Installation, Stability, Packages

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6629ezajko
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Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:00 pm

Installation, Stability, Packages

Post by 6629ezajko »

Hi everyone (zimbra staff especially),
I know theese questions have been asked, but some time has passed, so I will ask them again...
Is Zimbra production ready - if not when will it be?

What to do to change zimbra packages with distro packages (on RHEL, CentOS, Debian) - if there are some packages not to change - which and why?

What hardware do I need for about 2000 users (200 regular users, and rest are restricted /just email - pop3 and webmail/)
I am asking this because I am in proces of creating new email system which should replace Lotus Domino (v. 6.0.x), and it is, i may say that, urgent.
marcmac
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Installation, Stability, Packages

Post by marcmac »

[quote user="6629ezajko"]Hi everyone (zimbra staff especially),
I know theese questions have been asked, but some time has passed, so I will ask them again...
Is Zimbra production ready - if not when will it be?

[/QUOTE]

Depends on your production requirements - I use it in production (though I may be a special case).
It is stable, and performs well - so in that respect, I wouldn't hesitate. It is, however, beta - which means that you're going to have to spend time administering it, and be prepared for upgrades, because there will be frequent changes and bug fixes. You should strongly consider a supoort contract, too, IMHO - if it breaks, your boss is going to want it back up, and we can't guarantee support through the forums will be as prompt as you may need in that circumstance. Plus, you get hot-backup, which is pretty important for beta software.

[quote user="6629ezajko"]

What to do to change zimbra packages with distro packages (on RHEL, CentOS, Debian) - if there are some packages not to change - which and why?

[/QUOTE]

That's a lot of work, to integrate existing postfix, mysql, etc with zimbra - and you're pretty much going to have to build from source to do it - which means that we can't offer much support. It's possible, but it's a leap into the unknown. Not recommended for a production environment.

[quote user="6629ezajko"]

What hardware do I need for about 2000 users (200 regular users, and rest are restricted /just email - pop3 and webmail/)

[/QUOTE]
Depends on your users - how much mail do they get - that will help you determine disk requirements. You won't need too much CPU, overall - I use a 3.2ghz P4 box, which works great (and, for my user base, is more than I need) - so any reasonable recent server should work, provided you have enough disk.

[quote user="6629ezajko"]

I am asking this because I am in proces of creating new email system which should replace Lotus Domino (v. 6.0.x), and it is, i may say that, urgent.[/QUOTE]
Great news - let us know how the process goes, and what your users think.
jrobb
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:53 pm

Installation, Stability, Packages

Post by jrobb »

[quote user="6629ezajko"]
I am asking this because I am in proces of creating new email system which should replace Lotus Domino (v. 6.0.x), and it is, i may say that, urgent.[/QUOTE]
Please let us know how it goes. We are always looking for good stories about migrations from Domino to Zimbra. Who knows, you might win an iPod? ;)

http://www.zimbra.com/promo_ipod/
6629ezajko
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:00 pm

Installation, Stability, Packages

Post by 6629ezajko »

[quote user="marcmac"]Depends on your production requirements - I use it in production (though I may be a special case).
It is stable, and performs well - so in that respect, I wouldn't hesitate. It is, however, beta - which means that you're going to have to spend time administering it, and be prepared for upgrades, because there will be frequent changes and bug fixes. You should strongly consider a supoort contract, too, IMHO - if it breaks, your boss is going to want it back up, and we can't guarantee support through the forums will be as prompt as you may need in that circumstance. Plus, you get hot-backup, which is pretty important for beta software.

[/QUOTE]

Well...

I work as system administrator at Faculty of Electrical Eng. Sarajevo, and we have Domino/Linux that works as email server.

The problem is that I can administrate Domino (what I do for around 4 years), and I can't see no one else around me, but we are now looking for new solution, a solution that is standards based (which Domino is not), that can be tied with our LDAP directory, and solution that doesn't take much time of administrating (regular backups, user manaegment, straight fault recovery).

Solutions that I was looking at are Kolab, Hula, and our own solution that is made from regular components (which Zimbra and Kolab already use).

Number of users that i mentioned (2000 users; 200 regular and rest are student accounts with quota set to around 20-25 MB, with access to webmail and pop3).

[quote user="marcmac"]

That's a lot of work, to integrate existing postfix, mysql, etc with zimbra - and you're pretty much going to have to build from source to do it - which means that we can't offer much support. It's possible, but it's a leap into the unknown. Not recommended for a production environment.

[/QUOTE]
I am not afraid of work, but if I cant garantie stability and security, work is useless...

To be honest, I trust more to distro packages than to yours (no afens), so if you say that it is not recomended to change Zimbra packages with distro packages I must say it is not right way of doing things.

I have made demo install of zimbra, and it works great, but are you sure that your packages will be up to date like distro packages are?
[quote user="marcmac"]Great news - let us know how the process goes, and what your users think.[/QUOTE]

Based on demo system - users are very happy, you definitly have great product, but you still don't have community.
And one more thing I have to ask... server side filtering - did you think about SIEVE?
14319KevinH
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Installation, Stability, Packages

Post by 14319KevinH »

[quote user="6629ezajko"]To be honest, I trust more to distro packages than to yours (no afens), so if you say that it is not recomended to change Zimbra packages with distro packages I must say it is not right way of doing things.

I have made demo install of zimbra, and it works great, but are you sure that your packages will be up to date like distro packages are?

[/QUOTE]
The most important thing we care about is that will Zimbra work well with the dependencies. Our packages will be updated as new releases appear. Most important of all is that they will have been well tested with Zimbra(internal QA and our community). This is the only way we can provide such outstanding support. If a distro pkg would get updated that we depend on and breaks something in Zimbra then we'll both have a problem. So the key is having a working mail server that is easy to admin. Our approach has been to ship what we depend on so that you don't have to worry about it.
[quote user="6629ezajko"]

Based on demo system - users are very happy, you definitly have great product,

[/QUOTE]
Thanks!!
[quote user="6629ezajko"]

but you still don't have community.

[/QUOTE]
I'd have to disagree. Let's take Kolab as an example, since you mentioned them. Their support forum has been available since Sept 2003. They currently have 885 registered users on their forums. Zimbra launched in the very end of Sept 2005. We have currently 1189 registered forum members in our community. So in just over 2 months we've grown larger than Kolab has in over 2 years. Forum user's stats may be just one view(although a very strong one) into a community's strength. I'd encourage you to hang out on our forums and follow a few threads. I think over time you'll agree Zimbra's community is the most active out of all the projects in our category.
[quote user="6629ezajko"]

And one more thing I have to ask... server side filtering - did you think about SIEVE?[/QUOTE]
Yes. Our server support SIEVE filters today.
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