Which way do I go? 1

[cutter5o]

Hi everyone,
Ive been an NBX engineer for 6 years now and my boss decided that rather than send me to VCX training he wants me to learn Asterisk for our hosted ASP environment. So now I get to throw away my NBX and MS certifications and learn Linux/Asterisk. He is paying for me to go to training as we need to fast track my education.
These are the requirements;
the Asterisk platform has to be scalable,run on ESX server efficiently, capable of supporting multiple businesses separately, work with Microsoft Exchange 2007. other than that I dont know yet since I havent had enough time to research.
I need to know which version of Linux should I learn and which version of asterisk should we consider. Digium or another vendor that has already invented the wheel like trixbox. Thanks for your help

 

[busster]

Even though there are multiple distributions of Linux, for the most part, the command line interface is the same regardless.

To my knowledge, there is just one Asterisk, but there have been people who have written add-on packages and interfaces which make administration easier. If you know the command line interface, then you have it made. The graphical interfaces are nice, but ultimately if you are in for the long haul, you will end up at a terminal screen using the command line.

Fonality has a really good interface, but what appears to set them apart is the HUD product which allows users to see what is going on, great for call center apps.