RE: [IMail Forum] How to ensure high availability of email service using Imail 2006?

[Robert E. Spivack]

IDE sucks – I DO NOT HAVE IDE sockets in my servers with room to plug in their module.   “native Windows” means it does not support Active Directory.  It does not support Windows disk management, it does not support windows WMI management, it does not support Windows NTFS file system (using samba is not the same thing).   Network Appliance, EMC, et. al. are Enterprise solutions that are not repackaged shareware Linux code.  In the SAN/NAS space, commercial (but proprietary) solutions pre-date any Linux or Windows stuff.  Linux was not first in this area at all.  Off the shelf Linux shoved into a flash drive with restrictions is more of a worst-of-everything approach. If you want free/cheap, then use Linux directly.   Grey market Windows licenses, cheap cobbled-together Linux stuff,…hmmm..I’m beginning to detect a trend.  Are you running a business or a hobby?    From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 12:39 PM To: Imail_Forum@list.ipswitch.com Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] How to ensure high availability of email service using Imail 2006?   Open-E's iSCSI Enterprise runs about $750. I'm not sure that I understand the issue with it not being "native Windows" since iSCSI is really a transport protocol under the SCSI specification, and is completely unaware of the data that is being stored.  It's just SCSI over a network cable. You can either use an onboard NIC with Microsoft's iSCSI initiator to connect (boot drives on the Windows box required), or you can get an iSCSI card from a place like Adaptec that looks to your system just like a SCSI RAID card so that the full OS can be booted without a drive in the box. The fact that Open-E puts their own operating environment on an IDE pluggable flash card is not significant either since there is little activity to that flash drive in operations.  Since it is solid-state, it is less prone to failure, and it doesn't require you to use disk space to install an OS on, and management is minimal. I'm not a Linux junkie by any means, but I do recognize that virtually every core innovation in Windows first appeared on Unix/Linux/BSD/Solaris/AIX/Netware.  I also recognize that most products that embed some sort of software are either based on flavors of Unix/Linux or closely related..  It's not just a hobbiest platform, it is the source of the vast majority of innovation that we benefit from on a daily basis. Matt Robert E. Spivack wrote: I have looked at Open-E and was considering it, but decided against it.   It is basically an embedded Linux that is packaged a novel way – as a solid-state disk module that plugs into an IDE header.  This solves their copyprotection issues, but creates implementation problems as I don’t use IDE anymore.  Also, because it is Linux based, it is not native Windows and although they have some integration, it does not fully support active directory or Microsofts’ LVM (logical volume manager).  It is also feature constrained – they want extra $$ to support hardware raid cards, higher speed lan links, etc. so when you add everything up, it is still fairly pricey and you are single-sourced to a proprietary solution that may have compatibility problems or limitations with the hardware one wishes to use or add in the future.   For quick home/hobbiest use, I’m sure it is fine but it doesn’t fit our requirements for enterprise solution.  Then again, it might be cheaper to hire a Linux expert to simply gen this up with off-the-shelf software that is more configurable and flexible if one wanted to go that way.   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matt Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 12:04 PM To: Imail_Forum@list.ipswitch.com Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] How to ensure high availability of email service using Imail 2006?   Open-E (www.open-e.com) has some beautiful and inexpensive software that one can use to create either NAS or iSCSI storage.  Their Enterprise NAS version, which runs around $850 supports replication and snapshots.  It does not fail-over however.  It is based on Linux and Samba, but they customized the software so that it is loaded on an IDE connected flash card that you just simply plug into your box and boot up.  Using iSCSI however, you should be able to mirror two such systems for HA, but the NAS implementations don't have such capabilities. Here's a nice writeup on two iSCSI solutions including Open-E     http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/08/iscsi_the_open/ Certainly this isn't the same as clustering, but it does have many uses and benefits. Matt Sanford Whiteman wrote: How  are  you  going  to  replicate  all  the  mailboxes? I use some replication  software  for  web  servers, but wouldn't trust it with anything as real time and frequently changed as the mailboxes.       Of  course,  you  have  to  gauge  your  rate-of-change  and  the link speed/latency between the replication partners to make sure there is a match.  I  have used Double-Take to replicate up to 250 GB mailstores. You  have  to  watch your site-specific variables, but there's nothing inherent  in  block-level  replication  that  makes  it  unfit for any particular application type.   --Sandy     ------------------------------------ Sanford Whiteman, Chief Technologist Broadleaf Systems, a division of Cypress Integrated Systems, Inc. e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]   SpamAssassin plugs into Declude!   http://www.imprimia.com/products/software/freeutils/SPAMC32/download/release/   Defuse Dictionary Attacks: Turn Exchange or IMail mailboxes into IMail Aliases!   http://www.imprimia.com/products/software/freeutils/exchange2aliases/download/release/   http://www.imprimia.com/products/software/freeutils/ldap2aliases/download/release/   To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/