3CX phone system on raspberry pi?

[manfer]

I had the chance to test the debian 9 version of 3CX in a virtual machine and at first glance looks it works really well. So as debian 9 can work in ARM architecture too I was wondering if 3CX could run on a raspberry pi.

So I did a search on the forums and found this locked thread.
https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/full-blown-3cx-on-raspberry-pi.51385/

I was going to comment on that thread but don't know why it is locked as it is in my opinion really interesting question to follow up.

Maybe just because it is a duplicate of the thread?
https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/3cx-phone-system-on-raspberry-pi.50141/

But... that one is locked too.

Looking at the answer by @jem1 on that last thread I imply 3CX for linux makes use of .NET core to work and it is said it is not available for ARM architecture.
https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/3cx-phone-system-on-raspberry-pi.50141/#post-204297

But if it makes use of .NET core I suppose it would just need .NET core runtime and I can find in dotNet github repository this message
https://github.com/dotnet/announcements/issues/29

which links to
https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/samples/RaspberryPiInstructions.md

So though it is not still totally supported by Microsoft looks like there is progress on running .NET core on Raspberry pi.

 

[Sopock]

But... that one is locked too.

That seems to be new policy for any older topic!

Maybe on this platform there is no need to run all services like queue manager to reduce footprint...

Roadmap ARM 32/64

 

[eddv123]

Hi Manfer,

I believe I read somewhere (pre-stretch release) that Raspberry Pi cannot run 3CX due to a hardware limitation. It is great for SBC's though !!

That being said (and I expect this is the reason for the question) there are open source Linux based PBX's that can run on Raspbian.

My personal feeling however (in either case) has always been that it is not a professional move to go to a client site and tell them this PSU sized device is what your business communications are going to be running on.

 

[manfer]

It is just out of curiosity. Always great to know new deployment options.

I agree raspberry with 1gb is probably not a good idea. Not sure if with ZRAM would do.

But things are always moving very fast and there are more ARM architecture boards already on the market with 2gb.

Banana-pi, orange-pi, ODROID-C2, ...

About clients most of them just want things working and don't mind very much what you deploy. And as far I'm sure what I deploy does the task reliably because I have already tested it before, I'm ok.

 

[jem1]

Hi Manfer,

I believe I read somewhere (pre-stretch release) that Raspberry Pi cannot run 3CX due to a hardware limitation. It is great for SBC's though !!

It is a hardware limitation.

https://www.3cx.com/docs/3cx-tunnel-session-border-controller/

The 3CX SBC on a Raspberry PI 2 or 3 should be used when the remote office has up to 20 phones with a maximum of 10 BLF keys per device.

The SBC is only driving traffic back and forth for SIP and BLF events. The web events for provisioning are still handled by the PBX. A 4SC might be the most you could drive on a Pi, and even then that might be pushing it for the free Edition. Though Asterisk on the Pi 1 could handle up to about 10 calls before degrading, I imagine a Pi2 and Pi3 and software optimized could pull a lot more at once.

My Debian 9 VM which I provisioned 2GB of RAM uses about 25% idle, so RAM may not be an issue for lower SC. It does come down to 3CX is coded I bet quite differently than Asterisk and I can imagine 3CX will run on lower end hardware sometime in the future, just have to sit back and wait. V15 was a huge step forward in terms of running on less.