[asterisk-biz] Ingredients for self build asterisk for SME/SMB deployments

[paul at xedos.net]

I know that some may question the wisdom of bothering with a self-build when
products like asterisk at home or astlinux exist but I feel there are certain
advantages in building from bottom up - namely that you know the system you are
supporting to a greater degree and individual components can be upgraded with
more ease.

The list I thought might be needed to produce a remotely maintained Asterisk PBX
for customer deployments, is as follows:-

* Build box with single cpu, mirrored boot disk, Digium fxo card, 512mb ram, 2
eth cards - eth0 for phones, eth1 for adsl link
* Install and configure stripped down OS (eg. Centos 4 - no X or other
unnecessary s/w packages)
* Install and config Asterisk, zaptel, libpri, addons, sounds
* Install FreePBX (formerly AMP) or PBXWare or other gui package (can't decide
which but ideally something that allows customers some degree of control over
voicemail and some extension settings)
* Install + config nagios for remote monitoring / alerting
* Install webmin with asterisk plugin for remote web admin
* Configure tftp for phones (Snom 320's btw but could be any tftp enabled phone)
* Configure ssh for remote access and if necessary configure vpn (or ssh tunnel)
* Configure iptables to both block traffic, set up QoS and enable Voip traffic
logging
* Install + config arkeia or amanda for backups to remote-site

The aim is to be on a customer site as little as possible (other than initial
site install)  so I'd be interested to know if this lot can achieve that goal or
if any bits have been missed

Thanks
Paul






----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.