Re: Mail server software (Was Re: FYI -- fake email abuse warning)
On 13 Nov 2009 at 12:16, John Aldrich wrote: It appears that with Icewarp you have to buy each part individually. If you want to use Outlook, you have to buy a plugin for that. If you want A/D connection, there's a plugin to buy for that. At least it appears that way. With Kerio, there are plugins to download, but they are free. I think that's kind of what bothered me about Icewarp was that they appeared to be nickel and diming you to death! :-) Of course, I could be misunderstanding the whole thing. When I was looking around, I found a page that listed several bundles, it looks like you can get everything (except maybe the SMS Server) for around $4k (100 users), the SMS Server is another few hundred bucks. If you purchased everything non-bundled I think the total was a little over $5k. Don't recall seeing their maintenance pricing or upgrade-for-free policy, anyone know that? What would pricing for a 100-mailbox Exchange 2010 server be like? -- Angus Scott-Fleming GeoApps, Tucson, Arizona 1-520-290-5038 +---+ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
I imagine you could do a partial install of SBS manually promote it to a DC, grab the FSMO roles, and then complete the SBS install wizard. In fact, I believe that's exactly when I did when I transitioned our SBS to another server (physical to virtual), except I had the added step of adding a DC at the start of the process too. On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 8:58 AM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.comwrote: Hmm… but it **will** take over an existing Active Directory? I don’t want to have to rebuild the AD from scratch. [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] *From:* Andy Shook [mailto:andy.sh...@peak10.com] *Sent:* Friday, August 21, 2009 8:46 AM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software You can have additional DCs but SBS\EBS has to hold all the FSMO roles… Shook *From:* John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] *Sent:* Friday, August 21, 2009 8:35 AM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software Interesting. Thanks for the info. I may look at EBS standard edition, as we don’t have a huge need for SQL. Most of our databases are on the AS/400, so that’s not an issue. J Here’s a question: Will EBS work in a 2003 Active Directory, or will it, like SBS, want to be the only(?) DC for the entire company? If so, that’s a non-starter. [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] *From:* Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] *Sent:* Thursday, August 20, 2009 5:19 PM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software Essential Business Server. Essentially (pardon the pun) SBS for up to 300 desktops. If price is your one and only concern, regardless of features, functionality, administration, etc., then by all means discount even looking at exchange. To be fair, I’m a Small Business Specialist. For me and for my clients SBS is in a price point that makes it an easy sell. It’s just too feature rich to really have to look at anything else in this market space. I imagine if I were back as the IT Manager of a mid-sized company with more than 75 desktops, I would be looking at other options. I would, however have to weigh my needs of certain features against the cost. I may have to review 2 or 3 different products in a test environment. Find out if any products cheaper than Exchange meet **all** of the requirements necessary. If it doesn’t I’d have to weigh the value of the requirement against the price difference before making my recommendation, especially when Exchange 2007 CALs removed the Outlook component as part of the CAL to lower the CAL cost. That has to be part of the decision. Exchange 2010 is a different beast. The loss of Outlook in the CAL is no longer a strike against, as Exchange 2010 is fully functional from OWA, and in some cases is actually a better client than Outlook 2007. *From:* John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] *Sent:* Thursday, August 20, 2009 5:49 AM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software EBS? Not familiar with that term. Can you explain? Still… considering the cost of some of the alternatives is **less** than half of Exchange it seems to me that Exchange is awfully expensive. I can get a fully functional mail server for less than $10k using an alternative email client that doesn’t require an expensive “add-on” to back up the email database, and can run on a free O/S (or on Windows Server, for that matter.) Yes, it’s true, you don’t get any Outlook CALs, but if you already have Office, why do you need Outlook CALs, other than to get everyone on the same version of Outlook? [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] *From:* Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] *Sent:* Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:54 PM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software Your problem, John, is you’ve discounted, arguably, the best product on the market based on 10 year old technology with arguments you didn’t articulate. Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely and with a properly administered Deleted Items Retention policy you will never have to restore an individual mailbox. Every major Anti-Virus player has a version of their software that is “Exchange Aware” on install, even if you choose not to install their Exchange scanning product to protect your SMTP traffic. Even if cost is the only reason you want to discount Exchange you haven’t mentioned what sweet spot is per user. Based on what you asked for in your original post, discounting your “not Exchange” requirement I still would say your best solution is Exchange. I happen to notice you mentioned 200 users, which puts you out of the range of SBS, but not EBS. Have you priced that as a solution? *From:* John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2009 2:01 PM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server
Re: Mail server software
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
EBS? Not familiar with that term. Can you explain? Still. considering the cost of some of the alternatives is *less* than half of Exchange it seems to me that Exchange is awfully expensive. I can get a fully functional mail server for less than $10k using an alternative email client that doesn't require an expensive add-on to back up the email database, and can run on a free O/S (or on Windows Server, for that matter.) Yes, it's true, you don't get any Outlook CALs, but if you already have Office, why do you need Outlook CALs, other than to get everyone on the same version of Outlook? John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:54 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Your problem, John, is you've discounted, arguably, the best product on the market based on 10 year old technology with arguments you didn't articulate. Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely and with a properly administered Deleted Items Retention policy you will never have to restore an individual mailbox. Every major Anti-Virus player has a version of their software that is Exchange Aware on install, even if you choose not to install their Exchange scanning product to protect your SMTP traffic. Even if cost is the only reason you want to discount Exchange you haven't mentioned what sweet spot is per user. Based on what you asked for in your original post, discounting your not Exchange requirement I still would say your best solution is Exchange. I happen to notice you mentioned 200 users, which puts you out of the range of SBS, but not EBS. Have you priced that as a solution? From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago. I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan
RE: Mail server software
EBS: http://www.microsoft.com/ebs/en/us/default.aspx From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: 20 August 2009 14:49 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software EBS? Not familiar with that term. Can you explain? Still... considering the cost of some of the alternatives is *less* than half of Exchange it seems to me that Exchange is awfully expensive. I can get a fully functional mail server for less than $10k using an alternative email client that doesn't require an expensive add-on to back up the email database, and can run on a free O/S (or on Windows Server, for that matter.) Yes, it's true, you don't get any Outlook CALs, but if you already have Office, why do you need Outlook CALs, other than to get everyone on the same version of Outlook? From: Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:54 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Your problem, John, is you've discounted, arguably, the best product on the market based on 10 year old technology with arguments you didn't articulate. Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely and with a properly administered Deleted Items Retention policy you will never have to restore an individual mailbox. Every major Anti-Virus player has a version of their software that is Exchange Aware on install, even if you choose not to install their Exchange scanning product to protect your SMTP traffic. Even if cost is the only reason you want to discount Exchange you haven't mentioned what sweet spot is per user. Based on what you asked for in your original post, discounting your not Exchange requirement I still would say your best solution is Exchange. I happen to notice you mentioned 200 users, which puts you out of the range of SBS, but not EBS. Have you priced that as a solution? From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago... I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns
RE: Mail server software
The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Essential Business Server which is Microsoft's new-ish mid-market solution similar to SBS for small companies. TVK From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:49 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software EBS? Not familiar with that term. Can you explain? Still... considering the cost of some of the alternatives is *less* than half of Exchange it seems to me that Exchange is awfully expensive. I can get a fully functional mail server for less than $10k using an alternative email client that doesn't require an expensive add-on to back up the email database, and can run on a free O/S (or on Windows Server, for that matter.) Yes, it's true, you don't get any Outlook CALs, but if you already have Office, why do you need Outlook CALs, other than to get everyone on the same version of Outlook? [cid:image001.jpg@01CA2174.CEB594D0][cid:image002@01ca2174.ceb594d0] From: Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:54 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Your problem, John, is you've discounted, arguably, the best product on the market based on 10 year old technology with arguments you didn't articulate. Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely and with a properly administered Deleted Items Retention policy you will never have to restore an individual mailbox. Every major Anti-Virus player has a version of their software that is Exchange Aware on install, even if you choose not to install their Exchange scanning product to protect your SMTP traffic. Even if cost is the only reason you want to discount Exchange you haven't mentioned what sweet spot is per user. Based on what you asked for in your original post, discounting your not Exchange requirement I still would say your best solution is Exchange. I happen to notice you mentioned 200 users, which puts you out of the range of SBS, but not EBS. Have you priced that as a solution? From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago... I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. [cid:image001.jpg@01CA2174.CEB594D0][cid:image002@01ca2174.ceb594d0] From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.commailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.orgmailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE
RE: Mail server software
Huh? [cid:image001.png@01CA21F0.9BB553A0] Win2k8 R2 Windows Backup is better because it goes back to granular level backup (not just a whole volume at a time) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2009 9:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.commailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~inline: image001.png
RE: Mail server software
The key may be R2 vs 'original' Server 2008. From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 11:48 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Huh? Win2k8 R2 Windows Backup is better because it goes back to granular level backup (not just a whole volume at a time) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2009 9:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.png
Re: Mail server software
Didn't see that option when I was trying to schedule a regular backup. Maybe I didn't install something right. At any rate it's not as user friendly as NT Backup. I'm not fond of software that is supposed to be an advance when usability is sacrificed. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families Sent to you from my Blackberry in the Cloud From: Ken Schaefer To: NT System Admin Issues Sent: Thu Aug 20 11:47:42 2009 Subject: RE: Mail server software Huh? [cid:image001.png@01CA21F0.9BB553A0] Win2k8 R2 Windows Backup is better because it goes back to granular level backup (not just a whole volume at a time) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2009 9:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.commailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ inline: image001.png
Re: Mail server software
Ding! On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Richard Stovall richard.stov...@researchdata.com wrote: The key may be R2 vs ‘original’ Server 2008. *From:* Ken Schaefer [mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com] *Sent:* Thursday, August 20, 2009 11:48 AM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software Huh? Win2k8 R2 Windows Backup is better because it goes back to granular level backup (not just a whole volume at a time) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2009 9:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.png
Re: Mail server software
On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 9:28 AM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path ... Sounds like it's just like Vista, then. The one that came with Vista: You can't even select/exclude individual files or folders. It's all or nothing. Given the amount of crap Vista loads on the hard drive (whether you want it or not), that's a huge increase in storage. And if someone has a large amount of quiescent data, that's gonna get backed up, even if you want to archive it separately. No tape drive support. I know lots of people are moving to disk-based backup, but not everybody has. It's not like Vista includes a coupon for new backup hardware in the box. It's a loss of functionality, any way you slice it. And no ability to specify backup target, other than by physical disk drive, as you noted. The thing was a freaking embarrassment. Freaking MS-DOS 3.3 came with a better backup utility! Anyone have a pointer to a list-of-improvements that have made it to Win 7 or 2008 R2? From what Mr. Schaefer says, there are some significant ones. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
OK well you are correct if you use the GUI, however I have many backups running command line using UNC path. I have not tried a USB Drive so I can't comment on that. -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 8:28 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
I have the native backup in 2008 doing live backups of 6 VM's backups take about 9 to 10 hours and are getting something like 760GB of data to a Lacie 1TB hard drive. Restores are more of a challenge but I am still trying to learn the new way to do things on that server as far as backup. Jon On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 7:04 AM, Ben Scott mailvor...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
Nope it is there in original 2008 as well. Jon On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Richard Stovall richard.stov...@researchdata.com wrote: The key may be R2 vs ‘original’ Server 2008. *From:* Ken Schaefer [mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com] *Sent:* Thursday, August 20, 2009 11:48 AM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software Huh? Win2k8 R2 Windows Backup is better because it goes back to granular level backup (not just a whole volume at a time) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2009 9:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.png
RE: Mail server software
The backup-to-UNC-path option is there, but the only backup type is disk volumes. It seems that the 'new' backup in 2008 R2 allows you to do file level backups again. Don't know about Exchange which is where this started, isn't it? http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/101665/new-windows-server-back up-features-in-windows-server-2008-r2.html From: Jon Harris [mailto:jk.har...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 1:42 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Nope it is there in original 2008 as well. Jon On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Richard Stovall richard.stov...@researchdata.com wrote: The key may be R2 vs 'original' Server 2008. From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 11:48 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Huh? Win2k8 R2 Windows Backup is better because it goes back to granular level backup (not just a whole volume at a time) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2009 9:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.png
Re: Mail server software
Ummm, no. It's there for the one time backup but not for scheduled. Server 2008 std edition SP2 not R2 John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families Sent to you from my Blackberry in the Cloud From: Jon Harris To: NT System Admin Issues Sent: Thu Aug 20 13:41:39 2009 Subject: Re: Mail server software Nope it is there in original 2008 as well. Jon On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Richard Stovall richard.stov...@researchdata.commailto:richard.stov...@researchdata.com wrote: The key may be R2 vsoriginal��� Server 2008. From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:k...@adopenstatic.commailto:k...@adopenstatic.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 11:48 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Huh? [cid:image001.png@01CA218C.5944CE60] Win2k8 R2 Windows Backup is better because it goes back to granular level backup (not just a whole volume at a time) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.orgmailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2009 9:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.commailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.commailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ inline: image001.png
Re: Mail server software
Sorry mine is Enterprise but I have not yet looked at scheduled yet. I have not yet gotten my additional drives. I will be trying to get the Enterprise R2 after is is released. It will allow me to reduce the size of my back up a lot. Jon On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 1:56 PM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: Ummm, no. It's there for the one time backup but not for scheduled. Server 2008 std edition SP2 not R2 John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families Sent to you from my Blackberry in the Cloud -- *From*: Jon Harris *To*: NT System Admin Issues *Sent*: Thu Aug 20 13:41:39 2009 *Subject*: Re: Mail server software Nope it is there in original 2008 as well. Jon On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Richard Stovall richard.stov...@researchdata.com wrote: The key may be R2 vÿÿâÿ˜originaÿÿ€™ Server 2008. *From:* Ken Schaefer [mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com] *Sent:* Thursday, August 20, 2009 11:48 AM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software Huh? Win2k8 R2 Windows Backup is better because it goes back to granular level backup (not just a whole volume at a time) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2009 9:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software The new server backup utility BLOWS DONKEYS! You can't backup to a UNC path - you can backup to a USB drive (I'm already doing this with NT Backup) but that doesn't help me with it when it's running in a VM. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:04 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Jim Majorowiczjmajorow...@gmail.com wrote: Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely ... Curious, as I haven't looked into this yet: What about Server 2008 and later? NTBACKUP has gone away. Are the replacements worth a damn? I know the tools that come with Vista are near worthless. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ -- CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T
RE: Mail server software
Outlook 2010 rocks though! :) Getting Calendar reminders from multiple Exchange mailboxes is just plain awesome!!! Tim From: Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 4:19 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Essential Business Server. Essentially (pardon the pun) SBS for up to 300 desktops. If price is your one and only concern, regardless of features, functionality, administration, etc., then by all means discount even looking at exchange. To be fair, I'm a Small Business Specialist. For me and for my clients SBS is in a price point that makes it an easy sell. It's just too feature rich to really have to look at anything else in this market space. I imagine if I were back as the IT Manager of a mid-sized company with more than 75 desktops, I would be looking at other options. I would, however have to weigh my needs of certain features against the cost. I may have to review 2 or 3 different products in a test environment. Find out if any products cheaper than Exchange meet *all* of the requirements necessary. If it doesn't I'd have to weigh the value of the requirement against the price difference before making my recommendation, especially when Exchange 2007 CALs removed the Outlook component as part of the CAL to lower the CAL cost. That has to be part of the decision. Exchange 2010 is a different beast. The loss of Outlook in the CAL is no longer a strike against, as Exchange 2010 is fully functional from OWA, and in some cases is actually a better client than Outlook 2007. From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 5:49 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software EBS? Not familiar with that term. Can you explain? Still... considering the cost of some of the alternatives is *less* than half of Exchange it seems to me that Exchange is awfully expensive. I can get a fully functional mail server for less than $10k using an alternative email client that doesn't require an expensive add-on to back up the email database, and can run on a free O/S (or on Windows Server, for that matter.) Yes, it's true, you don't get any Outlook CALs, but if you already have Office, why do you need Outlook CALs, other than to get everyone on the same version of Outlook? [cid:image001.jpg@01CA21B5.EB926EC0][cid:image002@01ca21b5.eb926ec0] From: Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:54 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Your problem, John, is you've discounted, arguably, the best product on the market based on 10 year old technology with arguments you didn't articulate. Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely and with a properly administered Deleted Items Retention policy you will never have to restore an individual mailbox. Every major Anti-Virus player has a version of their software that is Exchange Aware on install, even if you choose not to install their Exchange scanning product to protect your SMTP traffic. Even if cost is the only reason you want to discount Exchange you haven't mentioned what sweet spot is per user. Based on what you asked for in your original post, discounting your not Exchange requirement I still would say your best solution is Exchange. I happen to notice you mentioned 200 users, which puts you out of the range of SBS, but not EBS. Have you priced that as a solution? From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago... I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. [cid:image001.jpg@01CA21B5.EB926EC0][cid:image002@01ca21b5.eb926ec0] From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your
RE: Mail server software
Yes you do. It's called Deleted Items Retention. -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:08 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need
RE: Mail server software
Or BackupExec can now do this. (Say it was purged from deleted items). -Original Message- From: Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:41 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Yes you do. It's called Deleted Items Retention. -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:08 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability
RE: Mail server software
Your problem, John, is you've discounted, arguably, the best product on the market based on 10 year old technology with arguments you didn't articulate. Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely and with a properly administered Deleted Items Retention policy you will never have to restore an individual mailbox. Every major Anti-Virus player has a version of their software that is Exchange Aware on install, even if you choose not to install their Exchange scanning product to protect your SMTP traffic. Even if cost is the only reason you want to discount Exchange you haven't mentioned what sweet spot is per user. Based on what you asked for in your original post, discounting your not Exchange requirement I still would say your best solution is Exchange. I happen to notice you mentioned 200 users, which puts you out of the range of SBS, but not EBS. Have you priced that as a solution? From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago. I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re
RE: Mail server software
And I didn't even mention that Exchange 2010 doesn't even need OUTLOOK! From: Jim Majorowicz [mailto:jmajorow...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 8:54 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Your problem, John, is you've discounted, arguably, the best product on the market based on 10 year old technology with arguments you didn't articulate. Exchange can be backed up natively from NTBackup quite nicely and with a properly administered Deleted Items Retention policy you will never have to restore an individual mailbox. Every major Anti-Virus player has a version of their software that is Exchange Aware on install, even if you choose not to install their Exchange scanning product to protect your SMTP traffic. Even if cost is the only reason you want to discount Exchange you haven't mentioned what sweet spot is per user. Based on what you asked for in your original post, discounting your not Exchange requirement I still would say your best solution is Exchange. I happen to notice you mentioned 200 users, which puts you out of the range of SBS, but not EBS. Have you priced that as a solution? From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago. I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like
Re: Mail server software
Ben, while I understand what you're saying, the fact is that: --- More and more enterprise software is headed in this direction of black-box composition --- We don't actually own the software. We own a license to use it --- There are less people that need/want to get into the guts, and more people that would do damage by getting into the guts, so it is cost-effective to protect the many inadequate tinkers from destroying their investment (and the perception of stability) than to facilitate a few worthy tinkers outside of the API access. -ASB Providing Competitive Advantage through Effective IT Leadership --- http://Home.ASBzone.com/ASB/ http://www.linkedin.com/in/AndrewBaker --- On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:49 PM, Ben Scott mailvor...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com wrote: The fact that you can't edit an ESE database is _good_. On this, we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm of the opinion that if I own something, I should be able to do anything I want with it, including break it. I also believe that (to borrow from Dennis Ritchie) preventing people from doing stupid things also prevents them from doing clever things. Locking up everything in a box and telling me to keep out prevents me from doing things the designers didn't think of. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
I take the time to teach and empower my users, most admins neither make or take the time to do so. I'm sure you've gone on a rant once or twice about how stupid someone was for doing something they know better than to do. I don't think being able to restore any (as in all messages ever sent or received) random message is a requirement for 99.99% of the companies out there. The White House can't even do it (go figure!) If you've never had to restore a mailbox because you've designed around Exchanges limitations then you fully understand that there are shortcomings, as with every other piece of software on the planet. Well done! John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:18 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 8:45 PM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: If they choose to ignor what I instruct them to do how is that not stupid? If it's simply a question of not following instructions, perhaps. I may have been taking your comments in broader context than you intended. This discussion is basically about meeting requirements. Calling someone's requirements stupid is rarely a good idea. (Infeasible, perhaps.) Perhaps you didn't intend for your comments to be applied to others. Of course, I wonder why you're sharing your opinion if you don't think it should apply to anyone else... ;-) It's also worth noting that when many people repeatedly misuse a system, that's often a sign of poor human-factors engineering. I see this on a daily basis, throughout the world, not just in IT. Bad traffic intersections. Confusing industrial controls. Overly complicated tax forms. Things that work well generally work the way people work. ... was the last time you had to restore a mailbox? I haven't, so far, knock on wood. But that's largely because I've designed around the limitations of Exchange in that area. Had we had other options, we might well have gone in a different direction, because it was easier/cheaper/faster/etc. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 9:50 AM, John Cookjohn.c...@pfsf.org wrote: I'm sure you've gone on a rant once or twice about how stupid someone was for doing something they know better than to do. Er. Um. Who me? ;-) Okay, guilty as charged. I don't think being able to restore any (as in all messages ever sent or received) random message is a requirement for 99.99% of the companies out there. Not that, per se. But consider: If it was easy to restore individual elements, one wouldn't necessarily need an expensive, separate add-on for archiving. One could simply keep archives as part of their backups (it's what we do), and restore elements if needed. Or one could archive to a separate set of media. One might be able to do away with deleted item retention entirely. Plus maybe other things I haven't thought of yet. I guess that last is really my point, that limitations are usually limiting (duh), and flexibility and openness are enabling, and in ways that may not be easily predicted. So I prefer the later. I've learned I rarely get everything the way I prefer. :) ... there are shortcomings, as with every other piece of software on the planet. Absolutely. Well done! I suspect it's mostly luck, and a fairly understanding top management team, but thanks. :-) -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
...I take the time to teach and empower my users, most admins neither make or take the time to do so. Then you are extremely privledged to have the opportunity and resources to do so (serously, no sarcasm intended) ! In many environments, the Help Desk has the day to day interaction with the users, and admins are only in the escalation chain for what the Help Desk cannot resolve ( correctly or otherwise ) ... Or else the admin is already working 55+ hours a week in a 40 hour job with too few resources, and not enough time or budget to complete all the 'priority' tasks on his/her list . ( I'm using arbitrary salary $$$ here, but they're close in some environments ) And how do you help your boss explain to the executive board ( CEO/CFO/CIO etc ) why he's got $30+ per hour staff doing the job of $20 per hour staff ??? Reality really hurts in many many locations especially these last couple of years ... Erik Goldoff IT Consultant Systems, Networks, Security -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 9:50 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I take the time to teach and empower my users, most admins neither make or take the time to do so. I'm sure you've gone on a rant once or twice about how stupid someone was for doing something they know better than to do. I don't think being able to restore any (as in all messages ever sent or received) random message is a requirement for 99.99% of the companies out there. The White House can't even do it (go figure!) If you've never had to restore a mailbox because you've designed around Exchanges limitations then you fully understand that there are shortcomings, as with every other piece of software on the planet. Well done! John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
I AM the helpdesk! I have 2 desktop techs that handle hardware, phone, moves etc By your standards I get paid helpdesk money but there are higher reasons I work for a childrens services non profit, money isn't everything it just helps. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families Sent to you from my Blackberry in the Cloud - Original Message - From: Erik Goldoff egold...@gmail.com To: NT System Admin Issues ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com Sent: Tue Aug 18 11:33:38 2009 Subject: RE: Mail server software ...I take the time to teach and empower my users, most admins neither make or take the time to do so. Then you are extremely privledged to have the opportunity and resources to do so (serously, no sarcasm intended) ! In many environments, the Help Desk has the day to day interaction with the users, and admins are only in the escalation chain for what the Help Desk cannot resolve ( correctly or otherwise ) ... Or else the admin is already working 55+ hours a week in a 40 hour job with too few resources, and not enough time or budget to complete all the 'priority' tasks on his/her list . ( I'm using arbitrary salary $$$ here, but they're close in some environments ) And how do you help your boss explain to the executive board ( CEO/CFO/CIO etc ) why he's got $30+ per hour staff doing the job of $20 per hour staff ??? Reality really hurts in many many locations especially these last couple of years ... Erik Goldoff IT Consultant Systems, Networks, Security -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 9:50 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I take the time to teach and empower my users, most admins neither make or take the time to do so. I'm sure you've gone on a rant once or twice about how stupid someone was for doing something they know better than to do. I don't think being able to restore any (as in all messages ever sent or received) random message is a requirement for 99.99% of the companies out there. The White House can't even do it (go figure!) If you've never had to restore a mailbox because you've designed around Exchanges limitations then you fully understand that there are shortcomings, as with every other piece of software on the planet. Well done! John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Agreed. Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2007 are completely different beasts. Also, Symantec AV was notorious for eating Exchange log files back in those days. It wasn't an Exchange issue, it was an issue of Admins doing a poor job of configuring their anti-virus or the anti-virus doing a poor job of adhering to the exception rules that were applied. TVK From: Brian Desmond [mailto:br...@briandesmond.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 6:37 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Comparing Exchange today (especially vNext) to 5.5 is a really inappropriate comparison. The product has evolved very very much since then. Taking away the transaction log of ANY database (regardless of if it's Exchange or not) will break it, guaranteed. That's not an Exchange issue, that's an issue with managing the server. I've not run into any issues where doing a full store scan has caused the store to crash recently either, certainly nothing that hasn't been fixed. Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.commailto:br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago... I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. [cid:image001.jpg@01CA1FF6.E2337740][cid:image002@01ca1ff6.e2337740] From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.commailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.orgmailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.commailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although
RE: Mail server software
I simply don't see Exchange issues. At %DAYJOB% one had one run out of disk space and the store dismounted, but that wasn't Exchanges fault. I manage Exchange at four companies to varying degrees and I have had zero issues dating back to late 2004. And trust me, it's not my Exchange skills keeping things going :) Dave jack of all trades, master of zilch Lum From: Tim Vander Kooi [mailto:tvanderk...@expl.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 9:28 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Agreed. Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2007 are completely different beasts. Also, Symantec AV was notorious for eating Exchange log files back in those days. It wasn't an Exchange issue, it was an issue of Admins doing a poor job of configuring their anti-virus or the anti-virus doing a poor job of adhering to the exception rules that were applied. TVK From: Brian Desmond [mailto:br...@briandesmond.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 6:37 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Comparing Exchange today (especially vNext) to 5.5 is a really inappropriate comparison. The product has evolved very very much since then. Taking away the transaction log of ANY database (regardless of if it's Exchange or not) will break it, guaranteed. That's not an Exchange issue, that's an issue with managing the server. I've not run into any issues where doing a full store scan has caused the store to crash recently either, certainly nothing that hasn't been fixed. Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.commailto:br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago... I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. [cid:image001.jpg@01CA1FEC.01BBFAC0][cid:image002@01ca1fec.01bbfac0] From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.commailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.orgmailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.commailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin
RE: Mail server software
Used Mdaemon in the past and was happy with in. Good spam filtering also. From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
Just curious - why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. [cid:image001.jpg@01CA1F33.09F22DE0][cid:image002@01ca1f33.09f22de0] CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~inline: image001.jpginline: image002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
I used Icewarp in the past, the features were not as good as Exchange. However basically we stopped using it several years ago. We still have an icewarp server but that is for sending out mail from systems. I found the software very stable, in the years we used it we never had any problems with the software. It would also run on pretty much any older computer we had laying around so we did not have to purchase a new fast computer just for it. It does work better on Server than desktop software but we have run it on both. -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Sorry hit the send too quick. Is Exchange so expensive it isn't worth getting the extra features or is yours just a small shop? Hosted Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Just curious - why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. [cid:image001.jpg@01CA1F34.04EA39E0][cid:image002@01ca1f34.04ea39e0] CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~inline: image001.jpginline: image002.jpg
Re: Mail server software
You're already looking at Kerio, so I would also recommend SmarterMail... http://www.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/Features/Windows-Mail-Server-Software-Webmail-Exchange-Alternative.aspx -ASB On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don’t want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I’ve looked at have some sort of “plugin” to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail – we want to have the “look and feel” of Outlook on the web. The two I’m leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I’ve installed Kerio and it’s got pretty much the features I want, but I’ve gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I’d throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
How about Scalix? From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:asbz...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:23 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software You're already looking at Kerio, so I would also recommend SmarterMail... http://www.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/Features/Windows-Mail-Server-Sof tware-Webmail-Exchange-Alternative.aspx -ASB On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. _ This e-mail, including attachments, contains information that is confidential and may be protected by attorney/client or other privileges. This e-mail, including attachments, constitutes non-public information intended to be conveyed only to the designated recipient(s). If you are not an intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized use, dissemination, distribution or reproduction of this e-mail, including attachments, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify me by e-mail reply and delete the original message and any attachments from your system. _ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
BPOS is in the $10/mo/user range with just Exchange. $15 for everything. Seems like something worth exploring here... Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:13 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Sorry hit the send too quick. Is Exchange so expensive it isn't worth getting the extra features or is yours just a small shop? Hosted Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Just curious - why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. [John-Aldrich][Tile-Tools] CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments
RE: Mail server software
Price, mainly. and some of the problems Exchange has, like the Jet database (AIUI, they still have not done away with the Jet database!) and all the proprietary technology behind it. One of the features I like about some of these other mail servers is that you don't have to jump through all sorts of hoops to back up the mail store. That and you can get near-Exchange functionality for less than half the price, including the price of the Microsoft O/S. If you're willing to use Linux, the price for the O/S drops to $0. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Just curious - why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools _ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
Less than 200 email addresses here.. And our email is already hosted and we're trying to bring it in-house. Hosted Exchange would defeat the purpose of bringing the mail server in-house. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:13 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Sorry hit the send too quick. Is Exchange so expensive it isn't worth getting the extra features or is yours just a small shop? Hosted Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Just curious - why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools _ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. _ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments
Re: Mail server software
My vote for Mdaemon too. Mdaemon AntiSPAM very good, expecially with Windows Mail or Outlook. Exchange more expensive, may be good for big corporation, second plus IMAP in Exchange better then Mdaemon. With Exchange I'm as blind nothing visible, with Mdaemon I see all mail in user folders and posible ajust assotiation for .msg to see mails in Outlook Express on Server machine and decide what to do wth its individual message. IMHO for middle level Mdaemon better and simple for administrion. Most Exchange function available but little worst. P.S. I have been had Exchange at my home network and kill him for Mdaemon At work office I have Mdaemon approximately for 100 WS P.P.S. excuse for my English, not native Anatoly Podgoretsky http://www.podgoretsky.com - Original Message - From: N Parr To: NT System Admin Issues Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 7:02 PM Subject: RE: Mail server software Used Mdaemon in the past and was happy with in. Good spam filtering also. -- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/outlook_sync.html Sounds like this does everything you asked for except for the AD integration. But depending on a couple things that may not matter with this implementation. -- Mike Gill From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 8:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
Interesting. Thanks for the link. One thing I did NOT see (although I wasn't reading every word) was Active Directory integration. I want to be able to add users directly from my ADUC and not have to add them twice. Not to mention, I also want them to have to use the same password for email and windows logon. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:asbz...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:23 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software You're already looking at Kerio, so I would also recommend SmarterMail... http://www.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/Features/Windows-Mail-Server-Softwar e-Webmail-Exchange-Alternative.aspx -ASB On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
The Jet DB isn't going away any time soon, as I recall the MS line is that SQL just doesn't handle the variances (item size - 10 kb to ???) as well. What's your beef with Jet? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:41 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Price, mainly... and some of the problems Exchange has, like the Jet database (AIUI, they still have not done away with the Jet database!) and all the proprietary technology behind it. One of the features I like about some of these other mail servers is that you don't have to jump through all sorts of hoops to back up the mail store... That and you can get near-Exchange functionality for less than half the price, including the price of the Microsoft O/S. If you're willing to use Linux, the price for the O/S drops to $0. [cid:image001.jpg@01CA1F38.945AAAC0][cid:image002@01ca1f38.945aaac0] From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Just curious - why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. [cid:image001.jpg@01CA1F38.945AAAC0][cid:image002@01ca1f38.945aaac0] CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information
Re: Mail server software
The database in Exchange hasn't caused me any problems in years... What's your particular concern with it? As for the proprietary aspect, whatever standards-based mail server you use will only really be standards based in how the mail is transported. How it is stored, and how the UI is interacted with, will differ, and likely cause you some transition pain to any other product. -ASB --- http://Home.ASBzone.com/ASB/ http://www.linkedin.com/in/AndrewBaker --- On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:40 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Price, mainly… and some of the problems Exchange has, like the Jet database (AIUI, they *still* have not done away with the Jet database!) and all the proprietary technology behind it. One of the features I like about some of these other mail servers is that you don’t have to jump through all sorts of hoops to back up the mail store… That and you can get near-Exchange functionality for less than half the price, including the price of the Microsoft O/S. If you’re willing to use Linux, the price for the O/S drops to $0. [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] *From:* John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* RE: Mail server software Just curious – why not Exchange? *John W. Cook* *Systems Administrator* *Partnership For Strong Families* *315 SE 2nd Ave* *Gainesville, Fl 32601* *Office (352) 393-2741 x320* *Cell (352) 215-6944* *Fax (352) 393-2746* *MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4* *From:* John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM *To:* NT System Admin Issues *Subject:* Mail server software If you don’t want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I’ve looked at have some sort of “plugin” to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail – we want to have the “look and feel” of Outlook on the web. The two I’m leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I’ve installed Kerio and it’s got pretty much the features I want, but I’ve gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I’d throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] -- CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
Did you miss the part about in-house??? We're wanting to get AWAY from a hosted email solution, so Gmail is not a valid option in this case. J Thanks, though. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Mike Gill [mailto:lis...@canbyfoursquare.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/outlook_sync.html Sounds like this does everything you asked for except for the AD integration. But depending on a couple things that may not matter with this implementation. -- Mike Gill From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 8:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
Maybe a bit off from what you are looking for, but we use GroupWise here. Runs on Netware, Windows, and Linux. You can use the GW client or Outlook with the Outlook connector. Web Interface is good. Database technology is proprietary like Exchange, Notes, but rock solid. I have GW servers that have been up for over a year. Pricing depends on size of your entity and profit/non-profit. Tom John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org 8/17/2009 12:45 PM The Jet DB isn’t going away any time soon, as I recall the MS line is that SQL just doesn’t handle the variances (item size – 10 kb to ???) as well. What’s your beef with Jet? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax(352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:41 PMTo: NT System Admin IssuesSubject: RE: Mail server software Price, mainly… and some of the problems Exchange has, like the Jet database (AIUI, they still have not done away with the Jet database!) and all the proprietary technology behind it. One of the features I like about some of these other mail servers is that you don’t have to jump through all sorts of hoops to back up the mail store… That and you can get near-Exchange functionality for less than half the price, including the price of the Microsoft O/S. If you’re willing to use Linux, the price for the O/S drops to $0. From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PMTo: NT System Admin IssuesSubject: RE: Mail server software Just curious – why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax(352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AMTo: NT System Admin IssuesSubject: Mail server software If you don’t want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I’ve looked at have some sort of “plugin” to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail – we want to have the “look and feel” of Outlook on the web. The two I’m leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I’ve installed Kerio and it’s got pretty much the features I want, but I’ve gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I’d throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties.Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG - www.avg.comVersion: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability
RE: Mail server software
What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:41 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Price, mainly... and some of the problems Exchange has, like the Jet database (AIUI, they still have not done away with the Jet database!) and all the proprietary technology behind it. One of the features I like about some of these other mail servers is that you don't have to jump through all sorts of hoops to back up the mail store... That and you can get near-Exchange functionality for less than half the price, including the price of the Microsoft O/S. If you're willing to use Linux, the price for the O/S drops to $0. [John-Aldrich][Tile-Tools] From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Just curious - why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. [John-Aldrich][Tile-Tools] CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.comhttp://www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~inline: image001.jpginline: image002.jpg
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What’s the problem with the database engine? There’s been a massive amount of engineering work in that space – I don’t expect it’s going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Well, I have to admit, I have little first-hand knowledge of it. It's just that to there's a lot of complications (as in expensive add-on) for backup software to talk to the Jet DB, whereas with some other programs, you have MySQL or some other open / standardized DB. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Brian Desmond [mailto:br...@briandesmond.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:21 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:41 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Price, mainly. and some of the problems Exchange has, like the Jet database (AIUI, they still have not done away with the Jet database!) and all the proprietary technology behind it. One of the features I like about some of these other mail servers is that you don't have to jump through all sorts of hoops to back up the mail store. That and you can get near-Exchange functionality for less than half the price, including the price of the Microsoft O/S. If you're willing to use Linux, the price for the O/S drops to $0. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:06 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Just curious - why not Exchange? John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools _ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
Sorry, I didn't read that part of your mind. I see no in-house as you quoted. :\ -- Mike Gill From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:10 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Did you miss the part about in-house??? We're wanting to get AWAY from a hosted email solution, so Gmail is not a valid option in this case. J Thanks, though. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Mike Gill [mailto:lis...@canbyfoursquare.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/outlook_sync.html Sounds like this does everything you asked for except for the AD integration. But depending on a couple things that may not matter with this implementation. -- Mike Gill From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 8:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
I'm in the same boat. I've been evaluating SmarterMail and Mailenable (http://www.mailenable.com/). Both seem capable (but I dont have the AD requirement - although Mailenable claims to do it.) We're moving from an old version of IMail. So far I like the interface for SmarterMail better but Mailenable has some features that we need that SmarterMail doesn't - like storing userbase/config info in a database whereas SmarterMail stores it in xml files. - Andy O. From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you dont want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones Ive looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two Im leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. Ive installed Kerio and its got pretty much the features I want, but Ive gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought Id throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
The 2GB pst size limit hasn't been an issue for years if you're running Outlook in Unicode mode. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2003/HA011402611033.aspx Apparently you can even run your pst files all the way up to 33TB! -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
I will disagree on Exchange being fragile. I am not sure how we decided to get Exchange Server 4 for my former employer at that time. This is when I learned to be an NT3.51/NT4 admin. The exchange public/private databases should have been destroyed by me dozens of time. I learned a lot of things that should never be done. I upgraded thru each version until 5.5SP2 (I think SP2 is where I stopped). Only had 1 Exchange server. Played with 2 one time. Moved the public to #2 then after 2 weeks had to move it back to #1. I believe that's where I learn of Don Ely's way of doing a few things :) I am bit more cautious now a days (backups, VMs, test machines, etc.). Gene Giannamore Abide International Inc. Technical Support 561 1st Street West Sonoma,Ca.95476 (707) 935-1577 Office (707) 935-9387 Fax (707) 766-4185 Cell gene.giannam...@abideinternational.com -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:44 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
Problem may start with 1 gb storage. It's llke Titanik - single and big I prefer OE on XP and specially Win Mail on Vista - each message in separate .eml file Anatoly Podgoretsky http://www.podgoretsky.com - Original Message - From: John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com To: NT System Admin Issues ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
My bad. I thought I'd said we were wanting to bring the email in-house. I sincerely apologize. as you said, you can't read my mind, and if I leave off that we're wanting to bring email in-house, you can't be expected to know that. J John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Mike Gill [mailto:lis...@canbyfoursquare.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:39 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Sorry, I didn't read that part of your mind. I see no in-house as you quoted. :\ -- Mike Gill From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:10 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Did you miss the part about in-house??? We're wanting to get AWAY from a hosted email solution, so Gmail is not a valid option in this case. J Thanks, though. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Mike Gill [mailto:lis...@canbyfoursquare.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 12:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/outlook_sync.html Sounds like this does everything you asked for except for the AD integration. But depending on a couple things that may not matter with this implementation. -- Mike Gill From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 8:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Mail server software If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. John-AldrichTile-Tools No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~image001.jpgimage002.jpg
RE: Mail server software
Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 2:42 PM, John Aldrichjaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. That's going to be true for most mail systems, to some extent. Even a system that uses the one-file-per-message approach isn't going to be happy if the AV software deletes files out from under it. And even the FOSS systems typically have something like a plug-in architecture for mail AV. Of course, you don't have to fork over big bucks to implement such a plug-in. You can easily hook it into your existing file-based AV solution. Unsurprising that the AV vendors don't like that. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. This I can't agree with. Exchange 2000 introduced multiple DBs (message stores), and I never saw it collapse just from size alone. The Standard Edition *did* have a limit of 16 GB, but that was for sales reasons. Microsoft wanted you to fork over more money for the Enterprise Edition to release that limit. And to gain multiple DBs. If your complaint is that Exchange is expensive to buy and expensive to run, no argument there. I never said it was cheap. :-) On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. As others have said, that was addressed in Outlook 2003. However, the mailbox PST import/export tools for Exchange (EXMERGE and friends) *still* haven't caught up, AFAIK. (Unless they did something with PoSh in 2007 SP1. We're still Ex 2003 here.) But really, that speaks to your point: Big complicated databases need special tools, and without the special tools, you're dead in the water. When even *Microsoft* refuses to provide the special tools, you're really hosed. With simpler designs, it's feasible -- perhaps even the most sensible -- to just roll your own. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
Have you looked into Microsoft's hosted services model? All the benefits of Exchange without having to maintain the thing. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM, John Aldrichjaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don’t want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I’ve looked at have some sort of “plugin” to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail – we want to have the “look and feel” of Outlook on the web. The two I’m leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I’ve installed Kerio and it’s got pretty much the features I want, but I’ve gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I’d throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
Zimbra, OSER and Scalix are the usual suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 08:53, John Aldrichjaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don’t want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I’ve looked at have some sort of “plugin” to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail – we want to have the “look and feel” of Outlook on the web. The two I’m leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I’ve installed Kerio and it’s got pretty much the features I want, but I’ve gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I’d throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
Sorry - meant to say they are the usual Open Source suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:59, Kurt Buffkurt.b...@gmail.com wrote: Zimbra, OSER and Scalix are the usual suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 08:53, John Aldrichjaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don’t want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I’ve looked at have some sort of “plugin” to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail – we want to have the “look and feel” of Outlook on the web. The two I’m leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I’ve installed Kerio and it’s got pretty much the features I want, but I’ve gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I’d throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Sorry... I neglected to mention, we're wanting to bring email in-house so we *don't* have hosted email. :-) -Original Message- From: Bryan Garmon [mailto:bryan.gar...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 3:26 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Have you looked into Microsoft's hosted services model? All the benefits of Exchange without having to maintain the thing. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM, John Aldrichjaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you dont want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones Ive looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two Im leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. Ive installed Kerio and its got pretty much the features I want, but Ive gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought Id throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus
Re: Mail server software
Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.comwrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other
RE: Mail server software
Anyone in their right mind would host any business centric email on a platform outside of Exchange, Lotus or Sendmail is just asking for trouble. Now, If I'm running a shop and my Engineer comes to me with jimbob's Mail Platform.. I'm going to ask for him to please get out of my office, and never return to my department ever again. And while you're at it, please go run into a brick wall. Good talk, glad we had it. _ John Bowles From: Kurt Buff [kurt.b...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:03 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Sorry - meant to say they are the usual Open Source suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:59, Kurt Buffkurt.b...@gmail.com wrote: Zimbra, OSER and Scalix are the usual suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 08:53, John Aldrichjaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don’t want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I’ve looked at have some sort of “plugin” to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail – we want to have the “look and feel” of Outlook on the web. The two I’m leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I’ve installed Kerio and it’s got pretty much the features I want, but I’ve gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I’d throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
It's called Dumpster always on and restore deleted items in OWA and if they need an email they deleted past the retention window then it falls under the I can't save you from your own stupidity heading. I DO have an archiving package that has allowed many stupid and unprofessional people to keep their jobs. YMMV John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:08 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance
RE: Mail server software
John, this post is a peach!!! -Original Message- From: John Bowles [mailto:john.bow...@wlkmmas.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:14 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Anyone in their right mind would host any business centric email on a platform outside of Exchange, Lotus or Sendmail is just asking for trouble. Now, If I'm running a shop and my Engineer comes to me with jimbob's Mail Platform.. I'm going to ask for him to please get out of my office, and never return to my department ever again. And while you're at it, please go run into a brick wall. Good talk, glad we had it. _ John Bowles From: Kurt Buff [kurt.b...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:03 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Sorry - meant to say they are the usual Open Source suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:59, Kurt Buffkurt.b...@gmail.com wrote: Zimbra, OSER and Scalix are the usual suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 08:53, John Aldrichjaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don't want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I've looked at have some sort of plugin to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail - we want to have the look and feel of Outlook on the web. The two I'm leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I've installed Kerio and it's got pretty much the features I want, but I've gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I'd throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
Sendmail? Not on your flippin' life. Postfix, yes. And, sendmail is just an MTA anyway. Postfix/Sendmail run happily with many backends, such as Cyrus, Horde, Dovecot, UW imapd, etc. The OSS Exchange replacement often use Postfix as their MTA. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 13:14, John Bowlesjohn.bow...@wlkmmas.org wrote: Anyone in their right mind would host any business centric email on a platform outside of Exchange, Lotus or Sendmail is just asking for trouble. Now, If I'm running a shop and my Engineer comes to me with jimbob's Mail Platform.. I'm going to ask for him to please get out of my office, and never return to my department ever again. And while you're at it, please go run into a brick wall. Good talk, glad we had it. _ John Bowles From: Kurt Buff [kurt.b...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:03 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Sorry - meant to say they are the usual Open Source suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:59, Kurt Buffkurt.b...@gmail.com wrote: Zimbra, OSER and Scalix are the usual suspects. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 08:53, John Aldrichjaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: If you don’t want to pay the cost of Exchange, what software would you get that has pretty much the same functionality as Exchange, including the following: 1) Active Directory integration 2) Shared calendars 3) Reserved meeting rooms (i.e. send a meeting invite to the room email address and reserve it.) 4) Outlook connectivity (most of the ones I’ve looked at have some sort of “plugin” to allow Outlook to connect to them and act like Exchange.) 5) Fully functional webmail – we want to have the “look and feel” of Outlook on the web. The two I’m leaning towards right now are Icewarp and Kerio. I’ve installed Kerio and it’s got pretty much the features I want, but I’ve gotten a recommendation from one of our ISP vendors that we look at Icewarp as well. Just thought I’d throw this out to see what else I should be looking at. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago. I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result
RE: Mail server software
If you mean you only want to restore the message without loading a database first, sure. But you can easily restore all or only one message from a single mailbox using exmerge on your recovery storage group. Granted, you have to load the entire database into the recovery storage group to do it, but it is easy, results in no downtime, and requires no third party or add-on software. Just takes a little longer. Granted, I run a small shop, but I've never wanted to do anything with exchange that I haven't been able to do out of the box for free. All those expensive tools seem to be little more than pretty faces, though some can save quite a bit of time. Having used them both, I certainly trust ntbackup more than Backup Exec on my Exchange server. Bill -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:08 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only
RE: Mail server software
1GB? Not sure what version of Outlook you're using but I've run far larger mail stores than that on Outlook 2003 and 2007 for years with no problems whatsoever. Ben M. Schorr Chief Executive Officer __ Roland Schorr Tower 1155 Fort Street Mall Honolulu, Hawaii 96813 Mobile: 808-782-6306 Fax: 808-533-3677 www.rolandschorr.com b...@rolandschorr.com Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007: http://tinyurl.com/ol4law-amazon -Original Message- From: Anatoly Podgoretsky [mailto:anat...@podgoretsky.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 8:53 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Problem may start with 1 gb storage. It's llke Titanik - single and big I prefer OE on XP and specially Win Mail on Vista - each message in separate .eml file Anatoly Podgoretsky http://www.podgoretsky.com - Original Message - From: John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com To: NT System Admin Issues ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
I've never needed to go to NTBackup to restore a single message - that's what Deleted Items Retention is for. :-) Ben M. Schorr Chief Executive Officer __ Roland Schorr Tower www.rolandschorr.com b...@rolandschorr.com -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:08 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. I like simple systems; they tend to be more robust. Exchange has always struck me as being more complex than it needed to be. In particular, Exchange is pretty fragile when you mistreat it. There's not much you can do to a Cryus mail server that will result in major data loss; you can reconstruct from basics if you have to. Exchange, sheesh, in 2000, all you had to do was run a file search against the M: drive and the server would implode. On my list of things to worry about, all this is pretty low down on my list, but it's not my ideal situation. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.58/2309 - Release Date: 08/17/09 06:08:00 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:14 PM, John Bowles john.bow...@wlkmmas.org wrote: Anyone in their right mind would host any business centric email on a platform outside of Exchange, Lotus or Sendmail is just asking for trouble. That much resistance to change is not a healthy attitude for any business. Just ask Novell. Or IBM. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:16 PM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: It's called Dumpster always on and restore deleted items in OWA and if they need an email they deleted past the retention window then it falls under the I can't save you from your own stupidity heading. Meanwhile, another mail system that doesn't have that limitation makes a sale. (It's hyperbole. Hopefully you get the point.) -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
Sure, I get the point and it all boils down to storage. There has to be a reason there are so many Exchange installations out there and it's not because they were the first mail server on the block. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families Sent to you from my Blackberry in the Cloud - Original Message - From: Ben Scott mailvor...@gmail.com To: NT System Admin Issues ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com Sent: Mon Aug 17 18:05:24 2009 Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:16 PM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: It's called Dumpster always on and restore deleted items in OWA and if they need an email they deleted past the retention window then it falls under the I can't save you from your own stupidity heading. Meanwhile, another mail system that doesn't have that limitation makes a sale. (It's hyperbole. Hopefully you get the point.) -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Comparing Exchange today (especially vNext) to 5.5 is a really inappropriate comparison. The product has evolved very very much since then. Taking away the transaction log of ANY database (regardless of if it's Exchange or not) will break it, guaranteed. That's not an Exchange issue, that's an issue with managing the server. I've not run into any issues where doing a full store scan has caused the store to crash recently either, certainly nothing that hasn't been fixed. Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago... I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. [John-Aldrich][Tile-Tools] From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.commailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.orgmailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.commailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Exactly! That's one of my concerns... Antivirus has to be told to overlook certain directories and you have to have an exchange-aware antivirus or buy a special plugin for the antivirus to allow it to scan the Exchange DB. AFAIK, most of the alternatives (at least Kerio) doesn't have this restriction. Not to mention having to buy special add-ons for your archiving solution just to back up the email store. Oh, and while it's not a problem now, up until the most recent version of Exchange, you couldn't have more than one message store and if it got too big, it would virtually implode from being so big. On the reasons why I don't like Outlook, the 2 GB PST file size is a biggie. :-) Although the main reason they get that big is that idiots like to send large files via email...and email is NOT a file transfer application. :-) -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.commailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.commailto:br...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going
RE: Mail server software
I'd have to agree with that. Also, with Exchange 2003, with Ninja, I never had a problem with the mail stores and viruses. We did have a problem with a RAID array that dropped - the entire array. Logs were on a different array. I immediately made a call to Microsoft and opened a critical care ticket. They walked me through rebuilding the server, and adding the mail stores back in, doing the restore, and replaying all of the logs. No lost mail. Honestly, this wasn't a 'bug' that needed fixing, and I don't think I would have had a problem doing it, but they had no problem with doing this, and he was on the phone for a lot longer than I would think the cost of the onetime critical ticket covered. Hats off to Microsoft Support. Someone sold the owners on cloud computing, so now I'm looking at Amazon's computing services to see if it'll run a full featured Exchange client. It doesn't look like it, per this note: Home Support Center Forums Amazon Web Services Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Thread: How to Set-up Exchange Server (2003 or 2007) on EC2 ??? http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?messageID=112 740#112740 Has anyone run Exchange in a Cloud? == John == From: Brian Desmond [mailto:br...@briandesmond.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:37 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Comparing Exchange today (especially vNext) to 5.5 is a really inappropriate comparison. The product has evolved very very much since then. Taking away the transaction log of ANY database (regardless of if it's Exchange or not) will break it, guaranteed. That's not an Exchange issue, that's an issue with managing the server. I've not run into any issues where doing a full store scan has caused the store to crash recently either, certainly nothing that hasn't been fixed. Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software I agree, I did not articulate my requirements very well. However, I ass-u-med that any admin in their right mind would want to be able to back up their mail server. Maybe it's just me??? Same issue with Antivirus. Or maybe you run your mail server without antivirus? I have to admit my experience with Exchange is limited to Exchange 5.5 (I think it was) about 4 years ago... I just remember that we had some issues with viruses getting into the mail server and we couldn't scan the mail store as that would cause Exchange to die. Also had some problems when the antivirus (Symantec Corporate Edition at the time) ate a log file that Exchange was wanting and caused the system to crash. So, yeah, I'm anti-Exchange both from a cost perspective and a perspective of someone who's worked with an admittedly out-dated version. That being said, my understanding is that the above facts have not changed significantly since Ex 5.5. If they have, great, but that still leaves the fact that Exchange is horribly expensive. From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:17 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software Maybe I'm being obtuse, but you didn't state all of your objectives clearly. The backup wasn't a requirement until later in your thread, as well as the anti-virus/backup plugin issue. You also left off a no-hosting requirement, because you were bringing it back in house. I get the impression that you don't know what you want, except that you don't want Exchange, for reasons that haven't been effectuviley articulated and seem to be poorly defined upfront to those trying to assist you. -Jonathan On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:08 PM, John Aldrich jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com wrote: Yes, but you don't have any way to restore *just one message* with NTBackup. :-) Agree that I should have been a bit more specific... If you want to be able to back up mailbox by mailbox, etc. you have to pay to play with Exchange. Other email server software, no so much. :-) -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Not to discount what you know about Exchange but... 1. I don't think any DB should be scanned by an AV program that doesn't recognize it as such. Ninja is stellar at this. 2. I'm backing up my E2K7 DBs with the native windowsbackup, no extra cost to me. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 -Original Message- From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail
RE: Mail server software
+1 I have only used it twice, when it was a serious issue. They stick with you and they get it fixed, and the price is very reasonable as far as I am concerned. From: John Gwinner [jgwin...@dazsi.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 7:46 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Honestly, this wasn’t a ‘bug’ that needed fixing, and I don’t think I would have had a problem doing it, but they had no problem with doing this, and he was on the phone for a lot longer than I would think the cost of the onetime critical ticket covered. Hats off to Microsoft Support. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 6:20 PM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: Sure, I get the point ... I'm not sure you do... ... it all boils down to storage. Or design. The inability to easily restore a single mailbox is not a good thing. Maybe there are tech trade-offs that make that design limitation necessary. Maybe it's a consequence of some fundamental design decisions made a long time ago, and which aren't easily changed. Maybe it's just something we have to live with, and other capabilities make it worth it. But calling people stupid in an effort to defend that limitation? That's counter to any possibility for progress and improvement, and rude besides. There are two ways to approach any obstacle: One can look for reasons why not, or one can look for ways how. I know which approach I prefer. There has to be a reason there are so many Exchange installations out there and it's not because they were the first mail server on the block. If population is your chief metric, then one must conclude that cockroaches are superior to humans. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
I continuously coach users on filing anything important and not useing the deleted items as storage. I do this personally with every new employee. They have been explained to in detail as to what constitutes important mail. We don't archive for their benefit, we do it for CYA regulatory reasons. If they choose to ignor what I instruct them to do how is that not stupid? If you get pulled over for speeding is the officer supposed to just let you go because you say I didn't know when it was clearly laid out before you got your license?everything has limitations and there are trade-offs, when was the last time you had to restore a mailbox? I find it trivial but it's been many months since I had to do it. Training users pays huge dividends. Ask the Notes people why Exchange is so popular, they're still scratching their heads and losing market share. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families Sent to you from my Blackberry in the Cloud - Original Message - From: Ben Scott mailvor...@gmail.com To: NT System Admin Issues ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com Sent: Mon Aug 17 20:09:52 2009 Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 6:20 PM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: Sure, I get the point ... I'm not sure you do... ... it all boils down to storage. Or design. The inability to easily restore a single mailbox is not a good thing. Maybe there are tech trade-offs that make that design limitation necessary. Maybe it's a consequence of some fundamental design decisions made a long time ago, and which aren't easily changed. Maybe it's just something we have to live with, and other capabilities make it worth it. But calling people stupid in an effort to defend that limitation? That's counter to any possibility for progress and improvement, and rude besides. There are two ways to approach any obstacle: One can look for reasons why not, or one can look for ways how. I know which approach I prefer. There has to be a reason there are so many Exchange installations out there and it's not because they were the first mail server on the block. If population is your chief metric, then one must conclude that cockroaches are superior to humans. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Agreed restoring mailboxes isn't that hard. I have worked with many, many organizations which have a no mailbox restore process except for legal reasons. Retention is a big deal these days and it's something every employee has to participate in. I've worked in several places where it's suitably important that every year employees and contractors have to take some number of hours of online training and take little quizzes on it at the end. The implementation mechanism for the retention policies varies, but, ultimately only the owner of the data (the end user) can properly categorize and label it. Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 -Original Message- From: John Cook [mailto:john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 7:46 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software I continuously coach users on filing anything important and not useing the deleted items as storage. I do this personally with every new employee. They have been explained to in detail as to what constitutes important mail. We don't archive for their benefit, we do it for CYA regulatory reasons. If they choose to ignor what I instruct them to do how is that not stupid? If you get pulled over for speeding is the officer supposed to just let you go because you say I didn't know when it was clearly laid out before you got your license?everything has limitations and there are trade-offs, when was the last time you had to restore a mailbox? I find it trivial but it's been many months since I had to do it. Training users pays huge dividends. Ask the Notes people why Exchange is so popular, they're still scratching their heads and losing market share. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families Sent to you from my Blackberry in the Cloud - Original Message - From: Ben Scott mailvor...@gmail.com To: NT System Admin Issues ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com Sent: Mon Aug 17 20:09:52 2009 Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 6:20 PM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: Sure, I get the point ... I'm not sure you do... ... it all boils down to storage. Or design. The inability to easily restore a single mailbox is not a good thing. Maybe there are tech trade-offs that make that design limitation necessary. Maybe it's a consequence of some fundamental design decisions made a long time ago, and which aren't easily changed. Maybe it's just something we have to live with, and other capabilities make it worth it. But calling people stupid in an effort to defend that limitation? That's counter to any possibility for progress and improvement, and rude besides. There are two ways to approach any obstacle: One can look for reasons why not, or one can look for ways how. I know which approach I prefer. There has to be a reason there are so many Exchange installations out there and it's not because they were the first mail server on the block. If population is your chief metric, then one must conclude that cockroaches are superior to humans. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, transmission, dissemination, or other use of, and taking any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient without the express written consent of the sender are prohibited. This information may be protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and other Federal and Florida laws. Improper or unauthorized use or disclosure of this information could result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
Ultimately, it's a factor of single-instance storage. The various add-on products that facilitate the restore of a single mailbox, by and large, undo single-instance storage. -ASB On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 8:09 PM, Ben Scott mailvor...@gmail.com wrote: The inability to easily restore a single mailbox is not a good thing. Maybe there are tech trade-offs that make that design limitation necessary. Maybe it's a consequence of some fundamental design decisions made a long time ago, and which aren't easily changed. Maybe it's just something we have to live with, and other capabilities make it worth it. But calling people stupid in an effort to defend that limitation? That's counter to any possibility for progress and improvement, and rude besides. There are two ways to approach any obstacle: One can look for reasons why not, or one can look for ways how. I know which approach I prefer. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Hmm - do you use a DBMS (like SQL Server or Oracle) as well? Most of those are binary blobs. Or do you prefer a DBMS that stores records in single files on the disk? Cheers Ken -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, 18 August 2009 1:44 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 10:43 PM, Ken Schaefer k...@adopenstatic.com wrote: Hmm - do you use a DBMS (like SQL Server or Oracle) as well? Actually, not really. We're small. (There's a couple MSDE instances, and a Firebird instance, all in support of various applications, but they're more embedded then something we use in and of itself.) And that's the thing: What typically separates an embedded database from a real DBMS is that a DBMS is generic, and has lots of general-purpose tools to explore and manipulate the data, independent of any particular application or use. Just like we have for a filesystem. Just like we *don't* have for ESE. :) More to the point, email doesn't really fit the database model. Email doesn't consist of fixed-length records, or rows and columns. Email is a bunch of discrete, variable-length entities, with arbitrary internal structure. In other words, it's a lot more like a bunch of files than database. Someone on the Sunbelt Exchange list once remarked that ESE is as much like a filesystem as it is a traditional database. Which I'm guessing is true. But that leads to the question... why not use the filesystem? :) Again, on my list of things to worry about, the nature of Exchange's backend storage is fairly far down. But if we're on the subject, I think the design has some issues, and there are ways it could be done better. I've also got plans for world peace. Just put me in charge of everything and we're all set... ;-) -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Andrew S. Bakerasbz...@gmail.com wrote: Ultimately, it's a factor of single-instance storage. It seems to me that, in the general case, it should be possible to have both SIS and individual element restores. Assume SIS is implemented as a reference counted system of blobs, with mail folders being a list of references to those blobs. On a restore of a mail folder, for each element, check to see what blob the reference points to. If it isn't there, restore the blob before you restore the reference. If it is there, just restore the reference, and increment the reference count. Unix has been doing this in the filesystem with hard links for 30+ years now, so the general concept is certainly feasible. Now, Exchange's design may not lend itself to this technique, for whatever reason. But that's not SIS means you can't do restore of a single mailbox, that's Exchange's design means you can't do restore of a single mailbox. As I've said, there may be good reasons for this design aspect, or it may just be historical accident. I have no idea. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. Yeah, and much needed work. I'm part of that group surprised they didn't move to from ESE to SQL finally in Exch 10. They spend so much time tweaking each engine, I am surprised that they don't combine their efforts. The things that ESE can finally do, SQL could do ages ago. Also, IMO, if Exch was built on SQL, it would prove to their customer their faith in it's own SQL product to handle a DB intensive app like Exchange. Sam -Original Message- From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 9:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Mail server software Hmm - do you use a DBMS (like SQL Server or Oracle) as well? Most of those are binary blobs. Or do you prefer a DBMS that stores records in single files on the disk? Cheers Ken -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, 18 August 2009 1:44 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brian Desmondbr...@briandesmond.com wrote: What's the problem with the database engine? There's been a massive amount of engineering work in that space - I don't expect it's going anywhere. I can't speak for the OP... but the fact that the Exchange IS is a giant binary blob, completely opaque for the most part, requiring special tools to work with it, has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked with a Cyrus mail system once that was really sweet. It could handle many more users on much smaller hardware vs Exchange at the time, and all the mail was still stored in plain text files (one per message). You could analyze the message store with the more command if you had to. I don't think we ever had to, but it was nice to know you had the option. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 8:45 PM, John Cook john.c...@pfsf.org wrote: If they choose to ignor what I instruct them to do how is that not stupid? If it's simply a question of not following instructions, perhaps. I may have been taking your comments in broader context than you intended. This discussion is basically about meeting requirements. Calling someone's requirements stupid is rarely a good idea. (Infeasible, perhaps.) Perhaps you didn't intend for your comments to be applied to others. Of course, I wonder why you're sharing your opinion if you don't think it should apply to anyone else... ;-) It's also worth noting that when many people repeatedly misuse a system, that's often a sign of poor human-factors engineering. I see this on a daily basis, throughout the world, not just in IT. Bad traffic intersections. Confusing industrial controls. Overly complicated tax forms. Things that work well generally work the way people work. ... was the last time you had to restore a mailbox? I haven't, so far, knock on wood. But that's largely because I've designed around the limitations of Exchange in that area. Had we had other options, we might well have gone in a different direction, because it was easier/cheaper/faster/etc. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
The fact that you can't edit an ESE database is _good_. Can you imagine the chaos if you were able to go in an AD or Exchange or DHCP or WINS or Windows Search or Windows Security Policy or SharePoint 2000 etc database and change some arbitrary data? I guarantee you it would NOT be pretty. There are tools around to go mucking with an ESE database in a graphical manner. Fortunately they're not public. The APIs are though if you're so inclined you could do whatever you wanted with an ESE database. Thanks, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com c - 312.731.3132 Active Directory, 4th Ed - http://www.briandesmond.com/ad4/ Microsoft MVP - https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Brian -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:01 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 10:43 PM, Ken Schaefer k...@adopenstatic.com wrote: Hmm - do you use a DBMS (like SQL Server or Oracle) as well? Actually, not really. We're small. (There's a couple MSDE instances, and a Firebird instance, all in support of various applications, but they're more embedded then something we use in and of itself.) And that's the thing: What typically separates an embedded database from a real DBMS is that a DBMS is generic, and has lots of general-purpose tools to explore and manipulate the data, independent of any particular application or use. Just like we have for a filesystem. Just like we *don't* have for ESE. :) More to the point, email doesn't really fit the database model. Email doesn't consist of fixed-length records, or rows and columns. Email is a bunch of discrete, variable-length entities, with arbitrary internal structure. In other words, it's a lot more like a bunch of files than database. Someone on the Sunbelt Exchange list once remarked that ESE is as much like a filesystem as it is a traditional database. Which I'm guessing is true. But that leads to the question... why not use the filesystem? :) Again, on my list of things to worry about, the nature of Exchange's backend storage is fairly far down. But if we're on the subject, I think the design has some issues, and there are ways it could be done better. I've also got plans for world peace. Just put me in charge of everything and we're all set... ;-) -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
Re: Mail server software
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com wrote: The fact that you can't edit an ESE database is _good_. On this, we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm of the opinion that if I own something, I should be able to do anything I want with it, including break it. I also believe that (to borrow from Dennis Ritchie) preventing people from doing stupid things also prevents them from doing clever things. Locking up everything in a box and telling me to keep out prevents me from doing things the designers didn't think of. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
-Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 10:43 PM, Ken Schaefer k...@adopenstatic.com wrote: Hmm - do you use a DBMS (like SQL Server or Oracle) as well? Actually, not really. We're small. (There's a couple MSDE instances, and a Firebird instance, all in support of various applications, but they're more embedded then something we use in and of itself.) And that's the thing: What typically separates an embedded database from a real DBMS is that a DBMS is generic, and has lots of general-purpose tools to explore and manipulate the data, independent of any particular application or use. Just like we have for a filesystem. Just like we *don't* have for ESE. :) DBMSes are just binary blobs, and require an API for access. And then they typically require a driver that uses that API. And all the tools are built on top of that. It's just that there are a few such tools. Exchange provides APIs for accessing data inside Exchange, and you should use those APIs. Just like Active Directory provides APIs for accessing AD. And so on. More to the point, email doesn't really fit the database model. Email doesn't consist of fixed-length records, or rows and columns. Email is a bunch of discrete, variable-length entities, with arbitrary internal structure. In other words, it's a lot more like a bunch of files than database. Someone on the Sunbelt Exchange list once remarked that ESE is as much like a filesystem as it is a traditional database. Which I'm guessing is true. But that leads to the question... why not use the filesystem? :) I don't know what the Exchange team things. I'd say, given how much more is stored in Exchange than just email, and additionally all the other products that interface with it, one of the issues is that it's hard to store relationships between entities in a file system Cheers Ken ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Mail server software
Well, then anyone should be free to use whatever undocumented interfaces exist in Windows to do clever things in the kernel, and so on. I thought we'd gotten past that stage. Cheers Ken -Original Message- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, 18 August 2009 11:49 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Mail server software On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Brian Desmond br...@briandesmond.com wrote: The fact that you can't edit an ESE database is _good_. On this, we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm of the opinion that if I own something, I should be able to do anything I want with it, including break it. I also believe that (to borrow from Dennis Ritchie) preventing people from doing stupid things also prevents them from doing clever things. Locking up everything in a box and telling me to keep out prevents me from doing things the designers didn't think of. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
