3CX Local Failover

[DanielE.]

Hello 3CX Users,

I have a question.

Is anyone of You running a 3CX Failover locally (2 PBXes in one LAN) to prevent downtime in case of Hardware-Failure or Service-Malfunction?

We have a customer, who would like to run exactly this setup. My thoughts on this where as following:
We could install a secound PBX on a virtual machine besides the Hardware PBX.
We could depoly the PBX Provisioning via DNS inside the LAN-Area (set a DNS-Scope on the 3CX Domain locally and point it to the primary PBX)
We could run a OPNSense wich allows Port-Forwarding to a DNS-Name via the Alias function.
We would then Port-Forward the Traffic from the Router to the OPNSense and than via DNS-Resolve to the right PBX.
In case the primary PBX Mailfunctions, we could update the DNS Record to the second PBX (via Scripts) and start the Services on the second PBX.

My Question is: Does anyone run such a Setup or something with a diffrent solution for the Port-Forwarding (the Router doesnt allow a change of the Port-Forwarding via CLI and cant forward to a DNS itself.

I recently read about the carp-protocol for Fail-Over but I never ran those and im not sure if the PBX would run well with it.

Does anyone have some experience to share?

Thank You very much in advance.

Sincerly,
Daniel

 

[SweetAction]

I've done this slightly different for the exact reason you mention (router port forwards going to the wrong place).

My failover script shuts down the failed primary PBX, changes the IP of the failover box, reboots it, and starts services.

Alternatively, you 1:1 nat the 2 PBXs with different public IPs and correct forwards.

 

[DanielE.]

Thank You very much @SweetAction.

Do You run Debian? I read a couple of times, that IP-Adress-Changes on a Debian System are more problematic. Did You provision the Phone with IP or DNS?

Thank You very much. I always thought, that IP-Switching would not work fluently so I discarded that thought too early.

I would be very happy if I wouldn't need aditional Hardware, because that one may fail too.

Thanks in advance.

 

[SweetAction]

We run debian.
We provision against the FQDN

We only use this method in cases where we can't update the firewall via script or use 2 IPs.