Page 1 of 1

mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 11:50 am
by shun81
I am installing an email server for my office for the first time and need assistance on good server installation and tech support professionals. could anyone help me out.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 11:55 am
by bthylafh
You're in over your head. Run away screaming and get your boss to host with Google Apps instead.

edit: and you're in the wrong forum too.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 12:13 pm
by DrkSide
bthylafh wrote:
You're in over your head. Run away screaming and get your boss to host with Google Apps instead.


What he said, I wouldn't touch a mail server with a 10 foot pole. At the last company I worked for I worked on a few linux mail server and they had to be restarted at least once a day. Never could get them to run right. Finally went to a hosted exchange because that is what the boss wanted.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 12:30 pm
by EV42TMAN
Microsoft or Linux?

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 12:48 pm
by Xylker
What is your role in the installation? Are you the boss who has asked for an email server, or are you the IT guy who has been given instruction to install and support said system?

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 1:15 pm
by PenGun
I like qmail but you will need a *nixy system.

http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html

A bit of a bear to set up but runs really well.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 2:25 pm
by Flatland_Spider
shun81 wrote:
I am installing an email server for my office for the first time and need assistance on good server installation and tech support professionals. could anyone help me out.


Zimbra is nice. It's packaged system, so you don't have to configure everything separately. You can also get Outlook integration, and an active sync connector for phones. It does run on Linux, so you'll need a Debian, RHEL, or Ubuntu server.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 2:35 pm
by ekul
shun81 wrote:
I am installing an email server for my office for the first time and need assistance on good server installation and tech support professionals. could anyone help me out.



Everyone who is saying run away screaming is right. Running a good email system is a giant pain in the ass.

If you only have a few users contract it out becuase the pain in getting it up and keeping it running won't be worth it. If you have a lot of users keeping it up under load will be a nearly impossible task.

so, in short, get a vendor to do this with some iron clad SLAs. Your family and sanity will thank you.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 2:47 pm
by [SDG]Mantis
It becomes an even bigger pain in the ass when something goes wrong: virus, massive spam hit, etc.

For reference, how many users are you talking about?

From a thread over at HardOCP:

Pros to a hosted e-mail solution:
1. no need to buy additional servers to run the mail server(s).
2. no expensive maintenance contracts for IT support for said server(s).
3. should not have to worry about maintaining data backups (on and offsite).
4. security of the mail servers is the contracted hosting company's issue/problem to deal with.
5. internet bandwidth savings

cons to hosted solution:
1. Internet goes down, you don't have access to your e-mail (unless using an Exchange solution w/ offline support).
2. Relying on some other company to do the correct job, maintaining backups, providing good service, etc.
3. Can be expensive when scaling upwards (in my opinion).

pros to running your own server:
1. data is yours, it's in house and you know where it is, who is handling the servers, etc.
2. faster access to e-mail since it is local (I guess this wouldn't apply to 3 of the locations unless you spread out the mail servers somehow between the 4 locations).
3. configure the server the way you want.
4. easy access to diagnostic logging, like when employee A says "well I e-mailed that important document yesterday. did you not get it?!?!?"

cons to running your own server:
1. having to deal with spam & viruses.
2. having to deal with maintaining security of the server.
3. having to deal with data backups of server.
4. can be expensive to purchase new servers & software licenses.
5. requires a good solid reliable internet connection (or multiple if email is critical Line of Business app to your company).

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 2:56 pm
by ekul
[SDG]Mantis wrote:
It becomes an even bigger pain in the ass when something goes wrong: virus, massive spam hit, etc.

For reference, how many users are you talking about?

From a thread over at HardOCP:

Pros to a hosted e-mail solution:
1. no need to buy additional servers to run the mail server(s).
2. no expensive maintenance contracts for IT support for said server(s).
3. should not have to worry about maintaining data backups (on and offsite).
4. security of the mail servers is the contracted hosting company's issue/problem to deal with.
5. internet bandwidth savings

cons to hosted solution:
1. Internet goes down, you don't have access to your e-mail (unless using an Exchange solution w/ offline support).
2. Relying on some other company to do the correct job, maintaining backups, providing good service, etc.
3. Can be expensive when scaling upwards (in my opinion).

pros to running your own server:
1. data is yours, it's in house and you know where it is, who is handling the servers, etc.
2. faster access to e-mail since it is local (I guess this wouldn't apply to 3 of the locations unless you spread out the mail servers somehow between the 4 locations).
3. configure the server the way you want.
4. easy access to diagnostic logging, like when employee A says "well I e-mailed that important document yesterday. did you not get it?!?!?"

cons to running your own server:
1. having to deal with spam & viruses.
2. having to deal with maintaining security of the server.
3. having to deal with data backups of server.
4. can be expensive to purchase new servers & software licenses.
5. requires a good solid reliable internet connection (or multiple if email is critical Line of Business app to your company).



All excellnt points. I'd add 2nd category of hosted email though. Since you have no email server experience and are being asked to do this I'm guessing this is a fairly small setup. You could contract a local IT firm to run and maintain an email server for you on site and split the difference between hosted and self-run. You could handle your own backups and whatnot but leave all the email bits to someone who knows what they are doing. Badly configured email servers are the scourge of the internet.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 3:00 pm
by morphine
PenGun wrote:
I like qmail but you will need a *nixy system.

http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html

A bit of a bear to set up but runs really well.

Unless things changed in recent years, qmail development was inexistant and new (well, current-day) features were not going to be added.

To the OP: yeah, unless you have to do it, just rent e-mail/webhosting with whatever company or run away screaming. Part of my daytime job involves those, and I swear that it's probably the most stressful and high-time-investment/low-payoff thing around.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 3:35 pm
by DLHM
Everyone is saying that mail servers are a huge pain. I don't understand this.. I ran Exchange 5.5 upgraded to 2000 and then to 2003. At most I've had about 100 users, right now down to about 50. I had a major problem once, when 2 drives failed on my raid 5 and I had to restore from tape, but other than that I don't see it as a big deal. I run public calendars, GFI mail Essentials for spam, SMTP , 2 Pop Connectors. It does require weekly maintenance and a good backup plan, but you should have the same for every server, it's no big deal.

Re: mail server

Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 3:40 pm
by bthylafh
The poster sounds like he's not especially technical. My advice stands.

Re: mail server

Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 8:08 am
by EV42TMAN
I like how he shun81 asks for help but when we're trying to help he doesn't check back and answer our questions. Because there is a difference between a server admin that hasn't touched e-mail, and an end user whose geeky that gets the "privilege" of installing the email server.

Re: mail server

Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 9:08 am
by xtalentx
DLHM wrote:
Everyone is saying that mail servers are a huge pain. I don't understand this.. I ran Exchange 5.5 upgraded to 2000 and then to 2003. At most I've had about 100 users, right now down to about 50. I had a major problem once, when 2 drives failed on my raid 5 and I had to restore from tape, but other than that I don't see it as a big deal. I run public calendars, GFI mail Essentials for spam, SMTP , 2 Pop Connectors. It does require weekly maintenance and a good backup plan, but you should have the same for every server, it's no big deal.


Yeah, I have pretty much the same situation here at my work except we are on exchange 2010 now. Really not too hard to manage. I also have (assisted) managed a clustered exchange environment for a company with over 40k users. That was a bit more complicated...

Re: mail server

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 12:45 pm
by flip-mode
If you insist on running your own: Kerio Connect. It's friggin easy to use and it's been very reliable for us. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. Our needs are not highly sophisticated, though, and only 25 or so users. But I love it. Can run on Windows or Linux.

Re: mail server

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:45 pm
by just brew it!
EV42TMAN wrote:
I like how he shun81 asks for help but when we're trying to help he doesn't check back and answer our questions. Because there is a difference between a server admin that hasn't touched e-mail, and an end user whose geeky that gets the "privilege" of installing the email server.

shun81 appears to be a spammer / sock puppet account; don't expect him/her to reply, because it isn't going to happen.

I've left the thread in place since there's been some good discussion irrespective of why the thread was originally started.

Re: mail server

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:59 pm
by thegleek
just brew it! wrote:
shun81 appears to be a spammer / sock puppet account; don't expect him/her to reply, because it isn't going to happen.

Good call! Kinda surprising how much a simple "google" search on a user's name will reveal (link 1, link 2, and link 3), probably 100's more like that from shun81.

Re: mail server

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 2:09 pm
by just brew it!
thegleek wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
shun81 appears to be a spammer / sock puppet account; don't expect him/her to reply, because it isn't going to happen.

Good call! Kinda surprising how much a simple "google" search on a user's name will reveal (link 1, link 2, and link 3), probably 100's more like that from shun81.

For even more amusement, check out this Google results page...

Re: mail server

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 2:11 pm
by bthylafh
Bizarre.

JBI, would you mind moving the thread out of the developer's forum?