Here is a summary of this week’s conference call. A few brief reminders:
- Conference calls are every Tuesday and open to all using either the FreeConferenceCall.com VoIP app or via a dial-in number: https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance
- Each week’s call agenda can be found at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... jMuGGtIl7J
- Constructive feedback on these call summaries is always welcome.
Using Centralized Storage In Zimbra
Mark S. asked if anyone has implemented the Centralized Storage ( https://zimbra.github.io/adminguide/lat ... ed-storage ) feature in Zimbra? This allows for storing mailboxes from multiple Zimbra mail stores within the same directory structure on an S3 storage volume (AWS S3, Ceph, etc.). Cine commented that Centralized Storage speeds up mailbox moves between Zimbra mailbox servers considerably. John E. added that when using object storage (Centralized Storage), it uses a single name space for blob storage, that during a mailbox move, will then move only the mailbox meta data, so few mailbox blobs move at all. Mark S. asked if he has a single AWS S3 bucket with two name spaces, where all of his mailboxes are stored, and he performs a mailbox move, are mailbox blobs still moving? Cine said in that instance, yes, all mailbox blobs will still need to be moved between name spaces, but if he switches to using Centralized Storage under a single name space in his AWS bucket, then most mailbox blobs will not need to be moved – only the meta data. Noah P. asked if he has a primary Zimbra mailbox server volume on-site, and a secondary volume on an AWS S3 bucket, does Centralized Storage still work? Cine confirmed it does. Mark S. asked if using a Zimbra HSM policy that moves email older than 4 weeks to a secondary volume, when using Centralized Storage, would this mean that only the most recent 4 weeks of mailbox blobs move? Cine confirmed this is correct and that customers he has worked with who use an aggressive HSM policy of keeping only 3-7 days of email in their primary volume on-site with all older items moved to a secondary volume, when combined with Centralized Storage, mailbox moves are very fast.
Zimbra Disaster Recovery (DR) Restores
Mark S. asked, when restoring a Zimbra mailbox server that has suddenly failed in a DR situation, what is the recommended way to do a restore? Cine suggested using the Zextras Raw Restore feature ( https://zimbra.github.io/adminguide/latest/#raw-restore ), which is designed for DR use only. Mark S. asked if he has two mailbox servers, Server 1 and Server 2, and Server 1 fails, should he build Server 3 as the replacement using the raw restore feature, and if so, does the Raw Restore feature also update the Zimbra mailbox transport setting for each mailbox from the failed server, so the Zimbra MTAs (Postfix) knows the new location of each mailbox? Cine said that it is not necessary to create a new server name, as the failed server name can be re-used. Cine suggested referring to the Raw Restore documentation section that discusses “Running A Raw Restore” and “Usage Scenarios”. Mark S. commented that he is trying to save money on storage at AWS by putting as much on S3 storage as he can, but this has the consequence of also shortening his Recovery Point Objective during a DR incident.
Migrating Mailboxes From Exchange To Zimbra
Marc G. said he has a customer doing a migration from Microsoft Exchange to Zimbra and asked for suggestions on the best mailbox migration tool to use. Mark S. suggested taking a look at BitTitan ( https://www.bittitan.com/ ). He added that BitTitan supports bi-directional transfers that can migrate email, contacts, calendars, etc. It also works well for migrating Office 365 tenants between accounts, since it is aware of things like Microsoft Teams. This helps in scenarios where a parent company is spinning off a subsidiary company in to their own Office 365 account.
Zimbra and SELinux
Matthew F. said he is building new Zimbra servers and wondered if there has been any changes to earlier recommendations to avoid running Zimbra with SELinux in enforcing mode. Mark S. said he disables SELinux on his Zimbra servers and Randy L. said he runs SELinux in permissive mode on his Zimbra servers.
Obtaining Status Updates For a Bugzilla Pull Request
Cine asked for suggestions on the best option to request a status update of a Bugzilla pull request for the Zimbra Open Source Edition. John H. said that bug updates are only available through the Zimbra Support Portal at present. Mark S. commented that open source Zimbra users can buy support, so they can then gain access to the Support Portal. He also commented that when he sees Zimbra Forum users post issues that he knows affect Zimbra Network Edition, he has opened support cases in the past referencing those Forum posts. Cine said he has a friend that has found a memory leak bug in the Nginx version included in Zimbra, and has submitted a pull request to fix it. John H. suggested that Cine’s friend take a look at the beta version of Nginx which jumps from Nginx 1.18 to 1.9. John E. suggested that if Cine’s friend posts comments in the pull request, this may also help draw more attention to it. John H. added that for anyone willing to install the beta version of Nginx and OpenSSL, Zimbra is willing to provide support. If installing the beta version, he suggested opening a support case to give Zimbra Support a heads up and mention John Hurley’s name. Nginx has only two bugs that need to be resolved before it comes out of beta: ZBUG-2098 and ZBUG-2099, related to an issue with an HTTP/2 configuration file, and a second issue related to some buggy code that causes Nginx to crash.
Zimbra Suite Plus Road Map
Mark S. asked if anyone had heard about updates for the Zimbra Suite Plus road map. He said he has a prospective customer interested in Zimbra Suite Plus since they want basic mailboxes with mobile sync support. The customer is also interested in Zimbra Connect, but there does not seem to be a way to add it to Zimbra Suite Plus. No one had any updates to share and Cine said that it is correct that Zimbra Connect is not currently available with Zimbra Suite Plus.
Randy Leiker
Skyway Networks, LLC