FreePBX HA Custom Installation procedure

Owned by Lorne Gaetz (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jan 23, 2024 by Nathaniel Halbrooks
8 min read

FreePBX has an automated installer that correctly installs the required packages and sets up the machine in a standard way. However, there may be occasional edge cases where using the automatic installer may not be possible (such as non-standard RAID controllers).

This document will provide a walkthrough of installing FreePBX HA with the 'Advanced' option of the FreePBX Distro Installer

Start by selecting 'Advanced' when booting from the DVD.

HA Test 1-2015-05-12-10-13-30.png

 

When you're prompted for an IP Address, do not select DHCP..

HA Test 1-2015-05-12-10-15-11.png

 

Ensure that you enter an IP address. Note that this is not the floating IP address. This address is fixed to this machine, and will not move. The Floating IP address (that clients connect to) is assigned as part of HA Setup.

 

When setting the Timezone, ensure that 'System Clock uses UTC' is enabled.

 

You can now proceed to setting up disks.  This is system dependant, but there are two important things to ensure are correct

  • You must have LVM configured, with at least 100GB of free space available after everything else is completed

  • The LVM Volume Group name must be 'vg_ha'.

An example setup inside VMware with a 150GB drive is below.

You start by selecting Custom Layout on the partitioning view

 

Create the '/boot' partition, which contains the kernel and is the first partition on the disk.

 

Ensure you pick 'Force to be a Primary Partition' to avoid potential issues with MBRs on older BIOS'ed machines.

 

Now you can create your LVM volume. You do not need to use all of the disk, you just need to ensure that there will be at least 100GB left over after you've created the root (/) filesystem, and swap space. However, in this example I have selected 'Fill to maximum allowable size'.

 

 

After you have created the Physical Volume, you then create the Volume Group that uses this Physical Volume.

 

When creating the Volume Group, set the name to be 'vg_ha'

 

Now create the / (root) filesystem, setting it to (at least) 40GB.

 

 

You also need to create a Swap volume. Set this to be 2 x the amount of RAM in your machine. 

 

 

This is what your LVM configuration should look like. Note that 'Free Space' is greater than 100,000MB. If you have it less than that, HA will refuse to install.

 

 

When you've completed this, you should have a disk layout similar to this

 

You can now proceed through the rest of the installer. Note that selecting the defaults is usually correct

 

 

 

Note that the install will pause at this point, and is to be expected

 

When the install is completed, the machine will reboot, and perform the firstboot configuration,which ensures everything is up to date.The machine may reboot depending on the age of the image you're using (if a new kernel has been released since the ISO was created, the machine will reboot into that kernel)

You can now perform the application settings to finalize the required packages. After logging into the machine, you need to enable the 'ha' repository. Copy and paste the following line into a root login on the machine

sed -i 's/enabled=0/enabled=1/' /etc/yum.repos.d/FreePBX.repo

That enables the High Availability repository, and allows the packages to be installed.

yum install drbd kmod-drbd pacemaker cman pcs ccs resource-agents resource-agent-freepbx rseries

That command will then install all the additional packages required for HA. 

[root@localhost ~]# yum install drbd kmod-drbd pacemaker cman pcs ccs resource-agents resource-agent-freepbx rseries Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, kmod Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile base | 2.0 kB 00:00 extras | 1.3 kB 00:00 high-availability | 1.3 kB 00:00 pbx | 1.3 kB 00:00 schmooze-commercial | 1.3 kB 00:00 updates | 1.3 kB 00:00 Setting up Install Process Resolving Dependencies --> Running transaction check ---> Package ccs.x86_64 0:0.16.2-69.el6_5.1 will be installed ---> Package cman.x86_64 0:3.0.12.1-59.el6_5.3 will be installed --> Processing Dependency: clusterlib = 3.0.12.1-59.el6_5.3 for package: cman-3.0.12.1-59.el6_5.3.x86_64 --> Processing Dependency: ricci >= 0.15.0-4 for package: cman-3.0.12.1-59.el6_5.3.x86_64 --> Processing Dependency: openais >= 1.1.1-1 for package: cman-3.0.12.1-59.el6_5.3.x86_64 --> Processing Dependency: modcluster >= 0.15.0-3 for package: cman-3.0.12.1-59.el6_5.3.x86_64 .... several pages of output skipped ....   sg3_utils x86_64 1.28-5.el6 base 471 k sg3_utils-libs x86_64 1.28-5.el6 base 51 k yajl x86_64 1.0.7-3.el6 base 27 k Transaction Summary ============================================================================================================= Install 63 Package(s) Total download size: 30 M Installed size: 104 M Is this ok [y/N]:

Select 'y' and let the extra packages install. 

When it's complete, you'll have something similar to this:

You must reboot at this point to ensure the correct kernel modules are loaded.

After rebooting, you need to Activate the machine to receive the licence, and then proceed with HA Setup.

If you have followed these instructions, all the prerequisite checks will pass validation!.

 

Return to Documentation Home I Return to Sangoma Support