Hallo Mike
Ich "kenne" dar nur MDaemon [1] - soll noch gut sein..
Gruss Reto
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Mike Kellenberger [mailto:mike.kellenberger@escapenet.ch] Gesendet: Donnerstag, 21. Dezember 2006 16:21 An: swinog@swinog.ch Betreff: [swinog] Mail Server suggestions
We're looking around for a new mail server solution, since our mercur (www.atrium.de) server is just too unstable.
Preferably it should run on windows (we're just not at home on the *nix platforms), have all it's config options in a sql database, provide anti-spam and anti-virus out of the box, have a feature-rich webmail client and be tailored for a small ISP.
Our specs: ~700 Domains, ~4000 Users
Thanks in advance for all your tips!
Cheers,
Mike
-- Mike Kellenberger mike.kellenberger@escapenet.ch Escapenet - the Web Company Tel +41 52 235 0700 http://www.escapenet.ch Skype mikek70atwork _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
Hi Mike
Preferably it should run on windows (we're just not at home on the *nix platforms), have all it's config options in a sql database, provide anti-spam and anti-virus out of the box, have a feature-rich webmail client and be tailored for a small ISP.
Our specs: ~700 Domains, ~4000 Users
MS exchange? CERN uses it: http://mmmservices.web.cern.ch/mmmservices/Help/?kbid=211030 http://mmm.cern.ch
The current version seems quite stable. But I'm just a user, I don't know how it is to manage.
cheers Edoardo
Edoardo Martelli wrote:
Hi Mike
Preferably it should run on windows (we're just not at home on the *nix platforms), have all it's config options in a sql database, provide anti-spam and anti-virus out of the box, have a feature-rich webmail client and be tailored for a small ISP.
Our specs: ~700 Domains, ~4000 Users
I'd use qmail-ldap on UNIX for it. It's as stable and as scalable as you can get. The largest installation I know of has more than 3 million actual users on it in a large cluster. But then I'm biased. The only thing coming close to it in scalability is Critical Path. Both Yahoo Mail and Google Mail (Gmail) started off the qmail-ldap code base. Rediff mail in India is running qmail-ldap with some modifications. The last time I got information it was above 2 mio. active mail accounts.
In any case I can give you three recommendations from 10 years experience in this business:
a) chose an email system that uses maildir for mail storage. Do NOT go with mbox or any other single file per user or single file per mail server system. Just don't. Any also never ever try to store the actual mails in a database.
b) use Linux or FreeBSD for your mail servers. Sun (Open)Solaris acceptable too. Use UFS2 or EXT3 in journaling mode for storage. Do NOT use Reiser or any of the other file systems.
c) use LDAP for user accounts. An SQL database not as good but acceptable as well. It's just not really suited for it. Do NOT accept black box user storage. If you do, you're locked into that vendor forever as you can't export your user data to move to a different system.
d) don't try to get a all-in-one system. Most likely you end up with the worst or mediocre of everything.
e) if you seriously want to operate a mail platform you have to build up some knowledge in-house. There is simply no way to run a reliable and stable mail system with just a point-n-click GUI and a 10 page quick introduction manual.
MS exchange? CERN uses it: http://mmmservices.web.cern.ch/mmmservices/Help/?kbid=211030 http://mmm.cern.ch
The current version seems quite stable. But I'm just a user, I don't know how it is to manage.
That's the problem. When an exchange server goes bad you're offline for a couple of hours up to days. Exchange server stores everything in one large linear database or log. Deleted mails are not really free'd but just invisible. Every month or so you have to 'compress' the message store to get the free space back. Compressing has to be done offline so for two or three hours the server is unavailable. When this message store goes corrupt, which it does from time to time just by itself, then it takes hours again to run a repair. During that time you're offline again.
Using Exchange server at an ISP is pretty much suicidal.
Interestingly email is still the core application of the internet. User can go without the web for an hour but not without email. And they use it 24x7. As an ISP you don't really have the option of generous maintainance windows as the corporate guys have (from 19:00 to 06:00 plus weekends).
Hi,
While i agree with all your points above, and don't think that Exchange is the right product for a plain ISP-Mail setup, it isn't as bad as you're trying to make it.
* Andre Oppermann oppermann@networx.ch:
That's the problem. When an exchange server goes bad you're offline for a couple of hours up to days. Exchange server stores everything
That's what you have clustering for - besides when you got a file system problem on your storage backend, you're equally in trouble.
in one large linear database or log. Deleted mails are not really free'd but just invisible. Every month or so you have to 'compress' the message store to get the free space back. Compressing has to be done offline so for two or three hours the server is unavailable.
That's not correct. Basic defragmentation is done with an online (mounted) information store every 12 hours. There's no need for offline defragmentation, unless there's something wrong.
When this message store goes corrupt, which it does from time to time just by itself, then it takes hours again to run a repair.
I've seen corrupted linux filesystems, and corrupted exchange information stores. The reason for this was always the same: bad hardware.
they use it 24x7. As an ISP you don't really have the option of generous maintainance windows as the corporate guys have (from 19:00 to 06:00 plus weekends).
While these generous maintenance windows are true for any SMB, they usually aren't for multinational coorporations.
In the end, Exchange isn't the right product to provide ISP mail - it never was. At about 200CHF per CAL (price of course depending on a lot of things), it's also far too expensive.
But if you're looking for a solid groupware, Exchange is definitivly the way to go. Microsoft fixed most of the problems Exchange had with the 2003 version, and went one step further with the 2007 version (which is almost out).
Hi,
The only thing coming close to it in scalability is Critical Path.
Does the windows version of Critical Path still exist? ;-)
After all it's a good/stable product. (Well: i dislike the CP-smtpd .. it works unless you try to do anything funky .. but replacing it with postfix/qmail isn't a problem)
Both Yahoo Mail and Google Mail (Gmail) started off the qmail-ldap code base.
gmail used the qmail codebase? Do you have any reports/documentation about this?
AFAIK they wrote the smtpd from scratch. Porting qmail to googles non-posix GoogleFileSystem doesn't sound like fun and in the early days it had a few bad quirks.. (like: sending long strings crashed googles smtpd)
Regards, Adrian
Hi
I'd use qmail-ldap on UNIX for it. It's as stable and as scalable as you can get. The largest installation I know of has more than 3 million actual users on it in a large cluster. But then I'm biased. The only thing coming close to it in scalability is Critical Path. Both Yahoo Mail and Google Mail (Gmail) started off the qmail-ldap code base. Rediff mail in India is running qmail-ldap with some modifications. The last time I got information it was above 2 mio. active mail accounts.
Does qmail still suffer from the "delayed bounces problem" (see http://www-dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html#delayedbounce ) in this configuration or did you managed to work around it?
Daniel
On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 08:15:09AM +0100, Daniel Lorch wrote:
Hi
I'd use qmail-ldap on UNIX for it. It's as stable and as scalable as you can get. The largest installation I know of has more than 3 million actual users on it in a large cluster. But then I'm biased. The only thing coming close to it in scalability is Critical Path. Both Yahoo Mail and Google Mail (Gmail) started off the qmail-ldap code base. Rediff mail in India is running qmail-ldap with some modifications. The last time I got information it was above 2 mio. active mail accounts.
Does qmail still suffer from the "delayed bounces problem" (see http://www-dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html#delayedbounce ) in this configuration or did you managed to work around it?
This is not an issue in qmail-ldap. Both recipient and sender can be verified and so mails to non-existant users are bounced in the smtp connection.
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Adrian Ulrich -
Andre Oppermann -
Claudio Jeker -
Daniel Lorch -
Edoardo Martelli -
Lukas Beeler -
Reto Burkhalter