Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : VOIP etc : Confused and Frustrated about Asterisk/VoIP

[mperkel]

I've been using Asterisk for years and it barely sort of works. Running it under OpenVZ now and although it still functions the Centos it is running on is semi crashed in that yum and RPM no longer work.

Anyhow, I've decided to start over and create a new one and try to get everything installed right. but there seems to be various options out there and trying to figure out where to start (over).

I'd like to use 64 bit if possible. Or am I stuck with 32 bit?

I's like to install from RPMS rather than an ISO that I somehow have to port over to work on OpenVZ. I like clean installs and clean upgrades.

I want something that works and is reliable. Not something that is flaky and unpredictable.

Should I use Asterisk 1.6 or 1.4? Should I used Trixbox?

I am also open to recommendations of other systems. But most importantly, I want the damn thing to just work.

Thanks in advance.

[citywidehost]

Hi Marc,

What are you using the PBX for? What's most important to you - easy management? being stable?

Trixbox is okay. I've been some problems with Trixbox, especially after upgrading versions.

I would prefer compiling Asterisk myself and writing my own dialplans and .conf. You simply won't have a pretty gui to manage the system. But installs and upgrades are straight forward.

64bit isn't a problem. Asterisk 1.4 is LTS (as is 1.8)... so you might consider one of those over 1.6.

Just my two cents

[rds100]

How much RAM do you have on that VPS? Yum probably crashed because of not enough free memory. And 32 bit is going to consume less memory than 64bit, so if you are short on memory, go 32bit.
Asterisk will work fine in a OpenVZ VPS, except for the conference calls - to have these working you need the ztdummy module, and the host has to make special arrangements to load this for you, most providers don't have it.

[citywidehost]

Originally Posted by rds100

Asterisk will work fine in a OpenVZ VPS, except for the conference calls - to have these working you need the ztdummy module, and the host has to make special arrangements to load this for you, most providers don't have it.

1.6 and higher has ConfBridge which is a conference application without the need of DAHDI. So no need for the ztdummy module in that case.

Hope that helps!

[SysAdminMan]

Asterisk 1.4 is a LTS version but with less than a year to go with security fixes now - https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/displ...erisk+Versions

Trixbox is OK but take some extra security precautions if it's directly connected to the Internet. PBX-in-a-flash is also a good option for a security focused system.

Asterisk (and FreePBX if you decide to run it) should be very stable.

I agree that if your running on a 'low memory' VPS it's likely that yum ran out of memory while doing an upgrade.

[voipboy]

Originally Posted by bucasia

Trixbox is OK but take some extra security precautions if it's directly connected to the Internet. PBX-in-a-flash is also a good option for a security focused system.

You are correct!!!

[CymraegWalesHosting]

Asterisk should never be run on a OpenVZ or Xen Machine. Its not stable and has timing issues. (ie.... never resell calls on a 1/1 basis on asterisk on a VPS)

We and our customers find it to trouble-some. Trixbox is good. But as of last week we are not supporting it after we found a HUGE security hole in the software. I am willing to share the security hole via PM but not via open forum as this security hole allows you to easily hack any Trixbox installation without a trace. Its not a case of Trixbox is the issue, its the case of what it does to the other software on the server and we can confirm this affects ALL versions of trixbox. Therefore if you want to use all your prepaid credit quickly.... get TRIXBOX!

The best pbx software we know of is PBXinaFlash or Freepbx.

If you are to install on a VPS. Make sure it is KVM based VPS. Xen & OpenVZ require changes to kernel operations.

We use Asterisk 1.4 (migrating to 1.6) on our cloud which currently handles nearly 2 million minutes a day.... our engineers have no trouble with it what so ever.

[SysAdminMan]

Originally Posted by CymraegWalesHosting

Asterisk should never be run on a OpenVZ ...

While I agree you will probably have problems if you try and run Asterisk on a general purpose OpenVZ VPS, that is definitely not the case if the host node is setup and managed correctly for Asterisk.

OpenVZ is in fact ideally suited to running Asterisk due to the way the virtualization works, and many hundreds/thousands of people do so sucsessfully.

[CymraegWalesHosting]

Originally Posted by bucasia

While I agree you will probably have problems if you try and run Asterisk on a general purpose OpenVZ VPS, that is definitely not the case if the host node is setup and managed correctly for Asterisk.

OpenVZ is in fact ideally suited to running Asterisk due to the way the virtualization works, and many hundreds/thousands of people do so sucsessfully.

Actually i do agree with you actually. But not for things like billing. We have come across alot of users who try entering the minute brokerage market and they are using VPS's for billing. When you are only making 5% profit on what you buy at, but your VPS is possibly .005sec out each sec... that can very quickly result in a loss rather than by.

I will be open, our Telecom cloud is effectively 1 huge VPS.... ie.... VMWARE GRID Technology. However we have taken extremely careful measures to make sure we are not effected by this issue.

[vccstelecom]

I would recommend AsteriskNow with asterisk 1.6. Once you install the iso you can control packages with rpm if needed.. Forget the 64 bit, you wont see any difference unless you're running large databases (in my experience). Be sure to check your VPS resources and see what the guest is using versus what you have given it. Thin provisioning if possible will allow to keep space to a minimum while ensuring you wont have to expand the disk in the near future.

Regards,

<<signatures to be set up in your profile>>

[pageshoppe]

Well, I dint experience any issues while running asterisk on a Xen server. I have experienced similar issues related to timing, when I tried it in KVM. Trixbox is good for a newbie. FreePBX is a good solution that I can recommend

[phil29]

My personal recommendation is FreePBX and if you are having problems getting a proper install running, you can use Freedoh: http://www.freedoh.net/ The author is a great guy, and the script is pretty solid. It will install a working copy of FreePBX onto your Debian variant box.

[phil29]

Also, I forgot to mention: the Freedoh script also automatically sets up FreePBX to utilize Google Voice outbound trunks if you so choose to try and go that route. Using GV to route outbound calls isn't 100%, so if you do choose to do that, I would also have a backup trunk just in case. Basically, if the GV trunks wont connect, it can failover to your "real" trunk.

Edit: the benefit of using GV is that its free.