Limitations of running 3CX on XP vs Server OS ?

[htcomm]

Hello

My company is again considering whether to adopt the 3CX.

I suspect we would go for a 16 or 24 concurrrent call licence with about 40 extensions with call assistant and some remote extensions. After hours about 10 people would use the 3CX voip phone (via it's tunnel) to connect remotely.

I ws intending to use XP Pro or maybe even Vista Business as the OS.

My questions are:

What are the limitaions of running the 3CX on a non server OS platform (XP Pro / Vista Business) ?

I've heard for example that there is a limit with XP Pro of 10 iis tcp connections. Would that for example limit me to the number of 3CX Voip Phone tunnel connections ?

Thanks
Htcomm

 

[discovery1]

There are no real differences in 3CX functionality between an installation on XP and one on Server 2003/2008.
If you intend to fax outbound then a server OS makes more sense, otherwise there are few differences. There is no limit for XP in terms of SIP sessions, so you would not be affected.
I have customers running 25 users on XP Pro with no issues and performance is good.

 

[bluetel2]

the same answer that discovery1.

just IIS is more stable in 2003 server, and 2003 server is too fast rather than XP.

that all. if your company don't buy 2003 license, because it's expensive it's not a problem for 3cx to run in xp OS.

 

[htcomm]

Thanks for the information discovery1 and ehermouet.

We will go for XP pro.
Thank you
Htcomm

 

[Discovery Technology]

We found that a move to a Server OS did improve our faxing capabilities.

Please note that each handset would be establishing a UDP connection of which XP doesn't necessarily have a limit as it does with TCP connections, so you could connect as many handsets and soft clients as you want.

We've run plenty of 3CX installations on workstations with no real issues otherwise.

Don't expect to have any more than 10 users accessing their 'myphone' screens, etc all at once though.

If you end up hitting performance issues, you could always consider a move to 2008 Foundation server later on (cut down version of Windows Server and a little cheaper). Moving 3CX around the network is very easy at least - the backup/restore utility works very well. With a site as large as yours, I would also recommend keeping a backup of the system on another box just in case you have a hardware failure. Along with the install files, you could quickly run up another copy of the 3CX Server if your main system failed. (Of course, there are plenty of other backup methods - this would be the simplest one)

 

[comresource]

The best reason to use 2008 server is the ability to mange QOS settings from group policy. While XP will allow you to set DSCP for RTP packets with a slight tweak to 3CX and a registry entry, Server 2008 allows you to manage all QOS settings at the OS level. This give you the ability to control QOS based on the application or IP/Port. It it very easy to setup with the QOS policy wizard.

Please note that while Vista has the same ability, it will only work if the machine is part of the domain and QOS settings are controlled by domain group policies. Server 2008 allows you to use local group policy in stand alone mode.

True QOS brings 3CX up a notch when competing with other business VOIP solutions and this is an example of the benifits of a windows based system, getting to use all of the goodies built into the OS.

If anyone needs any help setting this up, please let me know.