[dba-Tech] VoIP PBX of 2016

[Gustav Brock]

Hi all

Our old Trixbox PBX (based on Asterisk) installed a decade ago needed a replacement. The HP server ran fine but with a severely outdated Linux install, and the phones were also much of yesterday. It took a lot of trouble setting it up, I recall. My fear was if it should break down, because I wouldn't know what to do with the Linux stuff, and the techie who configured the Trixbox and the old SPA942 phones is far away.

So I turned to 3CX:

    http://www.3cx.com/

who offers a free version limited to two outbound calls, which is fine for our small shop where most traffic runs on mobile phones anyway.
Prepared with two test trunks at different providers, it took me one day to set up a virtual 2012 R2 server on our main 2012 R2 server and arrange for localized provisioning of the Cisco SPA512G phones with a simple group for inbound calls. Very basic, but fully functioning, and all tests were green.

The next day I could switch from the test trunk to our main trunk holding our public phone number.

Now I can pull one more physical server off service, and I have no more Linux or NetWare running. Not that they have not been stable, they have indeed, but I don't know how to manage them, and it wouldn't pay off for me to spend the time learning.

3CX is an amazing piece of software. It can run a huge corporate PBX system with all sorts of bells and whistles, yet it is very easy to handle for a very modest install like ours.

/gustav