In a FreePBX high availability setup are you required to have 2 licenses for each commercial module?
Alan
That is correct.
I think you can virtualize freepbx in a hyper-v or vmware cluster environment. In this manner you have only one license.
GRZMRC
I don’t think that will work with the FreePBX HA module. For one reason the FreePBX HA module needs both instances of FreePBX running so it can sync up the configs. Since both instances need to be running you would need 2 licenses.
I currently use PRIs so I need Sangoma PRI in the system which will not work in a vitalized environment.
We have ESXi running on 3 GL380 G7 servers. I am not sure what version of VM ware it is.
I guess I could use a Sangoma or Digium gateway to terminate the PRIs. I have a spare Cisco 2800 and some MFT VWIC cards that I was looking at using.
The phone system is very mission critical so cost is not so much an issue as redundancy and automatic failover.
We have about 200 extensions, 18 queues for product and tech support, conferencing, etc. We will need to be doing call recording soon for the tech support calls to the queues.
dicko, what are your thoughts on virtualizing an environment like this?
(just kidding on the last bit, I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes here 
just always looking for a better solution)
Perhaps a moderator could move this last part of the thread should be moved to general help as it moved out of the direct context of this forum.
An interesting variation I use for high volume call recording would be to use your Sangoma hardware as a “tap” in high impedance mode in parallel with your PRI’s wiring using FreeSwitch, zero impact on your Asterii boxen.
dicko, thanks for the input.
Repurposing is not an option. Those VM servers run almost the entire computing infrastructure of about 30 Windows and Linux VMs.
I have to purchase new hardware so I think that 2 FreePBX Xtreme 1000s would work. I could look into purchasing an additional DL380 for the VMware cluster but then I would have to add storage the the SAN and 2TB 15k SAS drives are not cheap.
Dicko thanks for outlining the point we made when bringing FreePBX HA to the market. HA is not a trivial thing to implement, or to build by hand and continually support. For companies that have a low tolerance for downtime, FreePBX HA is a great choice. Setup and configuration of HA nodes is managed directly in the FreePBX GUI when using the commercial HA module. This video outlines the installation and use of the FreePBX HA commercial module.
Have you considered the near line SAS drives for PBX and non-speed critical applications? We have a mix of 10k, 15k and near line SAS for different applications and it has worked well.