Newbie question

[edwin167]

Hi,
we run a small IT shop, and have a number of clients who are asking if we can do VOIP hosting for them.

I downloaded and installed 3CX Free edition, and I like the product so far.

Since we have a lot of smaller clients, 2-5 employees, I want to host multiple clients on one 3CX server. Is this possible or do I need a 3CX for each company ?

Thanks !

 

[KerryG]

You can but you can't completely isolate the companies meaning they can do extensions to extensions calling to each other and they will have a combined company directory if you use a single instance of 3CX.

 

[mhanson]

Kerry nailed it. Since the system has the ability to use multiple IVRs, each could have their own, as well as segmented Extensions ranges. But the minute someone accidentally dials to another extension in another business, they are going to know they are sharing a system.

3CX is not meant to be a multi-tenant PBX in my opinion, but it can be done.

 

[leejor]

If you can set up a dial plan in each extension (set) you could restrict the first digit dialled and block the other extension numbers. Then have one group 200 to 299, the next 300 to 399, etc., a bit cumbersome, but...

 

[KerryG]

That doesn't solve issues with inbound callers though. Especially with the dial by name directory.

 

[leejor]

If you didn't use the DR, and just put all lines for each customer in one or two ring groups, multiple key appearances on a set or sent calls to one receptionist line, it could work for the 2 to 5 line customers that he is looking at. But, before offering the service to anyone though I would thoroughly plan out the set-up, dial-plans, numbering schemes, etc., and try to work out any possible conflicts so you don't run in to "surprises" when it is actually up and running. Make sure you know what they actually want and expect, now and in the future. You don't want to have to tell paying customers that you have to take away their phone service because they outgrew it. Of course you could always install a 3CX for each customer, eventually.

 

[jelliott52]

Why don't you just put each system in it's own virtual environment? This would save you of the "gotchas". There are a number of FREE bare metal Virtual serves available. Just to name a few. ESXi, Proxmox, Citrix Zen. My favorites are ESXi and Proxmox. You can have a smoking hot server that can host 5 phone system for under $500 - $700 bucks, using AMD or Intel X64 dual or quad core chips. We have the following system running our office. AMD Quad core with 8 gigs of ram, 2-500 gig raid 1 and 1 data drive hot spare.

It runs 5, vm's Clark Connect Router software, Win 2003, Win 2003 Terminal Server, Win2000 Server, WinXP with 3CX on it. The most I've seen the process stay at is 75% and that moving extreme amounts of data around. The normal CPU usage it bounces around 25% - 35% usage. The one nice thing I've notice about 3CX is the low amount of horse power required to run it. You might even be able to run more. But you better have some serious Internet pipes. Right now we have 1 - T1 3mbps and 1 Comcast pipe that averages 12 mbps, using load balancing and 1-to-1 nat to get the traffic to proper server.

Jay

 

[edwin167]

Thanks for all the replies. I was thinking about the virtual route myself, but didn't know whether it would work. The fact that there are a few gotchas to look into, the possibility that someone dials the wrong extension and Jay's experience with VM's, nudged me in the (I think) right direction. I'm gonna setup a VM and see if that works for us. We already do VPS hosting as one of our services, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Thanks again all for the quick replies.

Edwin