Zimbra 10 (Daffodil)

[shardool.zimbra]

I see video/chat is now SaaS and not in the self-hosted anymore (it's https://immail.ca/, based on the installation documentation).

If this is the case (if I understood properly), ZCS lost its "on premise" advantage and full GDPR compliance.

Could someone from Synacor please tell me I'm wrong?

For Chat and Video, we continue to maintain the 'freedom of choice' strategy.
- Many customers do not want to manage the infrastructure for chat and video due to maintenance and scaling overhead. For such customers there is the SaaS solution (https://chat.zimbra.com).
- We are also in the process of building an on-premise variant of the chat solution, for customers who need the full GDPR compliance via a self-hosted solution.
- And then there are numerous integrations available which customers can use as per their choice - refer to the full list here - https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/ChatVideo

[dawood.shaikh]

The release-notes says that no migration is currently possible, but tools will be available "later".

From the way these tools are currently "integrated" (or not), I'd say they were implemented as a stop-gap, short-term solution anyway. A solution that has now run its course, apparently.

I would really like this to be available on AlmaLinux9, TBH, before I upgrade.
I need to sun-set CentOS 7 and I'd rather do that for something RHEL9-based than RHEL8. These migrations are a PITA and the less often I've got to do them, the better.

1. Migration is currently supported for Multi-node setup running NG Modules through the NG Migration Utility. This utility is an independent utility that can be executed on the 8815/900 servers as well. Please refer to the guide for more details - https://zimbra.github.io/documentation/ ... ation.html
2. Migration is not supported for single-node setup running NG Modules. We are currently working on steps to migrate such a setup and are hopeful we will provide an update soon.

[Klug]

For Chat and Video, we continue to maintain the 'freedom of choice' strategy.
- Many customers do not want to manage the infrastructure for chat and video due to maintenance and scaling overhead. For such customers there is the SaaS solution (https://chat.zimbra.com).
- We are also in the process of building an on-premise variant of the chat solution, for customers who need the full GDPR compliance via a self-hosted solution.
- And then there are numerous integrations available which customers can use as per their choice - refer to the full list here - https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/ChatVideo

Means Zimbra 10 is not usable yet for GDPR-aware companies (all companies in Europe).
Not even for chat (that was available for free)... Unless deploying another solution next to Zimbra for that (means time+money).

1. Migration is currently supported for Multi-node setup running NG Modules through the NG Migration Utility. This utility is an independent utility that can be executed on the 8815/900 servers as well. Please refer to the guide for more details - https://zimbra.github.io/documentation/ ... ation.html

That process is currently not usable (in production) as all the (HSM) data will be imported on the _primary_ storage on the destination server.
It means if you want to migrate you have to provision the volume twice (means time+money).

Also there's nothing in the guide about deduplication.
Do we have to provision the "mailbox space" (not really used space) as primary volume on destination server, then use the "Storage Management policy" to move data to secondary volume then use it again to deduplicate?


Unless these two points (chat/video and HSM migration) are fixed very quickly (as everyone knows we need 3 to 6 months of QA by customers to have something more or less working), it looks impossible to migrate this year (end of support of current versions).

[jhurley]

The Zextras tools (or the -ng extensions) enabled the commonly promoted "side by side" migration. I've spent a few hours having a look at v10 today and it appears it's back to the old clunky zimbra backup, which is not real time and only good for DR if you make frequent local copies of the redo logs. So that's a significant regression on the -ng backup along with making migrations more difficult.

Other than that it appears mostly much of a muchness and it'll be interesting to watch how it evolves. Hopefully competition from Zextras has lit a bit of fire under the Zimbra team.

Thanks for pointing this out, I'm so disappointed to hear this. Ngbackup was the one solidly good thing (to me) that came from upgrading to 8.8.15...

There are some intentional differences in the backup and restore in Zimbra Daffodil. The release of Daffodil allows the Zimbra Product and Development team to address a number of issues that NG modules prevented us from doing. We are committed to providing industry-leading features which will give us the flexibility to adapt to current and future industry changes.

In making the decision to go a different direction, discussions occurred with customers to obtain how they are using backup and their positive and negative experiences. This decision doesn’t mean we believe that NG real-time backup isn't a working solution but we feel that a better solution can be created which will be more adaptable, flexible, and resolves a number of issues that NG can not address. Here are some common issues reported by customers and from Support data:

Restore Limitation - NG requires a full mailbox restore for all mailbox corruption. The most common issue is corruption within the MySQL databases or OS where the Store was not affected. The majority of customers who experienced this type of issue requested the ability to restore at the component level. Daffodil backup brings back flexibility with what type of data you want to restore including blob-less restore.

Scalability - The ability to scale backup is another issue that is reported and seen within our Support data. More accounts and data on the mailbox server increases the likelihood to have NG backup performance issues. Because NG is an add-on, it competes for the same resources as mailboxd and MySQL, where NG real-time backup can negatively affect user experience.

Reliability - From our support data and customer experiences, we are seeing a correlation between an increase in the age of a real-time backup to unknown issues during restoration. These issues can prevent a full restore which requires an alternative restore method and data loss.

Time to restore - If a disaster occurs, NG backup is able to restore when accounts are live, but many restores take significant time, Restore can affect the performance of the server, and end users still notice and complain about missing data and user experience.

We continue to review how the Zimbra backup feature is used and how we can further develop this feature. Taking a new perspective on the Zimbra backup functionality, we are able to address a number of issues and improvements in the overall Backup and Recovery experience. In the coming months, we will be releasing enhancements to the backup and other features which will address the footprint of the backup, speed of restoration, backup message management, cluster to cluster migration. We will continue to keep everyone informed as new functionality becomes available.

We always want to hear from the community about how you use Zimbra, what issues you have, and your needs.

[dawood.shaikh]

With the latest Daffodil 10.0.5 Release, Zimbra has officially released the Migration guides for the customers running 8815/900 with NG modules to migrate to Daffodil v10. Please refer to the Release Notes for more details - https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zimbra_Releases/10.0.5