Sunday, April 17, 2011

Snomtastic Phone Management System (Part 1)

As I mentioned in many occasions already, we at GMC use Snom300 as EV endpoint. It is true that Snom, as multi-platform SIP phone, embraced by almost any platform provider (with exception of those, who offer software and hardware, hmm, wander why…) works and works well, but is hard to manage. Or, it was hard to manage until Snomtastic come out.


I will skip the “story of creation” and furthermore, the name selection. This is the place I say “I have nothing to with neither”. HOWEVER – we must give big round of applause to Jamie Barnett and Matt Marlor from Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority. Jamie is the ONE who dedicated time and effort to this project, AND made it available to the community as well. Job well done!

I will install and configure the application in my lab in order to provide some guidance because, as any open source, lack of support is the biggest show stopper.

There are two ways - the easy way and the way of "discovery". I will offer the "easy"way - pre-configured database and Snomtastic bits I know work just fine. All this will be offered in a single download, shall you decide to use those. Or, you can use the download form http://snomtastic.codeplex.com and use this blog as point of reference.

There will be four blog posts on the subject – SQL Express and Snomtastic database installation; the Snomtastic application installation, and finally, configuration and some guidance how is to be used.

I will use Windows 2008 R2 as my OS of choice. Once installed and upgraded, the server was joined to my lab domain. The FQDN of this server is snomt.drago.local.

First step is to install the prerequisites:








Next, I will request certificate for my server and install it:









To proceed further, I need few downloads:
  1.  Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express with Tools http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=967225EB-207B-4950-91DF-EEB5F35A80EE. Make sure you get “SQLEXPRWT_x64_ENU.exe”.
  2.  A preconfigured database and Snomtastic bits I know work. If you don't wish to use those, visit
    http://snomtastic.codeplex.com and download it from there.
***Create folder C:\Snomtastic and place the downloaded content there.

I will now install SQLExpress on my server by executing SQLEXPRWT_x64_ENU.exe.







I will run this instance in Mixed Mode (it is up to you do decide based on your environment requirements) and will use password “R2D2$3CP0” for my SA account.



 
The next part can get tricky as it could. I have done this installation many times before and customized the back-end database to reflect some changes in the firmware. On the next steps I will show you an easy way to shorten the path from installation to completion. It is up to you to decide shall you use the method I describe or proceed following the manual provided by the developers.

Preconfigured database and Snomtastic bits link: 

Live.com:



Move SNOMT.bak to folder “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\Backup”

Open SQL Server Management Studio. Connect to your Snomtastic Server and restore the database downloaded on the previous step:









So far – so good. In the next post I will install the Snomtastic application on my web server.

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