How to build a bench for learning Asterisk?

Question

Asterisk

Good afternoon. Let me describe the problem first.
I understand Asterisk at the level of theory, a couple of times I twisted Elastix and similar ATSs. I decided to begin to understand this matter more seriously, on a more practical level. I understand that for this it is necessary to build a stand with the server itself and several phones. Fortunately, the work allows you to allocate hardware for a server and several IPs, not IP phones, gateways, etc.
I would like to hear your opinion on how to properly build such a stand so that it would be possible to work out all possible practical aspects with Asterisk, what is the optimal number of phones, it is possible to add a couple of gateways to the network, etc., etc.

Answer 1

Make a few on a virtual machine, try to combine them, another 10 softphones, and whatever your heart desires, the beauty of the stand with an asterisk is that it is not demanding on resources and can be deployed on any toaster. Physical servers are worse for experiments, because. it is more difficult to copy or backup entirely.

Answer 2

Having studied the theory, assembled a test server and stuffed some bumps on the stand, I recommend moving on to the combat vehicle and solving real and everyday tasks. I've been working with Asterisk for half a year after completing the "young fighter course" :) Real experience is accumulated only on real tasks. Asteriske has a lot of shamanism and pitfalls that are not visible at first glance. The more interesting and difficult the task, the higher the experience gained. Try to constantly optimize configs. Avoid copy-paste in the dialplan.