I have set up an Asterisk Linux box on a PC and it ran great so now I am convincing my company to go full swing into this technology.
We would like a high availability server that can take 2 T1 lines. I am looking for the best recommendations as to the server type and what hardware we will be needing.
I am also wondering if anyone knows if Nortel IP sets are compatible with Asterisk?
Thanks for your help! I need to order everything ASAP to fit it in this years budget.
Hi
If you are going with server metal go HP
otherwise go with Xorcom
Ian
You’ll want to checkout OpenVOX T1 Cards, and make sure whatever server you end up getting for it, it has a pci-e slot (or whatever is needed) it all depends on what you want to do, but you’ll find the card there, if you dont like openvox, checkout digium, they will forsure have the card you need, but at a higher price. if you’re really going to buy a server for this, checkout switchvox as they have the all in one boxes which you can get support with as well, but they run into the 2-5k price range. as for the nortel sets, you’ll want to just say NO and move on with something thats much easier to setup and use with asterisk, sets are cheap anyways, like a cisco 7940 or a spa942. plus polycom has some good ones. anyways thats a start,
have fun, come back and ask questions!
Morgan
A purchase of an Openvox product in no way whatsoever benefits the ongoing development of Asterisk. These forums, for example, are paid for by Digium. So, every time you elect to buy a telephony card from a vendor other than Digium, you’re taking money away from the ongoing development (bug fixes, new features, etc.) of Asterisk.
Going to order my cards and support through Digium, of course.
Many thanks 
I not saying this is the best, this is just from my experience and so far it has been very good. I recently set up Asterisk on Debian GNU/Linux to support 120 phones, mostly Polycom 550s and 560s with some Aastra and Grandstream phones. I have two T1s. I’m using 2 Digium 1TE121BF cards, though I should have bought a two port card. Stupid me didn’t realize we were using two T1s at the time I bought the cards (one was to be set aside for backup system). I’m using a Dell T110 server (2.4GHz Xenon, 4GB RAM 250GB SATA). Be sure to get hardware echo canceler with your card. We saved tens of thousands of dollars since this was originally planned to be a Cisco system. I’m using the Polycom provisioning system so my Polycom phones are now zero config. It’s just an awesome system so far. Though I do have one post in here about a problem I’m having with the voice mail sendvoicemail option.
Good luck!
Mike