Help on setting up a mail server

[onna]

hi,

I am not really a linux guy, but my boss asked me to setup a new open source linux mail server.

I did some research about sendmail, postfix, squirrelmail, exim and qmail. I'm wondering if anyone has personal experience on setting this up?

Maybe someone can help me guide on this, maybe shed some light what can be the best mail server to use, and the one that would be easiest to maintain (less scripting and coding)..

The mail server will be serving atleast 70 users.

Thanks in advanced guys!

[Miuku.]

Save yourself time and effort, get; http://www.zimbra.co...pen-source.html

Especially since you're completely fresh and don't know what you're doing.

You'll need RHEL, SLES, Ubuntu LTS, Debian or Fedora to install it - it has extensive documentation and help available.

[onna]

Save yourself time and effort, get; http://www.zimbra.co...pen-source.html

Especially since you're completely fresh and don't know what you're doing.

You'll need RHEL, SLES, Ubuntu LTS, Debian or Fedora to install it - it has extensive documentation and help available.

Thanks for the link brother.

I actually have some experience with ubuntu desktop, only as a user though. No scripting and server administration.. :)

I think I would try to use ubuntu or fedora first.

Will it work in desktop version?

I actually work here as a network engr, but our system admin guy has resigned only last week and still no replacement so my hod ask me to take care some of his pending works

and that includes the mail server installation on our remote site.

The linux mail server would need to connect to our exchange 2003 mail server and then finally be routed outside with our mail gateway (a trend micro virtual appliance).

I am doing the initial setup now, hopefully it would work as expected.

What do you think?

[Miuku.]

Oh wait - so you actually are setting up a relay and not a complete mail system?

[onna]

Oh wait - so you actually are setting up a relay and not a complete mail system?

The setup would be like this:

The remote site with ~70users will be using open source mail server. The HQ is using exchange 2003 as mail server and AD as the user directory. The remote site have a separate subdomain name and every email transactions outside in public would need to transit on the headquarters. It would be like in microsoft, we would configure a routing group to connect this two sites. An ipsec tunnel is configured to connect this two sites.

So with the linux mail server, I am not sure how to do this.

Lets say a user from the remote site, user A, sends an email on a public domain gmail.com. The email will be received by the linux mail server (zimbra in our case), and it would need to be routed or relayed to our exchange server in HQ then finally to the smtp gateway (trend micro appliance)..

Let me know brother if you need more info, as I really need help for this one..

[Guest nicconics]

Why not just setup the subdomain on the windows 2003 server that is hosting exchange as well, and do it all from there. You run into alot of issues when trying the relay stuff over a VPN. (or ipsec tunnel) Maybe give them dedicated ports on the server machine through the firewall. Would save a crapload of headache

[sc302 Veteran]

Why not just setup the subdomain on the windows 2003 server that is hosting exchange as well, and do it all from there. You run into alot of issues when trying the relay stuff over a VPN. (or ipsec tunnel) Maybe give them dedicated ports on the server machine through the firewall. Would save a crapload of headache

x2

[onna]

Why not just setup the subdomain on the windows 2003 server that is hosting exchange as well, and do it all from there. You run into alot of issues when trying the relay stuff over a VPN. (or ipsec tunnel) Maybe give them dedicated ports on the server machine through the firewall. Would save a crapload of headache

I am really sorry bother, but I made an error on my previous post. Just did a phone call to my hod, and he said the remote site is a whole different domain..

And one of my colleague actually made some effort earlier on the meeting to just migrate all the users to our main exchange server to ease the process.

About the ipsec tunnel. Some of our smaller sites, which are mostly retail stores and small offices (same domain) are connected via ipsec and email traffic have no problems at all. Servers are all windows based (AD,dns and exchnage).

But then again brother, you might be right on this one, as I can not confirm this if it would also work on a linux mail server as it would my first time to deploy it, much less to configure it to relay (like a smart host) an email to a windows exchnge server.

I am doing some more research on zimbra, and some users says it supports AD and exchange integration.

But maybe there's some other options, for me to have a backup plan once zimbra fails to work on my side.

[sc302 Veteran]

Makes no difference, use exchange...setup exchange anywhere (rpc over http(s)) and the users will still use outlook, connect to the mail server, and have everyone synced as if they were sitting there at the main site (as far as mail is concerned).

[onna]

Actually, the very reason the upper management was opted to consider an open source is a strict budget.

I told them that this deployment might affect our current system and would generate issues instead of just setting up a new exchange server on the remote site.

And they told me its not possible with the current budget. The workstations will be planning to use ubuntu desktop, and most of those users are hotel crews and attendants which are only familiar on windows platform.

[onna]

Makes no difference, use exchange...setup exchange anywhere (rpc over http(s)) and the users will still use outlook, connect to the mail server, and have everyone synced as if they were sitting there at the main site (as far as mail is concerned).

Yeah, at first I think using OWA would suffice. But the thing brother is, I just confirmed now, its a different domain and really not related on the company. It looks like the management made "some aggrement" with the other site, then agrees to offer services and that includes setting up a new mail server and maybe a small virtual infrastructure in a few coming months. I really don't know what is in the contract, but the initial phase of the project that was given to my team is to setup a mail server (front-end and back-end) using open source solutions..

[onna]

They would actually have a whole different user database from us. I am expecting they would also use an open souce ldap solution on that one.

So in summary, the requirement would be an open source mail server and would be able to relay/route emails to exchange servers.

[Miuku.]

In that case, grab Zimbra.

I would suggest using something like CentOS for it - it's binary compatible with RHEL that they support.

[Guest nicconics]

Yes, make SURE you use something that is very supported, be it ubuntu or centos. That can save you tons of time in the future.

[onna]

Thanks for the reply. :)

Yes, I am planning to use ubuntu as I've seen on the zimbra website, they actually have a package built right in for ubuntu 10.04.

Anyways, sorry for a noob question, but in my case, 70 users/mailbox and hub and spoke topology, do you think there will be a "big difference" both in performance and stability if I use a desktop version over the server one? Again, I don't have much experience with scripting and coding in linux command line.

Another one, have any of you have experience running both AD and zimbra in parallel on a production or maybe in a test environment?

Because I am wondering, do you think a user can authenticate in AD, then be able to send email using zimbra account/mailbox? :)

I mean, can a user account be created on AD, and then be able to configure the AD to talk to zimbra then create the correponding email account/mailbox in zimbra?

Is Active Directory and Zimbra interoperable with each other?

Thanks again for the help brothers, really appreciate it!