Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB
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I have a customer that desires Hosted PBX but also wants to maintain the ability to communicate between extensions if Internet service fails.
Is it possible? and how would you design a hybrid system? I am thinking hosted VitalPBX with an onsite VitalPBX appliance for failsafe. Does this make sense? Is it possble?
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To do what they want, I don't see how it can be accomplished without having some kind of PBX on your LAN. Else, how will the phones know where to send traffic. In such a setup, how would you tell the phones to use the on-prem PBX in the event of your WAN link going down? I'm not saying that can't be done, but that's the technical challenge I see.
Personally, I'd want to some business-case research with the customer. Are all of the users of this PBX on the LAN, or are there some users on the LAN and other users remote? If the latter does the customer understand that if the WAN link fails the remote users likely won't be able to dial the extensions of the LAN users, regardless of where the PBX is hosted?
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@JasGot said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
I have a customer that desires Hosted PBX but also wants to maintain the ability to communicate between extensions if Internet service fails.
Is it possible?Of course. You can do it with two PBXs or one and an SBC. Basically the hosted one trunks to the internal one. Generally we don't recommend it, it's complex and has more points of failure. But some places REALLY need to keep internal communications.
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@JasGot said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
I am thinking hosted VitalPBX with an onsite VitalPBX appliance for failsafe. Does this make sense? Is it possble?
Yup, we went through this with @Dashrender recently. Not that he needed the functionality, but a vendor was pitching it to him and of course the discussion came up if we offered it, which we do, but it's so rare that you'd want it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
@JasGot said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
I am thinking hosted VitalPBX with an onsite VitalPBX appliance for failsafe. Does this make sense? Is it possble?
Yup, we went through this with @Dashrender recently. Not that he needed the functionality, but a vendor was pitching it to him and of course the discussion came up if we offered it, which we do, but it's so rare that you'd want it.
While rare, and generally limited on down time-
Why would anyone want to give up such a useful tool? I can see a small manufacturer want this because of a number of reasons- one of which being at the cusp of reeking havoc on parts of the US: Hurricane / Tropical Storm Laura.
And yes- I can see that if winds and downed power - internet/ telco lines are down the office and warehouse are likely going to quickly vacate- internal communications is something you never want to lose while people are on site.
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Thanks everyone. I'll let them know it is quite possible, but with it comes complexities and costs. Without a very good reason, it's likely cost prohibitive.
Where we (and our customers) are, cell coverage is so good, that any PBX failure is generally not enough to stop communications.
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@JasGot said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
Thanks everyone. I'll let them know it is quite possible, but with it comes complexities and costs. Without a very good reason, it's likely cost prohibitive.
Where we (and our customers) are, cell coverage is so good, that any PBX failure is generally not enough to stop communications.
With that as a known environment - cell coverage - you could very easily offer Soft Phones - Extensions which either Follow You (easy to set up) or are additional extensions that get routed to when the primary is unreachable.
While working with @scottalanmiller and NTG - I set my own extension to ring my primary desk phone, and my soft phone (cell phone) so that in the event I was away from my desk at the time a call came in, I was able to receive it. While rare - it worked just fine, and the calling party had no idea as the delay is extremely minimal.
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@JasGot said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
Where we (and our customers) are, cell coverage is so good, that any PBX failure is generally not enough to stop communications.
Yeah, put apps on the cell phones and the main PBX never loses contact. These days that's almost always the better option.
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You can also do direct IP calling with most SIP phones. It is complex to design as you would need DHCP reservations for everything or a very good DHCP to DNS structure.
You could then make a XML address book of all the extensions and let people dial that way.
There is also multicast available, but that is not per phone.
Finally, since you have good cellular, just get a CradlePoint (or whatever brand) unit to bring cellular in as a failover.
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There is another solution that we had proposed, too. Closer to Jared's solution. And that's having two PBXs. And use only 2+ line phones. In the situation where the "Line 1" hosted PBX becomes unavailable, the "Line 2" internal LAN PBX will be available and everyone can call each other through that by going to line 2.
This is actually the solution that we ended up settling on as the proposed way to go. Pretty easy, very robust, minimally painful to use in an emergency situation.
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@scottalanmiller said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
There is another solution that we had proposed, too. Closer to Jared's solution. And that's having two PBXs. And use only 2+ line phones. In the situation where the "Line 1" hosted PBX becomes unavailable, the "Line 2" internal LAN PBX will be available and everyone can call each other through that by going to line 2.
This is actually the solution that we ended up settling on as the proposed way to go. Pretty easy, very robust, minimally painful to use in an emergency situation.
Yes. I think this is what I was having in mind from my earlier response. Having IP phones with a line to each PBX.
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@gjacobse said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
With that as a known environment - cell coverage - you could very easily offer Soft Phones
I have this on my cell phone. It works really well with the exception of battery drain.
I only run it when needed.Before anyone tells me it doesn't take much battery, My phone lasts about 36 hours between charges. I EXPECT it to. If the charge lasts less than 24 hours, I go nuts and address the apps using power.
For those who frequently place their phone on a charger, it may not be an issue.
Don't lose sight of the fact that I do really like the softphone......
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@scottalanmiller said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
In the situation where the "Line 1" hosted PBX becomes unavailable, the "Line 2" internal LAN PBX will be available and everyone can call each other through that by going to line 2.
@JaredBusch said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
You can also do direct IP calling with most SIP phones.
@gjacobse said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
With that as a known environment - cell coverage - you could very easily offer Soft Phones
Well.... There are certainly many options and routes to over come the issues caused by lost internet. Thank you all for your ideas, this is great!
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@JasGot said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
@gjacobse said in Hosted PBX with on site Appliance - Specifically: VitalPB:
With that as a known environment - cell coverage - you could very easily offer Soft Phones
I have this on my cell phone. It works really well with the exception of battery drain.
I only run it when needed.Before anyone tells me it doesn't take much battery, My phone lasts about 36 hours between charges. I EXPECT it to. If the charge lasts less than 24 hours, I go nuts and address the apps using power.
For those who frequently place their phone on a charger, it may not be an issue.
Don't lose sight of the fact that I do really like the softphone......
Oh - very much so ,.. the soft phone would chew through my battery as well. But - it's also a small price to pay for that extra..
