Wondering if anyone had any tips on performance tuning the Zimbra software.
and then created a mail account pancho@unitan.sytes.net in another computer
Hi Pancho
Please check your DNS settings. Some strange things happen:
dig unitan.sytes.net MX
; <<>> DiG 9.7.1 <<>> unitan.sytes.net MX
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 57321
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 13, ADDITIONAL: 13
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;unitan.sytes.net. IN MX
;; ANSWER SECTION:
unitan.sytes.net. 60 IN MX 5 unitan.sytes.net.
However, it does not give any IP number in the additional section. So let’s look it up:
dig unitan.sytes.net
;; ANSWER SECTION:
unitan.sytes.net. 60 IN A 200.69.219.59
and do the reverse lookup:
dig -x 200.69.219.59
;; ANSWER SECTION:
59.219.69.200.in-addr.arpa. 85833 IN PTR mailserver.unitan.net.
Oops, the reverse lookup gives a different address. It looks like you were in fact pancho@unitan.net because the server name is not normally part of the mail domain. When I try this:
dig unitan.net MX
;; ANSWER SECTION:
unitan.net. 5548 IN MX 605 mail.unitan.net.
dig mail.unitan.net
;; ANSWER SECTION:
mail.unitan.net. 5539 IN A 200.69.219.57
dig mailserver.unitan.net
;; ANSWER SECTION:
mailserver.unitan.net. 7200 IN A 200.69.219.59
but in turn there is no MX record for mailserver.unitan.net. Every sender doing reverse lookup checks will not deliver mail to your site.
Voodoo, wow you did an intensive research about my company’s mail configuration.
unitan.sytes.net was a test domain it used to point to 200.69.219.57 but now it’s been redirected.
unitan.net is the real domain and mail.unitan.net is the mail server.
mailserver.unitan.net is not in use at the moment but it might be in a near future.
My mail server is working alright but it has a very low performance problem since I’ve used 7200rmp sata disks.
To everyone trying to install a Zimbra mail server: do not use ordinary SATA drives! they are cheat but Zimbra will be as fast as a chariot pulled by famelic donkeys.
15k rpm drives would be much better and a lot of RAM. When I say a lot I mean 12 to 16GB for 100 IMAP users.
Pancho
unitan.net is the real domain and mail.unitan.net is the mail server.
I understand. False alarm. That sounds much better.
To everyone trying to install a Zimbra mail server: do not use ordinary SATA drives! they are cheat but Zimbra will be as fast as a chariot pulled by famelic donkeys.
Just for your information: My mailserver is sendmail with the j-chkmail milter. The combo of the two is very easy for the hardware. j-chkmail is designed to handle big amounts of mail without hogging the CPU or the disks.
Before you give up altogether,
I haven’t supported this in about a year but I had it running fine on SuSE 11.1.
Scalix
Scalix is vastly more than a mere maliserver, it’s designed to be a Microsoft Exchange replacement in almost every way.
The installation routine automatically sets up LDAP/Microsoft AD integration, calendaring, centralized addressbooks, support for a variety of email clients including Outlook… and more.
At the time i built on OpenSuSE, it was an officially supported platform but viewed a bit with jaundice because of the ever changing updates… But I was very happy with it.
HTH,
Tony
Howdy,
Just adding a bit since I have a few extra moments now…
If you take a look at the Scalix Community Edition (free for 10 Users or less), the notes say that it is supported only on OpenSuSE 10 which would generally mean SLES and OpenSuSE 10.x, but if you search the Scalix forums you should find my posts regarding modifying the installation configuration to support 11.x.
Modifying isn’t a big deal and I can personally vouch for its stability on 11.1 over many, many months.
Tony
Tony, good to know about Scalix but Zimbra community edition has no limitations, you can use it for as many users as you want. But I must confess it is very demanding about resources.
And btw Zimbra can’t be installed on openSUSE 11.x. At least I couldn’t.
Pancho
Hello,
I’d heard about Zimbra although not used it yet.
Skimming the Zimbra website,
Looks like “no limitations” only applies to number of Users, is not considered a “drop in replacement” for anyone who is used to a Microsoft Exchange…
Zimbra Open Source and Paid Versions Comparison
No support for Microsoft Outlook (the gold standard in client email apps, often used with non-Microsoft email systems),
Open Source only supports IMAP.
No support for mobile devices.
So, Zimbra Open Source looks to be OK for less demanding solutions than Scalix and MS Exchange, paid Zimbra editions may be more competitive. And yes, the Community edition of Scalix is free only up to 10 “Premium” users (those who use advanced clients like Outlook) but unless things have changed is also free to unlimited numbers of users who require only basic email and collobaration like Zimbra.
Tony
Tony
Tony, no intention to argue but
No support for Microsoft Outlook (the gold standard in client email apps, often
used with non-Microsoft email systems),
I’m using it with Microsoft Outlook 2007 with no problem.
Open Source only supports IMAP.
I have IMAP and POP clients.
No support for mobile devices.
It does have an special gui for mobile devices, but no sync.
Al other versions beside community edition are pretty expensive. There are more options whe you combine postfix or other free tools and a webmail clients, at least for the average user.
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Pancho
-
I assume you’ve configured Outlook 2007 as an IMAP client, but that means that you’ve severely hobbled Outlook’s collaborative features which are available only when Outlook communicates with the mailserver like an Exchange client.
-
I would have supposed that Zimbra ought to support POP, it’s pretty standard but the comparison table at the Zimbra link only mentions IMAP.
-
A web (I assume) gui for mobile devices is nice to know, again it’s just not mentioned in the Zimbra comparison table.
IMO bottom line is that the Open Source version of Zimbra appears to be not much different than the Open Source version of Scalix, for both there is little difference in basic features and no software limit in number of basic users… But for a 10 user company or a company who only has 10 “power” users who demand more than basic mail services might want to take a closer look at Scalix.
IMO,
Tony