Seeking an Alternative to NUC for my Asterisk FreePBX Installation

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jlg84

63 posts

Master Geek

#189503 2-Jan-2016 11:34

My troubles with my VoiP system going offline on its own continue, and I can only assume that the trouble arises from the fact that my installation of Asterisk FreePBX resides on an Intel NUC. I find the NUC to be really problematic--it's very temperamental and even something as simple as turning it on is an exercise in frustration. What other device could be used to house my Asterisk system? Or is there a way to troubleshoot the NUC to fix whatever is wrong with it?

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2350 posts

Uber Geek

#1460112 2-Jan-2016 11:37

I don't see why a NUC should have issues.

Have you considered 2talk hosted pbx instead?

jlg84

63 posts

Master Geek

#1460115 2-Jan-2016 11:41

I didn't know that 2Talk offer such a service.

Yabanize

2350 posts

Uber Geek

#1460119 2-Jan-2016 11:48

jlg84: I didn't know that 2Talk offer such a service.

Have a look, it's included in all of their plans :)

jnimmo

1097 posts

Uber Geek

#1460120 2-Jan-2016 11:49

Yeah, highly recommend a hosted service unless you require internal phone communication to continue working in the event of an internet outage

speed

293 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1460135 2-Jan-2016 12:18

>troubles with my VoiP system going offline on its own continue

Can you define more precisely what you mean by 'going offline'?

Like do you mean your PBX goes 'offline' from the perspective of your ITSP (ie inbound calls fail), or do you mean it stops responding completely, ie internal hosts cannot ping it and internal calls fail? If the former then the problem is likely related to your NAT and replacing the NUC won't necessarily mitigate. However if it is the latter then yes certainly replace it.

To answer your specific query, I've helped a few people get (native) Asterisk running on their Raspberry Pis and that can make a great low-cost solution for just a handful of phones (and preferably little to no transcoding). But I'm not sure if there is a variant of FreePBX for RPi so may not be suitable for you.

Pete

jlg84

63 posts

Master Geek

#1460139 2-Jan-2016 12:40

I'll try to describe what happens as succinctly and accurately as possible. What appears to happen periodically is that, for no discernible reason, my IP phones (which include a handful of wireless Yealink phones, and a handful of Yealinks that are connected via ethernet cables) report "no service", and neither incoming nor outgoing calls will go through. If I go to the URL for my installation of Asterisk, the page will come up but I'll see a variety of error messages (though these are also present when the system is functioning--things like there are two bad destinations and several modules have available updates), and if I go to the 2Talk page to see what my status is, it will report that no phones are assigned to my account. The way I have corrected this is to restart the NUC, which is a bit of a challenge in itself, since occasionally when I do so it will start up OK but the ethernet lights on the active port will fail to light up as they should do. That's why I have concluded there's a fault with the NUC.

I have had a Raspberry Pi with Asterisk PBX installed on it, but that was even more troublesome than the NUC has been, as it burned out after just a few months and became completely unresponsive.

speed

293 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1460141 2-Jan-2016 12:48

That's a great description of the problem, kudos to you for taking the time to spell it out!

It sounds like Asterisk itself is running into trouble (since the page still loads, apache and the NUC must still be functioning), however that's just how Asterisk can be. It can be a real beast to tame, and the obfuscation of a GUI can make it even more difficult to understand what is happening and why.

I maintain a collection of Asterisk PBXs (serving approx 500 phones) from various Ubuntu Servers inside Virtual Machines on Apple hardware, and I have had a really good experience with the setup.

But perhaps the previous comments on investigating 2talk's cloud-PBX offering are worth further consideration for you. Especially if your SIP account already comes from them (ie if it doesn't then you can always get a temporary number for testing and then port your existing number across once you've confirmed they service meets your needs).

Best of luck. I hope you find a workable solution :)

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Peppery

919 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1460238 2-Jan-2016 16:05

speed: I maintain a collection of Asterisk PBXs (serving approx 500 phones) from various Ubuntu Servers inside Virtual Machines on Apple hardware, and I have had a really good experience with the setup.

What hypervisor are you using? We're running Asterisk on Ubuntu Server inside VMWare Fusion on a pair of Mac Minis and it works well, except for when the less technically inclined hit the big pause button.

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#1460454 3-Jan-2016 03:26

The NUC is a perfect Asterisk box. Because your issues are likely confuguration or network related I'm not convinced replacing it will necessarily fix things.

Have you looked to see whether your is possibly the incredibly common Asterisk DNS issue? It's an incredibly common fault to happen to people who don't understand Asterisk that well.

richms

28168 posts

Uber Geek

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Lifetime subscriber

#1460457 3-Jan-2016 03:52

Network not coming back up on a power cycle isnt normal however. That alone would have me looking at the NUC or the switch as a source of that problem.

Richard rich.ms

jlg84

63 posts

Master Geek

#1460461 3-Jan-2016 06:41

As a few of you have guessed, I am not an expert at maintaining my Asterisk installation, so I do not know what hypervisor I'm using (I'm not even aware that I have a hypervisor), nor do I know how to see if the dreaded Asterisk DNS issue is the cause of my trouble. What I do know is that occasionally and for no apparent reason my system stops working, and the guy in town who is somewhat knowledgeable about these things tells me to reboot the NUC to make it come back on, and it usually takes several repeated reboots before it does.

rosco62

55 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

#1460469 3-Jan-2016 07:12

You get what you pay for with freeware and bottom of the tree ip phones. I have yet to see any asterisx system that in the long term is trouble free. They are an IT dream in terms of making clients dependent on their IT provider and providing a nice income stream for them..
If you really want reliable get yourself something like an Avaya IP office with Avaya IP phones. Middle of the road in terms of pricing but up there with reliability and sip interoperability. I see lots of them tucked away for years, running reliably with no trouble. Lots of them for sale on trade me.
Nortel BCM used to be a good bet but has been end of life for several years now with no support. There are various other brands on the market but they come and go leaving clients hi and dry
No I am not a reseller of anything but an experienced trouble shooter

sbiddle

30853 posts

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Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#1460472 3-Jan-2016 07:29

I can't disagree more about Asterisk @rosco62 but the difference is I've deployed hundreds of installs, many with 150+ endpoints.

The problem with Asterisk isn't the platform, it's that distros such as FreePBX made it simple for people who know nothing about phone systems to deploy a PBX without understanding anything. There are advantages and disadvantages with any big platform whether you look at Asterisk, Avaya, Panasonic and so on. They all have different uses.

speed

293 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1460476 3-Jan-2016 08:23

Peppery: What hypervisor are you using? We're running Asterisk on Ubuntu Server inside VMWare Fusion on a pair of Mac Minis and it works well, except for when the less technically inclined hit the big pause button.

He he he, we never let the less technically inclined anywhere near the server console ;)

To answer your question, it's VMWare Fusion on one pair and Virtualbox on others.

Doesn't seem to make any practical difference to the running of the Asterisk VM (the only reason to get VMWare Fusion IMO is if you want to run any Mac OS X client VMs too).

The Mac Mini makes a great server platform, especially when you shoe-horn two of them into one of those 1RU RackMac enclosures (and only 300mm deep!). Even better if you're lucky enough to have a few of the old quad-core model!

Pete

noroad

949 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1460477 3-Jan-2016 08:25

rosco62: You get what you pay for with freeware and bottom of the tree ip phones. I have yet to see any asterisx system that in the long term is trouble free. They are an IT dream in terms of making clients dependent on their IT provider and providing a nice income stream for them..
If you really want reliable get yourself something like an Avaya IP office with Avaya IP phones. Middle of the road in terms of pricing but up there with reliability and sip interoperability. I see lots of them tucked away for years, running reliably with no trouble. Lots of them for sale on trade me.
Nortel BCM used to be a good bet but has been end of life for several years now with no support. There are various other brands on the market but they come and go leaving clients hi and dry
No I am not a reseller of anything but an experienced trouble shooter

I can tell you that Asterisk is used on a very large scale in the Telecommunications industry in NZ for POTS and VOIP delivery to end users. 5,000 - 10,000 end users per Asterisk instance is reliably achievable and not unusual. There is at least one setup that I know quite a lot about with around 100k end users (balanced over instances) with very few issues.

I am not impressed with the Intel NUC or the Intel Compute stick after using one of each. I would not buy either of them again. Asrock Beebox seems a bit better for an ultra small form factor unit.

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