VOIP LAB DAY 3 Creating the Virtual Machine 2

Welcome back to My VOIP LAB. Today we will install PBX in a Flash on Oracle Virtual Box.  We will use this PBX as PSTN gateway for Skype for Business.

As I wrote in the previous post, we will use Oracle Virtual Box as the VM host and not VMWare.

Once you installed the Oracle Virtual Box, you will need to create a virtual machine by clicking on New at the top. You can leave all the configuration as default except for the network setting. The network adapter setting needs to be set to Bridged Network. Setting the adapter setting to Bridged Network, you allow your VM to get the IP address from your home DHCP server, which is most likely your home WIFI router. You can change the IP address of your PBX in a Flash box to a static IP.

You need to specify the ISO file you downloaded from PBX in a Flash download site. If you click on Start the VM should boot from the ISO file. 

VOIP LAB DAY 2: Creating the Virtual Machine 1

If you already noticed... I am not a creative person when it comes to creating blogs and different posts.. I just want to post information that are useful to you.. I am putting DAY1, DAY2 a the beginning of each post so you can roughly follow those instructions, but the order does not beed to be followed strictly.

So the first step of setting up the lab would be to download Virtual Box.  You can download it from

https://www.virtualbox.org/.

Few important notes.. You will need ISO image for Windows Server 2012 and PBX in a Flash.. You need to select appropriate OS type when you first create your virtual machine. For PBX in a Flash, you will need to select Linux Debian 64 bit (if your PC is 64 bit). For Windows Server you need to select Windows Server 2012.

                               For PBX in a Flash

                                For Windows Server 2012

You will also need to select Bridged Network for your network option. This is very important because you need your Windows Servers and PBX talking to each other in the same network. You will be able to assign static IP for all your VMs and they will behave just like another PC in your home network. When you assign the static IPs, you need to assign the subnet mask and default gateway of your home network. Those VMs eventually start eating up lots of your memories. You could spread out your VMs across different PCs. As long as you select Bridged Network, they should all be able to talk to each other. This setting can be changed before or after you install the VM. 

The PBX in a Flash will ask you to set the root password during the install, so please write down the password somewhere you can find later.. 

Welcome to  Skype VoIP LAB, a Gotcha-Free integration guide for Skype for Business + Asterisk + Google Voice.
If you encounter this blog, you are most likely a Skype for Business 2015 admin or Lync Server admin who is trying to set up a home lab to test SIP trunk or PSTN gateway. My hope is that this will be your last stop on your journey to a successful VoIP lab. One of the reasons I created this blog is that while trying to set up my VoIP  lab at home, I encountered so many different "working examples" but they never worked in my lab.. If you are a busy person like me and if you just want to get the your lab working so , say, you can test your Skype dial-in conference call, you landed on a right spot. Hopefully you I can show you how to quickly set up your lab and you can concentrate on your stuff. So here we go.

What you will need:

•  A Virtual machine host. (Oracle Virtual Box or VMWare Fusion). 
•  Windows Server 2012 Eval Edition ISO. 
•  Skype for Business 2015 Eval Edition ISO .
•  Asterisk (You will need to download Incredible PBX ISO  from  PBX in a Flash  Other distributions do not work with Google Voice.) 
•  A soft phone, this is optional. 
• Skype or Lync client. 

In my lab used Oracle Virtual box, which is free.  I would not recommend VMWare because it is not 100% free and it gave me some headaches while installing Incredible PBX. 

I will not go into details about installing Windows Server 2012 and Skype for Business Server 2015 as I assume you are already familiar with them and there are tons of information out there how to do basic install...

If you are new to the world of VoIP, some terminology might confuse you first. Asterisk is a free linux based PBX application. It is an application that can be installed on linux box if you already have one. But, it is all command line and if you are busy sysadmin, you might not have time to learn what you need to get going.. Luckily there are few linux distribution with Asterisk already bundled with FreePBX, which is a web based GUI tool to administer Asterisk. One of those distribution is "Incredible PBX" from PIAF and that this is the only one that I was successfully able to connect to Google Voice. So if you want to connect your lab to the PSTN world, I would recommend you use Incredible PBX. 

You might also want to download a soft phone to test your PBX. I used Zoiper (http://www.zoiper.com/) which seemed to work well.

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