From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Mar 20 09:29:28 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AF26016A4DD for ; Sun, 20 Mar 2005 09:29:28 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com (mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [65.75.192.90]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 11DB743D3F for ; Sun, 20 Mar 2005 09:29:28 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) Received: from tedwin2k (nat-rtr.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com [65.75.197.130]) j2K9TKb20840; Sun, 20 Mar 2005 01:29:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tedm@toybox.placo.com) From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" To: "Jerry Bell" , "Mike Jeays" Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 01:29:10 -0800 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <1795.24.98.86.57.1111292119.squirrel@24.98.86.57> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1478 Importance: Normal cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: MS Exchange server on FreeBSD? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 09:29:28 -0000 > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Jerry Bell > Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 8:15 PM > To: Mike Jeays > Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: Re: MS Exchange server on FreeBSD? > > > I'll second that the calendar/email functionality has become a utility > service in many organizations. Exchange/outlook, for all their > shortcomings, have really changed the way companies work. > > At my day job, we have 9 exchange servers around the world, with about > 1500 mailboxes, so not a huge install, but in the past 5 years, > calendaring, email and public folders have become a critical > component of > the business, and any bit of unavailability isn't tolerated. > Now, we are > fortunate that we have several really good windows/exchange > guys to keep > things humming, but it is clear that the business demands of > calendaring > and email are outstripping the ability of MS to deliver. We, > along with > many other organizations, are really looking at ways to achieve 99.999% > uptime on exchange, but we're realy kidding ourselves. Something like > communigate pro, that can be clustered and run on a > non-windows OS could > move us closer to the mark, but still not really there. The > OS' and apps > just aren't meant for that type of availability yet. > Jerry, I would strongly encourage you to look at the latest Horde framework, which incorporates webmail, calendaring and many other goodies. It also has a plugin to sync to handhelds, although that is not as far along yet. The biggest hurdle of course is moving people off their calendaring in their own private Outlook calendars. The calendaring in Horde is web-based. But, you can easily continue using Outlook for the front end for e-mail. You can use it with pop3 or with IMAP, and you can setup a centralized address book with an LDAP server that Outlook will use quite nicely (as long as you format the LDAP data properly) Horde lends itself to clustering it is very modular. You can setup a group of Horde servers that use a central mysql database (which is where the calendaring and user settings are stored) Or you can use sql servers on each Horde system and use your own replication scheme between them. Horde is also multilingual, and includes support for the Asian languages, extremely good support in fact. Far better than Outlook clients, some versions of which cannot even display Kanji messages as you probably know. I've had a user run it on a Japanese localized verison of Windows and he raved about it. At the ISP I work at I went to Horde/IMP a few years ago to provide a webinterface for the mailserver. I use it in a dual server config, the mailserver is one box and it just runs sendmail and IMAP, the Horde server is a separate box. For grins I installed the calendaring module in it. I was pretty stunned last month when I went to migrate it to the new version and found the sql server stuffed with appointments and such. Apparently most of the users discovered the calendar and decided to use it. This greatly complicates my migration now since I now got to move all their data. :-) Ted