The ITEXPO event is still going strong down at the Miami Beach Convention Center, and will continue to do so until January 31. But the event is bringing out a variety of new points to consider, from addresses and panels delivering information to exhibitors showing off new products and services. FreePBX, meanwhile, is offering up a bit of news all its own with some new options for its High Availability Platform (HA) that should prove welcome for any business looking to use PBX (News - Alert) systems to drive its voice communications.

More specifically, FreePBX rolled out a pair of new HA appliances to help with the HA platform, packing in not only FreePBX Distro, but also a complete configuration as well as licensing with FreePBX HA. Two hours' worth of tech support is thrown in at no additional charge should it be needed to help get the devices up and running in the current system. The HA appliances come in two separate flavors, the SMB HA appliance and the Xtreme HA appliance bundle.

The SMB HA appliance is a rack-mountable 2U unit, with a pair of independent systems running under its umbrella. Each system can have its own drives, power supplies, and motherboards, and each comes with its own PCI (News - Alert)-e ports so that a PSTN can be patched into the system with a little extra hardware. Meanwhile, the Xtreme HA appliance bundle takes a pair of other appliances—the FreePBX Xtreme—to make a system much like the SMB HA, but more so. Each FreePBX Xtreme involved in the Xtreme HA is likewise rack-mountable, but is also a 4U unit.

Basically, by having two systems involved in the mix, FreePBX has built something of a note of redundancy into the overall system. Should something happen to the primary PBX—software failure, hardware issue or even a power system failure—the material running into the primary can be rerouted to the secondary. When the primary is brought back to working order, either by repair or by plain old recovery, the systems can be routed back into the primary in a process taking mere seconds, as FreePBX describes.

Those interested in seeing the systems in action can check it out at ITEXPO (News - Alert) and the collocated Asterisk World event, and those who want to put more PBX to work in the office may want to do exactly that. There's always something to be said for having a sound backup plan in much of life as we know it, whether it's in keeping insurance or just having a second computer on hand should the main one blow a seam, so to speak. The FreePBX HA line helps to ensure that those voice communications systems that many businesses depend on to make the process of business happen are ready to go regardless of current situation. It's not foolproof, of course—if something happens to the first system, something could happen to the second before the first can recover or be repaired—but the likelihood of a primary and its backup failing is significantly lower than just a primary failing. For more videos on this and other subjects, just follow this link.

Therefore, for those who count on PBX for voice systems, and count on voice systems for business, checking into a FreePBX HA system could mean not only immediate tangible benefit, but a huge relief down the road when a problem in the making isn't quite such a problem any more.