As I already have a pretty good VMware Server setup, I would quite like to be able to run FreePBX as a VM rather than install another box.
I see many comments about using a VM for testing, but I wondered if anybody had a production VM running?
Also, if you are using a VM, what about FXO and FXS interfaces (I need two FXO). Should I install a PCI card or go for an external box like the SPA3102? If internal, can I get the VM to grab it rather than the host O/S?
Lastly (sorry), is there a 2 x FXO equivalent of the 3102?
You can’t have FXO/FXS-cards in a VMware environment. If you use an external FXO/FXS solution it might work. You will run into issues with voicemail and sound.
If you have one or two users it might work, if you want to support more extensions, users and FXO/FXS-cards, use a 1U server like HP DL360 or equivalent.
I have Freepbx running in production on VMWare (ESX) and it works great, i couldn’t ask for more.
I have 4 FXO through 4 SPA3102, a double SIM gateway Portech MV372 and 50+ extensions.
The only limitation is that you cant use internal cards with virtual machine so the only solution is using external gateways. Beside SPA3102 you can check for SPA8800 http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10446/index.html which supports 4 FXO + 4 FXS and also there is official manual for configuring it with asterisk.
Glad to know that you are running FreePBX under VMWARE? Is there a special distribution of FreePBX that is tuned for VMWARE? If I recall, there were some timing issues.