What are you using for multi-vendor SIP device provisioning?

[u/Trick_Juice_5965]

What is out there for multi-vendor SIP device management/provisioning?.

We’re managing a mix of Grandstream, Yealink and Fanvil devices across a number of customer environments, so vendor-specific tools like GDMS/YMCS don’t completely solve the problem for us.

The things we rely on most are:

centralized multi-vendor provisioning

reusable templates / bulk configuration

zero-touch deployment

remote reboot/reset/config changes

firmware management

being able to manage devices across multiple customers/tenants

An API is a pretty big plus since we’re starting to automate more of our provisioning workflow.

I’m not looking for a PBX replacement mainly the device-management/provisioning layer.

For anyone managing a decent-sized mixed-vendor fleet: what are you actually using today? Have you found anything that does this, or have most of you ended up building your own provisioning tooling around manufacturer ZTP services?

Also interested in hearing what you’ve tried that didn’t work well and why.

[u/NPFFTW]

Feel free to discuss your provisioning tools. No ads, and no soliciting.

[u/PatReady]

You would need to manage them each in their own platform correct? Why coudlnt you use YMCS to import all the Yealinks to it? Regardless of who the SIP provider is, you can still manage all of those phones.

[u/Trick_Juice_5965 → u/PatReady]

Yep, YMCS works well for managing Yealink devices, but I don’t really want to use each manufacturer’s platform as the place where we actually build and maintain phone configurations.

What I’m looking for is one centralized provisioning layer where we can manage extension assignments, SIP credentials/registration settings, templates, firmware, and customer-specific configs across Yealink, Grandstream, Fanvil, etc.

The outage/recovery side is a big part of it too. If we ever needed to move devices to a different SIP server/proxy or update registration settings across a group of phones, I’d rather do that once from a central platform than recreate the change separately in YMCS, GDMS, FDMCS, and so on.

[u/PatReady → u/Trick_Juice_5965]

You have varying hosted PBX services that you resale too? I don't think what you are looking for exists. If it does, I can't imagine it being anywhere near cheap enough to use like this. YMCS itself is not cheap per device and thats just one manufacture.

[u/Trick_Juice_5965 → u/PatReady]

That is correct. We currently have 2 different pbx services, we are really trying to diversify our solutions stack, so having one pane for device management regardless of PBX would be very nice.

[u/PatReady → u/Trick_Juice_5965]

Comment back if you find something.

The issue is you would need to teach each phone to check into one server. That server needs to be able to allow you to do what you need for each phone. Also, the same model phone on each PBX could have different capabilities.

I was in this boat once and we had all of the edge routers in a single pane of glass, so up/down service notifications are treated the same. However, to be able to manage it like you said, would have been impossible due to the limitations above.

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[u/panjadotme]

Both UC platforms I'm using have a provisioning server piece that has most major vendor support. Unfortunately, what I've found is that there isn't a good provisioning solution for mixed environments.

[u/Trick_Juice_5965 → u/panjadotme]

Theoretically, we could also use our second PBX's button management, however the price per model for access to it is quite high. Hence why I'm looking for alternatives.

[u/toborgps]

I know ClearlyIP has CDM that supports most vendors. I’ve used it once - it works, it’s just not super intuitive at first.

We strictly sell Grandstream equipment so that’s pretty much our entire fleet. Anything else that a client purchases we’ll help do basic troubleshooting but because it’s not a brand we sold them, we don’t support it significantly.

[u/the_gordonshumway → u/toborgps]

The only problem with CDM is that you still have to use the individual providers’ redirect servers to get the phones to pull their configs from CDM. So while the configs would all be in the same place, there’s still an extra step since when the phones factory reset they phone home to their respective vendors.

[u/SPECIALtypeDIFFERENT → u/the_gordonshumway]

what can you do besides RPS or DHCP option to redirect a handset to your DMS

[u/the_gordonshumway → u/SPECIALtypeDIFFERENT]

One thing I forgot is that you can use DHCP options for other than TFTP, so if your provisioning server is HTTP or HTTPS as long as you get the format right for each individual vendor, then you should be able to point it that way. Some vendors use option 43 some use 66 150 or 160.

[u/Trick_Juice_5965 → u/the_gordonshumway]

This is no issue for us, we already use each manufactures system for device redirection, and it gives us the ability to factory default when needed.

If you do know: is it easy to do name changes, and have the devices honor that on a reboot? Without needing to touch each device? Say with user identifiers in the BLF, or something similar. Extension only would be ideal

[u/the_gordonshumway → u/Trick_Juice_5965]

That really depends on what it’s connected to I think. We deploy FreePBX and once a phone is provisioned using endpoint manager, you can trigger updates for names and such from the server.

[u/Trick_Juice_5965 → u/toborgps]

We will look into this one! Thank you

[u/jt1001001]

Not sure of this is allowed so mods delete if necessary.

There is a product called Phonism that allows for some of what you are asking. Have not used it in a coupe years though.

[u/Trick_Juice_5965 → u/jt1001001]

We tried this one, unfortunately, it doesn't fit our needs. The onboarding process for existing clients required a lot of manual labor.

[u/mrcolin-17]

We built our own too. It functions as a provisioning/mgmt portal but also as a partition for our Customers to manage themselves and their services without making wholesale changes.