I am wondering what has been done as far as running multiple instances of *. Like if you were providing a virtual PBX for small companies. I imagine it can be done in one of the following ways and am looking to see how other users are doing it. I have searched the wiki and have not found any info related to this. Maybe I am using the wrong word to describe what I want.
1) Segment the companies up in the extensions.conf file - This could handle the incoming outgoing calls but would have to share other configuration options in the other config files like moh etc.
I'm looking at this as well. I think Asterisk's "context" feature can be used to partition the PBX for multiple clients. When a call arrives on a T-1, the DID number will cause the call to be routed to that client's [incoming-call-x] context. The client's extensions would be defined in the [default-x] context, and each client would have a [local-x] context for outbound calling rules. I haven't tried this yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
2) Install multiple instances of * on the same machine - Seems like a good choice any problems with this and documentation on what needs to be done?
Red flags here. I'm not sure if multiple instances of Asterisk would be able to share the Zap channels known to the zaptel module--could channels 1-12 belong to Asterisk instance #1 and channels 13-24 to instance #2? Probably not. You also have the problem with /var/run/asterisk.pid.
3) Run inside of a virtual server environment like vmware or virtual linux server. - Seems like a good choice also. Anyone have any experience using * in this situation?
Wouldn't you still have physical circuits attached to physical boxes, each box running an instance of Asterisk?
I'm exploring a file server based system, with diskless "call servers" mounting their file systems from the file server. All configuration and voicemail files will reside on the file server. The file server will be server-grade hardware with RAID, while the call servers will be relatively cheap desktop quality hardware. All boxes will have two NIC interfaces on the MB, one a public interface and the other a private interface for inter-system IAX traffic. Each call server will have just a two- or four-port T-1 card in a 1U rack-mount chassis.
Each "extension" on the Cisco 79xx can be configured to register to a particular IP address, so each phone can be registered across two or more call servers. I'm thinking that the failure of a call server won't necessarily bring the system down, just degrade the service. Plugging the T-1 circuit(s) into a spare call server and powering-up the box would restore the system.
Comments anyone?
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