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New email system

D

duncan882

n00b
Joined
Nov 3, 2008
Messages
7
I am in charge of planning a new email system for my company of about 150 users and we are looking for email solutions. We are looking to host the email in-house, and we are kind of looking towards Zimbra virtual appliance. I was wondering if anyone had good or bad experiences with this compared to an outlook/exchange setup. Also how are the system requirements compared to a exchange setup.
 
if you are interested in having a hosted solution check out Microsoft exchange online, $5.00 a month 25 gig mailboxes, everything is included, spam, backup license fees, it's ridiculous.
 
We are more interested in hosting in house and running our own virtual email server.
 
i'm going to have to agree with marley1 on this one.

that is assuming you already have an AD domain running, etc. wouldn't take too much effort to create a quick VM exchange box and get everything connected.
 
I'd try out a couple solutions in VM and see what looks best, including exchange.

From working with exchange, I actually don't get the big deal about it. It's very primitive to say the least. I'm sure there must be better out there. So if you actually have a choice I'd try out multiple solutions and decide from there.
 
Exchange is primative my arse, you didn't get into it if you think exchange is primative.

I have tested out Zimbra and it is not that bad of an email system, but you have to know linux to use it well.

Exchange 07 and 2010 are really nice, pack a lot of features, but the price point may be out of your budget.

Zimbra is cheaper, but not equel to exchange in the least bit, but if you looking for basic email and calander its nice.

If your running in a VM, make sure you size your hardware accordingly, cause store.exe in exchange is a memory hog.
 
Another vote here for exchange. There are many many email solutions out there, and I have worked with my fair share, but every time I work on something that isn't exchange I wish it were.
 
Exchange 2010 for 150 users in a virtualized environment will run like ass on anything but some very decent hosts and a SAN. Exchange 2010 is a memory hog (only by design, because it memcaches) as noted before, and can have some serious IOPS requirements.

What is the budget for this? That is pretty much the limiting factor for this...
 
lotus domino.. that's where it is at.

i am joking. either get an exchange server, or host it for $5 a month with micorosft bpos or whatever they call it.. someone posted the link above.
 
scottatwittenberg said:
lotus domino.. that's where it is at.

i am joking. either get an exchange server, or host it for $5 a month with micorosft bpos or whatever they call it.. someone posted the link above.
Click to expand...

Actually, if you are fluent with Domino, 8.5 is very good, and traveler is not compatible with most major phone OS's

I am an exchange person, but i do admin a 4 server Louts 8.5.2 Cluster and its not bad. If you have a good lotus script developer, its pretty amazing with you can do with it
 
duncan882 said:
We are more interested in hosting in house and running our own virtual email server.
Click to expand...

Why Virtualized, and Why on-site? What do you want to do with your e-mail server that has it be on-site?

k1pp3r said:
If you have a good lotus script developer, its pretty amazing with you can do with it
Click to expand...

oh yeah well isn't that the case with everything in linux. BASH monkeys are good to have.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I'd try out a couple solutions in VM and see what looks best, including exchange.

From working with exchange, I actually don't get the big deal about it. It's very primitive to say the least. I'm sure there must be better out there. So if you actually have a choice I'd try out multiple solutions and decide from there.
Click to expand...

2nd that, if you think it is primitive, you had no idea what you were doing and didnt bother to try to figure it out.

I know 2 guys who are exchange pro's and they are still learning new things about it.

Exchange is not a "memory hog" it just actually uses the ram you give it, if that be 2G, 4G, 24G. it will actually make use of it to make your experience faster.
 
Nacho said:
Exchange 2010 for 150 users in a virtualized environment will run like ass on anything but some very decent hosts and a SAN. Exchange 2010 is a memory hog (only by design, because it memcaches) as noted before, and can have some serious IOPS requirements.

What is the budget for this? That is pretty much the limiting factor for this...
Click to expand...

Not sure I fully agree with this...

The reason Exchange 2010 was designed to be a memory hog (which I do agree, it is) was to reduce IOPS requirements. Hell, Exchange 2010 has reduced IOPS so much that Microsoft actually supports SATA drives for the mailbox server in a production environment.

150 users is not a large scale implementation by any means, I think he'd be fine personally, as long as he threw enough RAM at it.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Exchange is not a "memory hog" it just actually uses the ram you give it, if that be 2G, 4G, 24G. it will actually make use of it to make your experience faster.
Click to expand...

Yup...it gobbles up what you give it...but it can still run OK on low RAM. I have an Exchange box at a nursing home running on just 3 gigs of RAM, 80 users. Not a ball of fire..but it does the job fine. Would I have loved to stick 12 gigs of RAM in there? Sure...but, that's the server they had for me to install it on.
 
+1 on the Exchange.

We are running our Exchange environment in ESXi 4.1 and it runs quite smooth. Minimum RAM I would recommend is 8GB and 16GB if you can swing it. A physical box would indeed be faster, but for our environment (165 Users) putting it in a VM worked out well. I still plan on assigning it more RAM once we get SP1 on there.

Be prepared to set aside around $10K for a 160 Users if you are going to be rolling out Exchange 2010. More if you are going to go with the premium CALs.
 
I'm uninvolved with running it, but Novell Groupwise has worked well where I am. I've also heard it can be a nightmare system to run. Not bad from a user standpoint, and the guys who run the system like it.
 
So right now we are really focusing on Zimbra. I have a test network with it up and running and it doesn't seem to bad. The main focus now is install some of the widget type of app into the system.
 
Sure not interested in trying Google Apps? Our school district moved over to Google Apps from Novell Groupwise and couldn't be happier. Less time spent administering and more time spent doing more important stuff. Just saying have a look.
 
minc3d said:
Sure not interested in trying Google Apps? Our school district moved over to Google Apps from Novell Groupwise and couldn't be happier. Less time spent administering and more time spent doing more important stuff. Just saying have a look.
Click to expand...

He wants it on site. So unfortunately apps is out.
 
Zimbra may be a good bet then. I've heard good things about it overall; don't get into a messy Exchange setup unless you really know the ins and outs of it.
 
If you go the Zimbra route, do not, I repeat, DO NOT try to make it Exchange by introducing the Zimbra Outlook Connector...
 
Anyone here actually deploy Zimbra? I've only heard good things about it, never deployed/managed myself. Just know it as the friendly exchange alternative :)
 
We deployed Zimbra. We're actually wrapping up our migration from Zimbra to Google Apps for Education if that tells you anything. Likely we would have been okay if we never got involved with their Outlook connector. Unfortunately, the connector screwed so much up and created such a support nightmare that we decided to move on.
 
Ok we are going a new direction now the higher ups weren't to sure of the Zimbra mail. Right now we are strongly looking at Google apps for business. Do you guys have any pros or cons for their system.
 
Google apps has had quite a few outages in the past 24 months. Other than that, i know poeople who use their service and they are happy with it.

Me personally, I wouldn't want my business mail with Google, but higer ups never really consider the cost of setting up an on prem email solution so they won't care about giving it to Google if its cheap/free
 
duncan882 said:
Ok we are going a new direction now the higher ups weren't to sure of the Zimbra mail. Right now we are strongly looking at Google apps for business. Do you guys have any pros or cons for their system.
Click to expand...

None yet. Using them with companies as small as 4 people, and as large as 250. They work amazingly well. You may also want to look into hosted exchange depending on how much your company's google apps will be.
 
marley1 said:
Exchange nothing else
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Don't do this.

I recommend a standalone Postfix / Dovecot server for less than 500 users. If you run this on ESXi 4.1, it's rock solid, takes 40 minutes to configure, and cost $0.00 in licensing.
 
We've been hosting our personal email en-masse for the past 10 years or so in the "cloud" on gmail, yahoo, and hotmail, aol without much issue so what is with all the concern about "where the f is your mail?"

I dont see why this is such a thorn in so many people's sides. How many outages can you count in the past year with your personal email service? I use Gmail and I've been locked out due to glitches for a max of 10-15 mins of work time in the past year.

I dont want to even compare that to my school district's old Groupwise server or my former employer's Exchange 2003 systems where we can tick the hours on two hands...
 
I work for a fortune 500 company and we're in the defense / space division so hosting mail with the worlds #1 search engine doesn't sit well with anyone. Plus to me it just looks lazy and shows me that most people don't take the time and research required to run a proper mail server. Exchange is a completely different joke all together. When they learn how to follow RFC rules that comply with the rest of the world, maybe they wont be considered such a joke. My mail server doesn't go down because I've made the precautions and spent time setting it up properly. Start with a redundant connection and then have a fail over with replication. I don't see how this could be any easier regardless how your environment differs from mine. Clouds, Gmail, etc etc etc are just a gaping privacy hole for those who can't spend 5 minutes to learn how to stand up a secure mail server.
 
For the rest of the business world, and I deal primarily with small businesses in my consulting firm that don't hold treasure troves of top secret information, there is nothing wrong with utilizing the cloud. It's a question of ROI ultimately and in-house server systems, unless they are keeping mass amounts of top secret information, just cant touch the ROI of a Google Apps or other hosted setup.

It's not laziness - it's practicality and using manpower/manhours towards IT tasks that matter more these days then sitting in a back room administering a mail system.

Our school district went Google Apps and we aren't turning back. 3000+ students, 800+ staff members, and growing. We don't represent a Fortune 500, but we do represent large scale implementation of a cloud based email/docs/calendar product that works.
 
minc3d said:
It's not laziness - it's practicality and using manpower/manhours towards IT tasks that matter more these days then sitting in a back room administering a mail system.
Click to expand...

No offense but I think that's a scare tactic sales consultants use to make money. It doesn't cost companies millions of dollars managing Linux servers over Microsoft systems because of hours / days it takes getting them working. Not that you're implying this directly but I hear so many people use this and it's beyond false. Any time spent managing a local mail server will be equal but mostly greater on a remote cloud system or any other environment. The point is there's the right tool for the right job and as long as you understand the limitations or your options, you can pick what's going to work best for you.
 
Carlosinfl said:
No offense but I think that's a scare tactic sales consultants use to make money. It doesn't cost companies millions of dollars managing Linux servers over Microsoft systems because of hours / days it takes getting them working. Not that you're implying this directly but I hear so many people use this and it's beyond false. Any time spent managing a local mail server will be equal but mostly greater on a remote cloud system or any other environment. The point is there's the right tool for the right job and as long as you understand the limitations or your options, you can pick what's going to work best for you.
Click to expand...

You're delusional...
 
Wow, this thread is a bunch of "All email systems are shit" isn't it?

It goes like this.

If you want on prem simple cheap basic email = Postfix, Zimbra

If you want better email with more advanced features but more licensing cost = Exchange, Lotus Domino (Both have on prem and cloud solutions)

If you want Free not on prem email = google apps

If you don't like licensing and you want to "Stick it to the man" than email is not for you, go get some stamps.
 
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