Amahi Forums

I was about to purchase a new NAS mainly for RAID storage of media files (music, mostly to sonos, but also other clients), plus back-up for various other machines around the house, then saw this. Amahi looks like a cool alternative, but would be most compelling to me if I can get an Amahi box to replace more than just my desired NAS functionailty.

From the website it is not clear whether I can get Amahi to satisfy my other main wishes. Two questions before I put together some hardware and take the Amahi plunge:

1) If I were to do Amahi I would also prefer to use the full DHCP router capabilities in HDA. But want to run internet access for most of my home network through an outside VPN server. I can see that Amahi can act as a VPN server, which is nice, but can I set up Amahi as a VPN client (under either OpenVPN, or IPSec or L2TP, or similar) through which my home network can connect with an outside VPN server? If yes,

1a) Would doing this require a lot or a little or no real hacking beyond some setup work in standard Amahi-bundled apps?
1b) If this can be set up, can I get it so VPN is used selectively, either only by certain machines on my LAN or only when accessing certain outside URLs?

(BTW, 1a and 1b are not deal-killers, but it would be nice to know what I can expect)

2) Can Asterisk or any of its derivatives be setup from within Amahi, or alongside Amahi on the same box?

Thanks. Anyway, cool thing you've got here, whether I end up using it or not.

1) If I were to do Amahi I would also prefer to use the full DHCP router capabilities in HDA. But want to run internet access for most of my home network through an outside VPN server. I can see that Amahi can act as a VPN server, which is nice, but can I set up Amahi as a VPN client (under either OpenVPN, or IPSec or L2TP, or similar) through which my home network can connect with an outside VPN server? If yes,

1a) Would doing this require a lot or a little or no real hacking beyond some setup work in standard Amahi-bundled apps?
1b) If this can be set up, can I get it so VPN is used selectively, either only by certain machines on my LAN or only when accessing certain outside URLs?
(BTW, 1a and 1b are not deal-killers, but it would be nice to know what I can expect)

certainly. i know at least two users who do this, with a cisco vpn client running in their hda.

how much work is it, i am not sure, since it depends on how hard you have work to make one of the clients work.

2) Can Asterisk or any of its derivatives be setup from within Amahi, or alongside Amahi on the same box?

this is a goal. there definitely is a lot of interest for this. however, the bar of "single click install" is pretty high, so the app packagers have to work pretty hard to make that work.

some apps take more effort and may require more configuration, like with MythTV, which we are packaging, but it may not be 100% one click.

all is needed is one person with some app expertise to become an application packager. if you know a bit about Asterisk/Trixbox/variants, we can help package it!

Now that we have the servers feature, where apps can have associated servers, it will be easier to package things like asterisk and the other variants.

Asterisk is already part of the Fedora base system, but be aware that it has been split into several packages, each offering one piece of Asterisk's functionality. Look through the package list to make sure you get the features you need (such as voicemail).

A good application to package for Amahi on top of this might be FreePBX. I already have such a system running in production on Fedora 10, though it hasn't been packaged for Amahi.

Asterisk is already part of the Fedora base system, but be aware that it has been split into several packages, each offering one piece of Asterisk's functionality. Look through the package list to make sure you get the features you need (such as voicemail).

A good application to package for Amahi on top of this might be FreePBX. I already have such a system running in production on Fedora 10, though it hasn't been packaged for Amahi.

I am looking to buy a Voip program for my office phones, and I am wondering what the best package would be for an office of around 20 people. I want to get all of my employees internet phones, but there are so many different packages, I would like to know what the most important features are in each package, and which ones are absolutely necessary for my business. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!

-Charlie