Up till now, I have been using PBXinaFLASH because it has Fail2ban and iptables setup properly. But they don’t do a good job with OpenVZ container.
Also, I have noticed that the FreePBX ISO is a much more cleaner install. There are literally no errors - of course that’s because the FreePBX team own the software
Anyhow, I like to change all of our 50 or so clients to FreePBX Distro as I get to like it more and more - I mean fax working out of the box.
But, we run everything on Proxmox. So, are there any plans to release an OpenVZ version? I don’t see any reason why anyone would download Elastix, Trixbox, or even Piaf, if FreePBX team releases it’s own rock solid version of OpenVZ and ISO.
No there is no real way to do a convert. It is something we have talked about but its finding the resources to get it done and maintain another Distro as they are way different to maintain.
Yes, Tony, I hear you. It is indeed different. And when you do a job, better do a really good job than a half broken system. I like your approach of the ISO being very stable and absolutely error free.
Again, I don’t see any reason why anyone should download another distro when you guys, the experts, provide a distro. However, as you know the OpenVZ has become very relevant recently and it should be on top of your list of things to do.
I am even willing to post a $100 bounty to it and hoping other commit too.
IMHO the primary reason to have a template is to be able to set up a Proxmox server and start turning up instances of an ISO based FreePBX/Asterisk. Which is all well and good except for a few really sticky points.
a) The cloud is a security nightmare. Anyone telling you different does not work in that space.
b) Having timing sources that work for things like conferences and modules that depend on conferences. It is not easy to do.
c) Hard to connect POTS, probably not possible to do T1’s and such.
If you are doing premise based ( not cloud ) then a nice little Atom box or other hardware solution is best.
In other words, I think Tony actually understated the difficulty in maintaining an OpenVZ template on top of the ISO maintenance. I think the kernels would have to be different and just that is a whole can of worms…
a) Proxmox runs on Debian and it can run behind a firewall just like any other box and can be very secure. We only use OpenVPN point to point for any customer and node. No need to keep any box open to SIP registration.
b) Buy a $100 USB timing source from Sangoma and plug it into the server and serve 20 Asterisk OpenVZ containers and run all conference call you want. We have done this and it’s working beautifully. The USB can be shared with all containers.
c) We are authorized reseller for ILECs in Canada. However, POTS/PRI is only 5% of our sales. And any PRI goes to our dedicated PRI box anyways. A proxmox server won’t need analogue lines anyhow because it’s too big of an operation for customer premises.
However, I agree with your that it does need it’s own maintenance but technically the technology is now mature and I am talking that from experience.
Yes at this time we just do not have the resources to spend on this. We maintain our own commercial version of openvz templates with some really cool things but between FreePBX GUI, FreePBX Distro, Paid Support, Our Commercial PBX and Customers for premise and hosted, our dialer services and everything else just not enough hours in a day. Moshe, Bryan, Luke, Myself and the rest of the Dev team is already working 70 plus hours a week so until we get more resources this wont be happening anytime soon.
Forgot to note that I currently use Digium provided repositories and do simple:
“yum -y install asterisk16 asterisk16-addon asterisk16-config freepbx” on a OpenVZ container and everything installs nicely and works flawlessly. There are the FreePBX errors that spit out due to Digium not maintaining the repository.
Oh, good to know you have a commercial version running already. It means the technology works. I would like to contribute if you decide to create an open source version of it.
