Which options are there for ip phone provisioning servers?

Question

I want to know which options exist to provision (configure) multiple VoIP phones from multiple vendors for use with an Asterisk server. I'd like some kind of interface to manage extensions, configuration templates and so on.

Here's what I found so far:

• FreePBX has a commercial module called Endpoint Manager which seems to do what I want. However, I don't like the idea of having to run a web server on the same machine (or container) that runs Asterisk. It seems like a bad idea which increases the attack surface of the Asterisk server. I would much rather have an endpoint manager on a separate server (or container) but I can't find any information about running or buying the Endpoint Manager outside of FreePBX.
• Phonism advertises a "Cloud based IP phone provisioning and management system. Their service looks promising, but the number of supported phones is lower and I'm not completely sold on requiring the internet connection to configure the phone extensions in an office.
• All the other solutions I found are tied to their complete proprietary VoIP solution (3CX, Kerio, etc.) or to a particular VoIP phone vendor.

Is anything else available? Or do people usually use a single VoIP phone vendor and use their own specific configuration method?

Since I can't find any phone provisioning solution which fits my needs, I'm questioning my understanding of Asterisk deployment best practices. Is using a plain Asterisk deployment a good idea or is it too bare in terms of related tooling?

Answer 1

You are thinking about this in a way that is too abstract and generic.

A voip equipment vendor will provide documentation which describes what provisioning protocols are used and how to use them. Then you can find a tool to use which meets that requirement and also suits your environment and skills.

Vendors usually provide proprietary tools to generate provisioning files too.

That said you should be advised that TFTP (trivial file transfer protocol) is a common provisioning method.

If you are using a bare bones asterisk install on linux then setting up your own TFTP server on linux is, well, trivial in comparison.

Running a provisioning server and asterisk server on different boxes is of course possible but you'll need to find or build some integration tools to keep provisioning config and asterisk config in sync (if that's important to you). I can't think of a reason why using two boxes makes this work significantly more difficult though.