Elastix Installation

Elastix FAQ - **Installation**
Press to download Step by step installation guide

What hardware do I need to run up a test Elastix system?
This varies depending on your final configuration of your Elastix system. If you just want to run up a test system to have a play, then a Celeron/Pentium 3, with a 20Gb hard drive, 512Mb of memory, cdrom drive and a network card is a good enough system to test with a VoIP Carrier. This can even be a workstation class machine. If you want to connect it to a normal PSTN/T1/E1 Carrier, then you will also require a suitable communications card to suit or at least an external SIP connected gateway that supports these carrier connections. Yes you can run it on less hardware e.g. 8Gb drive, may even squeeze it into 256Mb memory, and possibly run it on an Atom processor, but due to the changing nature of the Elastix design and products included, the above configuration will run it with a bit of headroom.

What hardware is recommended for a production Elastix system?
These answers will vary and in general the answer is the more the better. Why risk issues on a production PBX system for the sake of a saving a couple of hundred dollars. A typical Intel Core 2 duo based system will handle 200+ extensions, wth 30-40 simultaneous calls via E1 hardware without an issue but don't rely purely on this FAQ, ask other users in the forums on what they are running. If the possibility of the business expanding rapidly exists, over compensate. Even dual or quad Xeon systems are reasonably priced nowadays with 4Gb of memory being standard.

You can also check this link for dimensioning your Asterisk server: Asterisk Dimensioning

How do I calculate bandwidth for my specific needs?
You can calculate estimates here: Asterisk Bandwidth Calculator

Tip: remember that every call goes both ways (incoming+outgoing)

What is the ISO image that I have downloaded and what does it do?
For many that are new to the Linux world, the idea of Appliance Servers and ISO images may not be things that you come across often, especially if the majority of your background is in the Microsoft world. The ISO image that you may have downloaded from Elastix.org is a single file that contains an image of a CD that the developers of Elastix have created. The first step is to burn this onto a CD so that you can install this on your hardware. Now again for many, not having come across an ISO image before, they are not burnt to a CD like you would with data files. Your CD Writing software must be capable of “burning an image” or “burning an ISO”. If you cannot see these options in your software, have a look through the help of your CD Writing software. Most have it, but there are some CD writing software included with PC's when you buy them, that do not have this capability, or have it enabled in a “PRO” version. If you don't have this capability, there are now plenty available for free download, just use Google to search for one. Once this is burnt correctly, it produces a bootable CD that will install the Elastix product onto your hard drive after a few questions

I finally have burnt my CD with an ISO Image. What do I do now?
Place the CD into your machine that you are going to run Elastix on. Boot the machine making sure that the machine is set to boot from CD as the primary boot device. If it is not set to boot from CDROM, you need to change this setting in your BIOS or BIOS boot screen. Every machine is different, so you will have to work this out yourself….on the whole however it is pretty straight forward.

Ok it has now booted with the CD, the Elastix initial boot page has come up, what's next?
Press enter at the first page, almost all the rest is reasonably easy to understand. The only pointers that we can provide are, make sure that you select the correct timezone for your location, when it comes to preparing your hard disk, don't select the default, move it up to the top option which is to complete replace the current partition (especially if you have used this machine for other purposes previously) and for the time being when it comes to the packages to install, leave as default. That is generally about it. When it ejects the CD pull it out, otherwise your machine will reboot and try and boot from the CD again. One other thing that it asks you to enter is the root password. When you enter this, write it down. If you lose this password, it makes things extremely hard moving forward.

Everything seems to have gone well, my machine has rebooted and come up asking for login?
Congratulations, it sounds like '''on the whole your installation has gone reasonably well. Before we break open the congratulatory Pepsi Max or Coke Zero, we need to login and confirm that your Network card has been identified and installed. So at the login, t'''ype the word “root” (without quotes and in lower case) and press enter. Now it asks for password, type in the password that you entered as part of the installation (you did write it down - didn't you?). Now you should have a Linux prompt after a message that also provides you with your IP address for your Elastix system (providing that you have it connected to the network with a DHCP Server (usually you have one on your router if not on a business network)

Tip: if you don't have DHCP Server ON, then type setup on the root console > Network Configuration > Edit devices > and setup your network card with an static IP address.

The IP address came up when I logged in. What do I do now?
On a workstation (separate to your Elastix machine), do as it is says which is open the browser and in the address bar of your browser, enter the http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx address and you will be possibly prompted saying that the site certificate is not valid. Just accept this and you will then be presented with a login to Elastix. Type in admin for the user, and palosanto(in the new distro during installation it asks to set a password for the admin account so that you can set you own preferred password instead of palosanto) as the password and have a look around. :-)