As FreePBX is moving away from CentOS as a base distribution and targetting Debian, a lot of people that run FreePBX systems would like to know what Loway plans to do in terms of how to install QueueMetrics and WombatDialer.

Historically, most Asterisk distribution have been based on RHEL and derivatives (even through the first one with an automated installer, called Xorcom Rapid, was based on Debian in 2005), and therefore it was a no-brainer for us to target CentOS systems as our primary installation method by providing native packages. This has been the status quo for almost 20 years now. But boy, some things have changed.

The biggest change to the way we do general computing is the ubiquitous availability of virtual machines. Nowadays, most of the infrastructure is run within a VM, and providing a new VM is usually cheap and effective. Therefore our approach is to try and to minimize the changes made on the PBX itself - just put a data loader there, and send everything to QM that is physically on a separate VM or within our hosted cloud. This makes your life easier as an admin because you can upgrade one system without touching the other.

The second big change compared to years ago is the general availability of Systemd, that means that very same service unit scripts can be used on different distributions.

The third change to the historical landscape is the common usage of Docker and derivatives in order to run a piece of software on any Linux distribution without caring too much about the exact details, and bypassing the installation stage.

So, for the future, our approach is based on three principles:

  • First, we don’t expect to install the software on the PBX itself anymore. You just install Uniloader, and it takes care of sending everything to a local QueueMetrics or hosted QueueMetrics-Live instance. Which one it is, is not important - it works exactly in the same way. You’re free to choose.
  • Installing Uniloader will be done using a script within the package itself, and won’t rely on native packages. As it is one single package, adding a repo and downloading the package is just as much effort as downloading the TGZ, unpacking it and typing ./install.sh as detailed on the User Manual. That script will work on any system that is based on a recent version of Systemd, has no dependencies to external packages, and basically just works. Need to upgrade? just run it again.
  • Data exchanges happen, whenever possible, using HTTP, so that you don’t have to configure remote database access, file sharing, or any other of those niceties. This is not always possible (for example to access AMI directly) but very often it is. Even call recordings can be accessed through an HTTP interface, by using Uniloader in AudioVault mode (and yes, we provide an unit just for that).

In practice, this means that you have two managed options (plus one) to install QueueMetrics or WombatDialer:

  • If you want total control, as you are used to, you can install it on a CentOS derivative (for example Rocky 7, 8 or 9) and it will work using native packages.
  • As an alternative, but an alternative that is good enough for the majority of scenarios, you can install it within any operating system of your liking, using Docker or similar container host and using one of the official images that we distribute.
  • Or you can skip the install phase altogether, and rely on QueueMetrics Live and offload all mainteinance on us. This is a gret alternative if your CC is small, or you sell hosted telephony and you’d rather deal with customers than take care of a fleet of QM systems.

And, of course, it will be possible to install the software manually, though we don’t recommend it.

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