Our Race to Asterisk

Perimeter Church is pretty clearly going to be using Asterisk, or some derivative, very soon.  VERY soon.  With all the excitement of our CRM roll-out, and our general fiscal year-end wrap-up activities, as well as our deployment of Exchange 2007, SharePoint, our new search tools, storage upgrades, revamping our backup tools, enhancing our web site, and dozens of other big things, you'd think we'd be comfortable saying "that's enough for now."  Oh no!  Not us!  We are ALSO doing a very rapid construction project which has major IT implications.

This project involves purchasing an existing building adjacent to our property.  Our current facility is the large area in the lower left, the "new" building is in the upper right:

The new building has actually been a around a while, and it's been nearly vacant.  Part of that is because it's been poorly maintained.  Part of that is because the building has a mold problem.  Not a trivial one.  Our solution is to basically tear the building down.  All the way to slabs and girders.  No interior walls.  No exterior walls.  No windows or doors.  A fresh, naked, building.  Then rebuild it.  Oh...did I mention we started about three weeks ago and plan to move in before the end of August!  Yup, that's the schedule, start to finish in less than 90 days.  Amazingly, the contractor is right on schedule.

Here's the building just at the start of stripping off the bricks.  (A bit of clearing in the top left corner)

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Most of the facing off.  Not done yet.

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Just about "naked."  A little more gutting to do, some areas to treat, some water-protection to apply, but almost ready to start the rebuild process.  This picture was taken in late June.

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Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with our Race to Asterisk.  Well...we're not using any copper in that new building -- only fiber connectivity.  That's a good bias toward a VoIP phone system.  Our current phone system supports VoIP, so I could just buy more [expensive] phones to add to it, but why spend money on old technology when for not a lot more, we could move to Asterisk?  Yeah...we couldn't think of any good reason either, so we're jumping in.

Our first thought was that we'd use Asterisk *just* for the new building, and configure it as a front-end to our existing system.  Do-able, but a lot of work.  When we thought through it, the labor & service charges to integrate the two phone systems just might be the same, or even more, than the cost for the roughly 300 phones we'd have to purchase to make a full move to Asterisk.  So...new plan: get to Asterisk, soon!

Oh yeah...did I mention that late August deadline?  This is going to be a very busy time...

Comments

[Clif Guy]

One word: "Yikes!"

[IndioITMan]

Checklist:

Check Tony's blog...Check!

Check on Tony's workload...Check!

Add Tony/Perimeter to prayer list across the country...Check!

On my knees on your behalf,

SCC-Dave

[Danielle]

One thing is true. Some works are quick, some longer. Good to have a quick work, all things considered. Even when you're down to the slab, a rebuilding is probably always easier than creating.

Good news is...with Jesus, stripped down and naked also means covered. I'll be praying for certain. Kudos to those involved. Bless yall.

[Bryan Johnson]

Hey, we've been living in the Asterisk world for about a year now. If you're interested, here's what we use

Software
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Asterisk 1.4.x
CentOS 5
FreePBX
ARI / Web Meet-Me
These are currently rolled together as Trixbox CE, but there's a bad vibe in Trixbox land right now. :(

Hardware
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Dell PE1950 + 2GB + Diskless (Boot from SAN)
http://trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/howto-booting-trixbox-iscsi-san

4 port Redfone FoneBRIDGE2-EC for connecting to our PRI
Adtran TSU-600e for analog devices - modems over VoIP=bad
Dell 3448P switches
Aastra 51i, 55i, and 55i + Sidecar
Polycom SoundStation IP4000

[allen madding]

I strongly believe you will be happy making the move. I'd suggest Polycom deskphones. I like the IP 501s. They're very easy to config, have GREAT quality built in speakerphone, and very competitive price point (list $270 and regularly sell for $199). You can even pick up spares off EBay.