Provisioning lifecycle

What happens between paying for your order and getting a working dialer — usually about a minute, start to finish. Each step is a transition in the server’s state machine, and every transition writes an audit-log row, so support can see exactly where any build is.

Step by step

1. PENDING_PAYMENT — the order is in, waiting for payment confirmation. The moment the payment webhook lands, your server row is created and the build is queued. From here on your dashboard shows the build with live progress.
2. PROVISIONING — the cloud platform creates your VPS from our golden image (a snapshot with VICIdial and its dependencies pre-baked), injects a first-boot setup script via cloud-init, waits for the VPS to report running, reads its public IPv4, and creates the DNS A record for your server’s address. About 30 seconds.
3. INSTALLING — the setup script runs on the box itself: it personalizes the pre-baked VICIdial install (database, fresh passwords, your hostname), installs the SSL certificate we issue for your address, and configures the web server. Restored from the golden image this finishes in well under a minute. The box posts each stage back to the platform, so you can watch it live on the server page.
4. ACTIVE — on the success callback the server flips to Active and we email you "your server is ready" with the admin URL, the server IP, and your admin username. The admin password is never emailed — reveal it from the VICIdial admin card on your server page.

If something fails

Any step can land in FAILED instead. Three safety nets catch that:

1. If the build fails within 1 hour of payment, the charge is refunded automatically and we email you the refund confirmation.
2. A sweep runs every 6 hours: any server stuck in FAILED for more than 6 hours is cancelled and refunded automatically, and its subdomain is released.
3. Our admins are alerted on provisioning failures and can re-run the install from the admin panel — most failures are transient and succeed on retry.

Good to know

• The about-a-minute figure is the normal path: your VPS is cloned from a pre-baked golden image, so there is nothing to compile or download. Rarely — right after an old base image is retired and before the next one is baked — a build falls back to installing everything from scratch, which takes 15–30 minutes.
• The DNS record for your server’s address is created during PROVISIONING, before the install starts, so it is usually resolved by the time the box is Active.
• The SSL certificate is issued and renewed by the platform — there is nothing for you to configure.
• Factory reset reuses this exact pipeline: the same VPS is rebuilt from the golden image and rides the same INSTALLING → ACTIVE path back. See Factory reset vs terminate (/help/factory-reset-vs-terminate).
• Every transition — including failures and retries — is recorded in your server’s audit log.