Setting up a Linux based mail server 1

[bubarooni]

Hi All,

I'm sure you've seen the same basic question asked a million times, but...

I have an Exchange Server 5.5 sitting on an NT 4.0 box. Management has decided to replace this box. One of them knows someone who has a 'free' email server sitting on a Linux box. They have asked me to do the same. In fact they told me about this last week at my annual review and they want a proposal next week.

I've bought a book (Red Hat Fedora and Enterprise Linux 4 Bible) that seems excellent, but it's about 1100 pages and I don't think I'm gonna get thru it by next week so I'm looking for advice. I did take a Linux class about 7 years ago and also support an old ScoUnix box so have some basic understanding of what I'm getting into. I will obviously be doing some heavy learning though.

I need a mail server that will support the features I have with Exchange Server 5.5 such as group calendars, distribution lists and webmail. All my users currently use Outlook 2000 or Outlook Web Access so it would be nice if they could continue to use Outlook though I have Mozilla Thunderbird installed on my workstation as a test and it seems to be just fine.

I currently have about 150 email accounts but need to look at supporting up to about 300.

Any advice or suggestions would be most welcome. I'm especially interested in what hardware requirements, operating system and mail server application would be a good fit for my organization.

Thanks

 

[bubarooni]

dang! how'd i miss thread54-1324683. it has a lot of good stuff in it.

 

[bubarooni]

where is a good place to buy a linux server. i'd like to get:

no OS
dual socket 940
dual power supply
4 sata drives
raid options

anything on top of that is gravy. i've been looking on tigerdirect and newegg, but there are a ton of choices and i'm worried about hardware compatability.

Thanks

 

[thedaver]

Dell and HPQ servers are often available through their dealer networks and through EBay.

I like to patronize Nautilusnet.com from time to time as well.

I would think your risk is low for real HW compat. problems unless you use something not listed on the OS/Distro compat. lists. That's the REAL place to start.

I don't think you'd see someone specifically selling a "Linux server" that often.

I would also recommend Monarch Computer.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[damber]

bubarooni,

You may be interested in the below:

http://www.zimbra.com/

Open Source Messaging and Collaboration Server which runs on Linux and provides Outlook compatibility (in the paid version) as well as excellent web mail client (I use this all the time). There is a free community edition, but it wont work with Outlook - for that you'll need to buy the enterprise edition.

or

http://www.scalix.com/

Similar to Zimbra, provides Messaging and Collaboration on Linux with Outlook compatibility with a reasonably good web client. This is free for the community edition, which supports 10 free users using an outlook client - though more than that and you need to upgrade and get more licenses.

Both of these are very usable as free solutions - but to maintain the outlook integration you will need to pay. However, that is assuming you want Outlook to work in 'Exchange Mode' - you can have it (or any other mail client) work using IMAP or POP without any extra cost too.

They both run on Fedora Core 6 ok as well (though Scalix can be a bugger to install - a friend of mine battled a good few hours with that one)

As far as I know, there aren't any completely free mail servers that allow full outlook integration (a-la-exchange). Try out the Zimbra demo online - you might find that your users will prefer it to outlook...!

Hope that helps,

A smile is worth a thousand kind words. So smile, it's easy!

 

[bubarooni]

i had actually run across the the zimbra in my search already and was wondering about that one (saw it on sourceforge). the zimlets looked kinda cool. when i googled this forum i didn't get any hits though.

do you use thunderbird as your client with zimbra then or just the web client? does the web client do a good job with shared calendars? i need to have a 'company' shared calender and then shared calendars for my individual departments.

Is setup and config gui, cli or both?

I'll check them both out. Thanks so much for your input!

 

[damber]

Zimbra's Web UI is excellent - really good, you can try it out here:

http://www.zimbra.com/products/hosted_demo.php

I use this as my primary mail client now - it has a very good search feature as well as plenty of other bits that make it very usable. It's all AJAXy based so it's almost as interactive as a local client (though it can be a bit slow to load initially, and isn't quite as 'instant' as local apps, but near enough not to cause a problem).

It supports Shared Calendars from a single view, which you essentially "invite" others to use. So you can setup a shared calendar to suppliment the default, and have other users either edit or just view. But you dont need to change calendars to see what's going on in say the corporate calendar - you can view it all from the one calendar view (highlighted in different colours).

It also has collaborative documents, aka a wiki, builtin, so you can share 'notebooks' with the department (or externally) too - which is quite useful.

initial set-up is CLI based, but it's just a wizard so is as easy as pie. You'll need a working DNS server with the mail server set-up as the MX and if you want you can also use LDAP to authenticate users.. though this should run on another machine - you are best keeping Zimbra on it's own server, as it also installs OpenLDAP for local directory features.

The configuration is all done through a web interface - as simple as the normal mail gui.

The one thing that it lacks is Tasks or To-Do Lists.

It also has a migration tool for Exchange (not sure if this is free or not though, or if it likes exchange 5.5).. And an Outlook PST migration tool, which takes your PST file (calendar, contacts, mail etc) and uploads to the users mail account on zimbra.

The biggest pitfall in my opinion is that their commercial model prevents you testing the outlook integration and PDA synchronisation features without paying for them. Scalix has a much better model where you get the first 25 premium users free.
(I'm a bit biased as I use this at home, and only have a small number of users - therefore would like the premium features for free!)


A smile is worth a thousand kind words. So smile, it's easy!

 

[bubarooni]

Hi Damber,

I have the trial Network Edition of Zimbra up and running on a CentOS box now. It was a bear for me due to my training level, but a good exercise for me nonetheless. Zimbra is actually a pretty slick little package.

One of the things that I really like is the calendaring and resources you can create (like a 'conference room' or 'projector'). Do any of the free mail apps I keep reading about (Cyrus and Dovecot for example) have similar capabilities? If so, especially with the resources, I haven't been able to find a reference to it.

Thanks

 

[RhythmAce]

No, cyrus and dovecot are just pop3/imap servers. Very good ones I may add.

 

[etonic]

If you know what your server is going to server, you could easily and cost effectively get a modest server that would run almost any company size without any problems.

With Linux you don't really have compatibility issues (especially with well known BRAND hardware). Do your research and get something reliable hardware wise because that's your foundation for success. Linux is just the green grass growing on top of your fertile soil if you know what I mean?!

What I recommend?

Sendmail for your MTA because there is a TONE of documentation out there and it is very robust and reliable.

Dovecot for IMAP/POP3 if that's what you want and Squirrelmail for webmail if you need it. It has a lot of neat features, plugins you could ad on and very reliable.

Once again, try doing your reading and try it out for a day or two.

Good luck!

 

[aixmurderer]

Worth while looking at Kolab and Citadel as well. Scalix didn't scale too well in our test run.

IBM Certified Confused - MQSeries
IBM Certified Flabbergasted - AIX 5 pSeries System Administration
MS Certified Windblows Rebooter

 

[gb0mb]

I had great experiences dealing with Spectrum Systems.

http://www.online-spectrum.com

I have bought many servers from them.

Small company always spoke to Tom in sales. Very helpful and will do what he can to help you build what you need.



Gb0mb

........99.9% User Error........

 

[jshurst]

From what I've read Zimbra is pretty expensive. If you really wanted to do it cheap then you could use SharePoint (I'm assuming that you already have a Windows 2003 server) for shared calendars and hMailServer to handle mail. I also use RoundCube for my webmail. Pretty basic setup and certainly won't allow you to do everything Exchange Server will, but it's totally free and runs on windows. I know that you were asking about a linux distro, but by the time you've paid for RedHat enterprise and Zimbra, you might've saved money by just sticking with windows - not stating a fact, you just might want to investigate...

http://www.hmailserver.com/

http://www.roundcube.net/

J

 

[shadwman]

I'm currently using Courier MTA (

http://www.courier-mta.org)

and I like it. It has a nice web based configuration interface that I've found really usable.

 

[damber]

Zimbra is a 'mostly' open source product, and offers UNLIMITED users for the community edition. The main functional difference in the paid for version is Microsoft outlook "Exchange Mode" support (it will support MS outlook in normal IMAP, POP3/SMTP mode) and PDA/Blackberry support.

Maybe you want to look again. And as this is your first post on Tek-Tips, I wonder why you were so compelled to join to make this post..?


jshurst,

The community edition of Zimbra is FREE (and open source) and runs on Fedora, amongst other FREE linux distro's. As mentioned above, the ONLY things you lack are support of Outlook in Exchange mode (MAPI). IMAP, POP3/SMTP works with Outlook as it does with any other mail client, and the PDA/Blackberry over-the-air support isn't there.. I use Zimbra, and I don't pay a penny for the priviledge. That doesn't seem too expensive to me. It also has a top quality UI for the web admin and webmail consoles...

I wouldn't say Zimbra is perfect, either as a product offering or as a technical solution - but it is far better than most I've come across to date. Biggest problem is the lack of PDA support for me, and lack of contacts/calendar synchronisation with local clients/PDA.. of course, with the paid for versions, this isn't an issue.



A smile is worth a thousand kind words. So smile, it's easy!