PBX and file sharing solution
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So PBX. I am almost finalising Elastix, just need to check the phones and the overall setup check and then suggest this.
On the file server side, one good think I just learned that they are using google apps for business already, so may be its best to integrate a Synology NAS with local storage and sync to Google Drive. I am still waiting to get the details on the type of plan they have with google apps.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Elastic is great. FreePBX is great too. 3CX is decent.
If you have the skillset, I would use FreePBX over Elastix simply because Elastix is falling too far behind.
Elastix 3 is out soon. That will close the gap a lot.
Isn't 2.5 still in beta? as well as 3.x? sounds like very slow development.
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It's a PBX. You don't want fast development. The 2.4 branch has the latest Asterisk. It's not like prod isn't up to date.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's a PBX. You don't want fast development. The 2.4 branch has the latest Asterisk. It's not like prod isn't up to date.
If the Elastix guys were doing things to the Asterisk side of things I would agree, but they generally do not. It is a pretty clean Asterisk build to my understanding.
It is being so extremely out of date with their chosen interface to Asterisk (FreeePBX) that is the problem. A lot of improvements have been made to that side of things and it is all not available.
Primary example I have personally ran into: blf hints
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@scottalanmiller Since I couldn't find much spare time to help my friend to setup Elastix, found a company who does elastix implementation here in Dubai. They sell an appliance based on Elastix and are scheduled to give us a demo, Any recommendations I need to look for while getting this done by a third party? They were suggesting Yealink/Polycom phones.
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@ambarishrh said:
@scottalanmiller Since I couldn't find much spare time to help my friend to setup Elastix, found a company who does elastix implementation here in Dubai. They sell an appliance based on Elastix and are scheduled to give us a demo, Any recommendations I need to look for while getting this done by a third party? They were suggesting Yealink/Polycom phones.
NTG would happily do that too, you know
Make sure they are looking at Elastix 2.5 and 3.0. The 2.4 series has been replaced since this thread began.
I would avoid an Elastix appliance, that is a point of fragility that you do not want to deal with. You want either a hosted solution or a virtualized solution on-premises so that you can integrate the PBX into your existing backup, failover and DR strategy. PBXs are essentially stateless and so failover is trivial when virtualized (technically stateful but only in-flight calls are dropped and you can pick them back up again immediately.)
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Yealink and SNOM are the low cost phone leaders. We use them almost exclusively. Polycom is excellent and probably the best phones made but will cost a bit more, not necessarily worth the price premium but their price/quality ratio is still very good so well worth having on the short list.
The new player is Ubiquiti with desktop Android phones. We don't have one in the lab yet so we can't vouch for it beyond the idea being great, the price looking good and Ubiquiti having a great reputation. We plan to get some soon-ish as they really look interesting.
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@scottalanmiller Could you please let me know about the hosted PBX option is detail? Lets see if we could propose that, but wanted to make sure if it meets all their requirements and we have strict ISP regulations here, so need to make sure if hosted PBX is a possible option
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@ambarishrh said:
@scottalanmiller Could you please let me know about the hosted PBX option is detail? Lets see if we could propose that, but wanted to make sure if it meets all their requirements and we have strict ISP regulations here, so need to make sure if hosted PBX is a possible option
I just sent you a chat.
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@scottalanmiller I am still waiting for the guys to meet and discuss about the hosted PBX option. Meanwhile, got some info from the vendor, that their current stable elastix version used is 2.4 and said 2.5 version has some bugs which leads to call drops! Told him to send me the list of bugs, so I could verify if thats really the case or just avoiding the upgrade!
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2.4 isn't patched for security, though. That's the big issue there.
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The changelog for 2.4 says:
- Changes in Elastix Security:
- The instalation of this module now its much cleaner.
- Change of files owners for more security int he path web path.
- Some bug fixes for Elastix-Security.
- Changes in Elastix Security:
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@ambarishrh said:
The changelog for 2.4 says:
- Changes in Elastix Security:
- The instalation of this module now its much cleaner.
- Change of files owners for more security int he path web path.
- Some bug fixes for Elastix-Security.
That's from years ago. It is not patched for Shellshock or the SSL issues that recently were such a big deal.
- Changes in Elastix Security:
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Oh yes! Good point. Will check with the vendor about this as well
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If they have that patched, it means that they are doing their own alterations to Elastix 2.4 and you've potentially lost the benefits of Elastix' stability because they are altering the platform.
Really, at this point, I would only want Elastix 3.0 being rolled out. The 2.x line is a dead end and stuck on CentOS 5 now that 7 has been out for a while. It's an ancient platform.
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Thanks @scottalanmiller this would give me enough points to make sure either we get them with 3 or not to go with this vendor and stress more on the hosted pbx platform, and I might come back to you!
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Good luck!
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Got some details from the vendor. I asked them about the vulnerability on the 2.4 and their reply below:
Elastix 2.4 is not affected with the Shellshock vulnerability. Please find below the link for your reference.
http://forum.elastix.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=128542&p=132730&sid=6d0696d93b9f80a7d9ca3d9ca5d6ee09
We will not recommend 2.5 for analog lines as it has got call disconnection issue. Means if you are calling out/receive a inbound call the PBX will not disconnect the call even if the caller disconnect the call from the other end. Is that true?
We will do a bash upgrade to eliminate any issue of Shellshock.
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Well in a hosted system you don't have analogue lines so that isn't a factor for us.
