I personally don’t care where you install your FreePBX. There are people who run FreePBX on a old laptop that is on a WiFi connection…
Look, the point is, how much time, effort etc you put in to setup/troubleshoot/maintain the system.
Wherever you choose to install it may or may not matter now. But later on, when you post on the forums, just please tell us where it is installed so we can understand the situation a bit better.
I have never heard of the TrueNas before but looks more expensive. I know that my Synology NAS DS920+ is a 4 bay and If I deside to go with anything els I would want no less than a 4bay. What configuration do you run?
Well, I know with Synology NAS it is constantly back everything up. I have grown to love Synology. I know for me I have saved a ton of money using it as my webserver. I’m doing research now and since installing FreePBX on my NAS and it’s running which is an accomplishment.
Installing FreePBX and/or Asterisk on a NAS, OpenWRT, a container within a docker on a container or any other variation of jamming a telephony engine/PBX into software/appliances that have nothing to do with telephony things are all great hobbyist projects. They are all great “Hey ma, look at what I did” projects for funsies and giggles. That’s it.
None of these have a place in an actual business environment, and before someone decides to play the “Outlier Game” sure there could be very rare case scenarios for it. However, in this community overall…no. For this thread, no. This is nothing more than trying to cut corners and use existing systems which, in the long run, isn’t going to really solve a problem. It’s going to create more.
Save your self and this non-profit a bunch of hassle and time. Don’t put their PBX on their NAS.
Haven’t read all comments, but I have been running FreePBX in Synology in VMM for quite some time now and it works great. If a 5$ Vultr server can, a Synology can for sure. If you’re looking for the basics, check out Crosstalk Solutions on YouTube.
I’m getting more experience in installing FreePBX for small businesses and have instances in VULTR, Synology NAS in VMM, and the Sangoma appliance. They all work well, except 1 instance on a Syno. If going the Syno route, I recommend upgrading the ram and using SSD cache, which the 920+ supports, especially if you are using Synology Drive or other applications as well.
As stated in other comments, you just need to weigh hosting it yourself vs cloud. A lot of municipalities I installed for would rather keep their data local and have everything on battery backup and offsite their FreePBX backups.
My FreePBx is perfectly running on my Synologiy. However I bought it with 16GB main memory to allow 8 GB for a virtual win-server, 2 GB for a virtual rapbian installation, and 2 GB for a virtual PBX installation.
So first of all, you don’t need docker. I think most Synology station come with some licences for virtual maschines. Therefore,
download the current FreePBX-ISO,
install Virtual-Maschine-Manager on your Synology and
add a virtual maschine with 2 GB main memoy, 1 or 2 cores, and 64 GB hard-drive (32 GB is too less)
use PfreePBX 64bit ISO and additional Synology VMM Guest-Tool
Start Virtual Maschine on your synoglogy, and connect via Synology VM-Menue for installation
once installed you may connect via http:/your IP of the virtual PBX or ssh to your virtual PBX.
Your are running a regular pBX distro on a red-head-linux / Sangoma-Linux / Cent-OS-Linux
Make your VM in Synology to “autostart” because it is sometimes going down when updates for your syny-station are going to be installed.
I believe one of the things that the people in this forum forget about is the fact that all of the cloud storage is on a computer somewhere. Do we really know what is running the software? No we don’t, and I think some of the replies I have got is so off the wall. I think the problem is is people these days take the easiest way out. Me on the other hand, I am a programmer and I understand a little more than maybe some give me credit for.
After alot of reearch on the synology website I found a few guys that run freepbx on the synology nas and has beeb working perfectly. I tend to feel so many people want the easy way out and when someone els wants to do somthing different people go crazy. I dont understand this world.
I recently purchased a PNY memory module 16 GB. I installed it in the Synology and for some reason, it still would not boot up. I need to take the module back to Best Buy and have them re-order it for me. I would assume I probably got a dud.
I don’t see anyone going crazy in this thread. I see people giving practical advice based on years of experience with FreePBX. Almost all of us have run FreePBX on hardware of various types and on cloud servers too. Cloud servers are not an “easy way out.” They are just outsourcing part of the stack that is a standard commodity. Configuring and operating a PBX is plenty of work on its own; giving someone else the responsibility for the server layer only makes things a little easier.
My issues with your setup have nothing to do with running on the Synology NAS and everything to do with running FreePBX in docker. Docker was designed to run immutable images. It also adds a bunch of proxies between ports to make the networking work. FreePBX is very stateful and needs to write to the image in LOTS of places. FreePBX ALSO opens ALOT of ports to make SIP work. None of this is ideal for Docker.
Simply put, FreePBX was never designed to be run in Docker. It was designed to be run in a VM.
Agreed. This has been discussed multiple times at length - a quick search of the forum would reveal many threads regarding this exact thing, including a few in-depth explanations by @xrobau on why it’s not a good fit.
When installing new ram, The Syno will check each block on 1st boot and can take a good while. I think mine took like 30 min to boot first time, then after that it’s fine.