you not activated it yet?
Hi Preston, there may be a setting as to what each level user gets to see, I don’t have the words message/messages in my account or while looking at a standard forum entry and I am logged in. I think it was intentional
