Hi all,
I am setting up a new FreePBX Distro system next week. I was going to put it on an Intel NUC but I saw some other posts that suggest the distro doesn’t have all of the drivers it needs. Can someone recommend a model that does work? Or are there ways of loading drivers manually with the distro? If a different similar mini-PC does work, I am open to suggestions.
Thanks!
Its hard to recommend anything unless you share more about how you will be using the system.
Small deployment. About 10 phones with extensions. Low volume. I know a NUC would be more power than I need, but at around $600, I’m OK with the extra power. No, I don’t want to do a Raspberry Pi or something like that. I know there’s the Sangoma appliances, but I generally prefer having control over the hardware without voiding warranties.
I know you indicated otherwise, but I would really recommend the FreePBX Phone System 40. Similar price. Although they are based on the same platform I believe you would have more functionality than the PBXact offering.
From a hardware perspective I really appreciate the extra gigabit ports (lots of options). It is fully supported incase you have issues in the deployment and I don’t think upgrading the ram necessarily voids the warranty, but am not 100% sure about that.
The Phone System 40 is certainly an option for this…
I was wondering… how far behind do updates come with the appliances since they are supposedly thoroughly tested… Or does it follow the same Stable track that the self-install distro does?
Does it have limits beyond CPU power or does it actually limit the number of extensions or phones?
FreePBX is FreePBX on your equipment or Sangoma’s. I believe you would get the current (stable) version. PBXact I am not sure of. We were told on a sales call it runs a version or two behind (for stability), but never pursued it. We opted to go with FreePBX and buy commercial modules.
I am not aware of any limits beyond the general limits of the hardware and software. I would recommend a quick email to the Sangoma sales team to get your specific questions accurately answered before making any decisions.
Let us know what you do!
Good luck.
Hi,
I had installed for two locations Intel NUC PC, ( inside with Ubuntu Server + KVM with OpenVswitch + PfSense + FreePBX + Unifi AP controller ) 3 vm’s works perfectly in Intel NUC.
Best
Which Model NUC?
I find the Celeron ones too underpowered, pretty well all the rest work fine with debian ootb, to do a RedHat thing it might be easier to use kvm to present a generic nic or perhaps temporarily use a five dollar usb to Ethernet dongle then add the broadcom/intel driver latwr.
Hi PitzKey,
I used Intel NUC NUC5i3MY i5 cpu, 16GB Ram, 256 M2 SSD and 1 TB 7200Rpm Second Disk.
You can find this model for cheep price because its Q3 15 model, i7 little expensive but i5 doing nice job.
Best
yes i did the same way wifi settings… 
sangoma pbxact-25 is perfect.