FreePBX Distro Proxmox Hardware Requirements

Distro Discussion & Help
1

I am preparing to fire up a virtual machine on a Proxmox server to run the FreePBX Distro for a small to medium size business. Right now, I am expecting to have about 50 extensions, and typically there will be about 12-15 simultaneous calls, including both extension to extension and external phone calls. In addition, I plan to use fop2 or iSymphony v3 for call management.

However, I am specifically seeking suggestions regarding sizing the virtual machine. Since there are no hardware requirements available on wiki, I am curious what specs others have used for a virtual machine using KVM technology (not OpenVZ). Could you provide some suggestions regarding:

  • CPU - Socket Count and Core Count? 1 (1 Socket, 1 Core), 2 (1 Socket, 2 Cores), 4 (1 Socket, 4 Cores), or 4 (2 Sockets, 2 Cores)?
  • Hard Disk - IDE or VirtIO?
  • Hard Disk Size - 250 GB?
  • RAM - 8GB?

Thank you for any feedback or experiences you are willing to share.

2

You can “resize” the memory and CPU’s as needed very easily in ProxMox, I would think that one core and 512-1024 ballooned memory would be sufficient to start. The only thing a little harder to do is compute the hard-disk size reserved, 10g is normally enough but bear in mind the space neded for Voicemails and monitored calls, using .wav uncompressed files, you will need 8kbit/sec of recorded calls.

3

dicko,

Thanks for the feedback! I wasn’t sure what impact changing the memory or CPU’s would have on the VM once it was up and running. Especially since the Commercial Modules depend on the Deployment ID, I was afraid I would need to have all the hardware specs exactly right from the start. So, all that is good to know.

So, I gather from your comments that even if running an operator panel like iSymphony, 8GB of RAM is way overkill. For the most part, calls will not be recorded. So, if I were to estimate 120 minutes of voicemail for every extension (overkill again), I would still only need approximately 3GB of hard drive space above the Distro hard drive requirements. Correct?

Thank you very much for the help.

4

I am guessing that the deployment is probably keyed to the macaddress of your external network (which is both a good and a bad thing for a vm). Java stuff like iSymphony can take a lot of memory but just add some if the machine gets turgid

5

So, is a 60 GB hard disk more than adequate? Somehow, I feel that is awful small, but perhaps that is due to struggling with too much Microsoft Windows bloat for years…

6

Most of my instances, similarly dimensioned to yours, have 15G of HDD space.