Aretta Communications - Hosted Asterisk Servers

Aretta Communications, Inc. is a technology company located in Roswell, Georgia, USA. We are a leading provider of hosted communication solutions for small businesses worldwide. Our core product offerings include hosted virtual Asterisk servers, hosted dedicated Asterisk servers, pre-configured VoIP phones, SIP Trunking, and hosted VICIDIAL outbound and predictive dialing. We are 100% focused on communications hosting solutions and have designed our entire operations and network infrastructure to be optimized for the communications space.

Asterisk® is a complete IP PBX in software. It runs on a wide variety of operating systems including Linux, and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX including many advanced features that are often associated with high end (and high cost) proprietary PBXs. Asterisk® supports Voice over IP in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware. For more information, visit: http://www.asterisk.org/about

Virtual Asterisk is the concept of putting multiple instances of the Asterisk open source PBX application on a single hardware server that is running host virtualiztion software. This allows for hardware resource optimization ultimately leading to Aretta being able to offer a low cost, full featured Asterisk virtual servers to the public. For small businesses (<50 extensions), this is a perfect solution as there is no hardware to buy, install, configure, host or maintain. The software virtualization environment allows each guest Asterisk virtual machine to be completely walled off from the other machines, meaning you can only see files from your machine and the other machines on the same server cannot access your machine at all.

A dedicated Asterisk server is a pre-configured version of Asterisk operating on your own dedicated hardware rackmount server. There is no virtualization installed on the machine, it is competely dedicated to one customer. These are typically used in larger PBX deployments, such as mid-size businesses with >50 extenstions active on the system at any given time.

We install a number of security enhancements that harden your Asterisk virtual server beyond a standard distribution. Additional details on what is installed are located HERE.

YES! Zaptel is configured to work properly on your Asterisk virtual machine. You have full support for all of the Zaptel-related features of Asterisk including MeetMe and IAX2 trunking.

Virtual Private Servers are isolated server environments located on a single partitioned physical server. A VPS performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server for its users and applications. Each VPS has its own processes, users, files and provides full administrative access. Each VPS can have its own system configuration files and can house applications. Each VPS can have its own versions of system libraries or modify existing ones. Each VPS can have its own IP addresses, port numbers, tables, filtering and routing rules.

SWsoft's Virtuozzo is a server automation and virtualization solution that creates multiple isolated Virtual Private Servers (VPSs) on a single physical server. Each VPS functions as a stand-alone server, meaning it can be rebooted independently, has its own administrative access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files.

Also referred to as a Virtual Dedicated Server, a VPS (Virtual Private Server) empowers you with the flexibility and freedom of a dedicated server at a fraction of the cost. Unlike shared hosting which uses a single file system shared by all users, a VPS, like a dedicated server, resides in private environment with its own independent operating system, web server, mail server, and software instances. Dotster's VPS plans give businesses the reliability, scalability, and security of hosting on an enterprise-quality dedicated server. With root access, you have full control. You can install any software or make practically any OS-level configuration change.

An 'active call path' is a single active G.711 channel. G.711 is a non-compressing codec used in telecommunications that consumes 80kbps per channel in each direction (upstream and downstream). Aretta packages are priced based on 'Maximum Active Callpaths' where your total server bandwidth is this limit (based on your plan) plus an additional overhead amount for non-telephony data transmissions. For example, if you happen to be running a small web server or email server, you will be able to have that running alongside your virtual Asterisk PBX at the same time.

Not necessarily. Our provisioning system and ARIN requirements do not allow us to guarantee contiguous IP address blocks. When you purchase additional IP addresses, the next available addresses will automatically be assigned to your account/server.

The shutdown and reboot commands behave at a virtual level closely to the way they would for a dedicated Unix server. Because you do not have access to manually start the system, you can not completely halt your VPS (the -h option for the shutdown command is disabled), but you can restart all the services on your account. The shutdown command attempts to cleanly halt and restart services on your VPS, including execution of the commands in /etc/rc.shutdown. The shutdown procedure then kills any processes that do not exit cleanly, and restarts the init process (init reads the rc files and starts up system services). The reboot command differs from shutdown because it does not attempt a clean shutdown of your system. Instead, reboot simply kills all running processes and then runs init (which will run the rc scripts).

No. If you have not purchased additional, multiple IP addresses, you must not change the IP address. If you have purchased additional, multiple IP addresses for your account, you must exercise great care when you change an IP Address. In all cases, if you specify an IP address which is not assigned to your account, it will not function. This is true of any other IP address than the those assigned to your account. You will also be unable to see information about any aspect of the data traffic associated with any other IP address or accounts. The Linux operating system supports a standard command which enables you to see the status of network interfaces for your private server. Use the command for diagnostic. For example, if you issue the ifconfig command without any additional argument, all of the currently active interfaces are displayed. If you issue the command with the additional argument of –a, all of the interfaces, including inactive ones are displayed. For more details about the ifconfig command, refer to the Linux operating system Man Pages.

Yes, you have full shell access to the machine via SSH. Login credentials and instructions are sent in the 'Welcome Email' when you sign up for the service.

The number of clients per server varies based on the plan type. These environments are monitored to ensure the number of clients never exceeds the amount of resources available.

Your server comes with Webmin pre-installed. If you wish to add another panel, we can install Plesk on your server for an additional fee. Click HERE to open a support ticket for more information.

Your ENTIRE virtual Asterisk server is backed up once per day on a separate network attached storage device. Users have instant access to their daily backups and do not need to go through a System Administrator to get an old file. Tape backups are made once per week and stored in a different location in case of any disaster. Despite these backups, Aretta strongly recommends that each user backup his/her own files on a regular basis to their local computer.

We use high powered 1U rackmount servers based on the latest Intel Quad-Core Xeon technology. Each 1U server has dual Gigabit network interfaces, RAID hard drive arrays, and at least 8GB of DDR 667 system memory.

Yes, we can handle special requests if you have your own distribution. Please open a support ticket by clicking HERE to get a quote on creating a custom template.

Yes! Since you are able to have full root access to your virtual environment, you are able to upgrade any service on the server that you like.

We currently have three distributions of Asterisk that we offer. The first is trixbox® Community Edition (CE) version 2.2.4 (latest production version), http://www.trixbox.com/products/trixbox-ce/. The second is Elastix version 0.8.4 (latest production version), http://www.elastix.org. The third is KVA - Kris' Virtual Asterisk (named after our own Asterisk Guru - Kris Sheets who created it), KVA is a clean CentOS5 + Asterisk 1.4 + FreePBX 2.3 install meant for Asterisk experts. It is a clean and lean version of Asterisk meant for experts who don't need all the 'fluff' of the other distributions.

You will receive a 'Welcome Email' from Aretta when your order is processed. It will contain the public IP address and root password of your server. You will also receive a link with instructions on how to access the WebGUI of your server to immediately start using it. In addition, you will receive instructions on shell access for the machine via SSH login.

We provide ample memory and disk space for your Asterisk virtual machine. Memory starts with 256MB for the basic package and scales up to 1024MB for the top-tier package. Disk space starts at 5GB and goes up to 40GB. You can purchase additional memory or disk space by sending a request to the Support Team. Dedicated servers have larger memory and disk space options.

All Asterisk features are supported. Your machine will run as if you installed it from source or a downloadable ISO image. You get all of the features for your monthly price. Aretta does not 'nickel and dime you to death' like the other hosted PBX vendors in the marketplace. The complete list of features can be seen at: www.aretta.com/features

Yes, absolutely! You basically have a full-blown LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server installed with your virtual machine. While we cannot offer support on any non-Asterisk applications, you are free to configure and operate a web server or mail server as long as it is not in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy (located here: http://www.aretta.com/aup.php) or our Terms of Service (located here: http://www.aretta.com/tos.php)

In this optional add-on service to your package, Aretta will handle the PBX setup (including extensions, voice mailboxes, find-me-follow-me, conference bridges, auto attendants, etc) as well as ongoing PBX MACD (moves, adds, changes and deletes). For example, an ongoing change might be adding a new PBX extension when a new employee joins, or changing a system menu option. Management is limited to PBX-related configuration settings only.

In most cases, you will see in increased performance level of your machine compared to installing Asterisk on your own piece of hardware. This is due to the fact that we are using the latest Quad-Core Xeon processors from Intel with extremely fast server memory.

By default, your account comes with a single dedicated IP address and is not enabled to have additional ones. However, you can purchase additional, multiple IP addresses and configure your account to utilize them.

Order the server using the online order form at our web site. You can place your credit card number on the order form itself (ensure you use the secure form), fax it to us, or call it in. Payment for the setup fee and a one month's deposit(if paying by check) must be received at our home office prior to us processing the order.

There is no contract to sign up with Aretta. You may cancel at anytime without penalty however we require 30 days notice for you to cancel an account. See the 'refunds' FAQ question below for more information on refunds.

If your account has a setup fee, the setup fee is non-refundable. Our accounts are on a monthly basis. We require 30 days notice for you to cancel an account. So the least that you would be billed would be 1 month's charges(IE: $35 setup + 1 month fee).

Just open a ticket to our Billing Department HERE stating your name, domain name, and the server you are on along with your preference to upgrade or downgrade and the change will be made.