SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

I have a few clients that are heavily mac based ( there may be the odd 1 or 2 windows clients used for sage etc) and the desktops range from 20-90 units. Now the normal setup has been for many years, a windows based server (usually around the SBS 2003 model running Exchange 2003) with the clients running Entourage 2004/2008. Server has appropriate backup etc and in some cases has services running on them for mobiles like iphones etc.

The problems we mainly encounter is down to the mail and size of mailboxes. Now obviously Exchange has its limits and then there is the oddness of how Entourage talks to the exchange server. This has prompted us to look at alternative solutions for these clients. Now these solutions can either be still on the windows platform but maybe a different mail server model like Kerio Mail server etc or moving away from the windows platform altogether and going down the Mac OS X Server route. That opens up a different can of worms though. Like
a) what mail server to use or is the built in server mail services adequate
b) what is the best backup solution with RAID 5 ?
c) expansion at a minimal cost of storage considering the form factor of the XServes or maybe use a Mac Pro instead ?

Any advise would be greatly received as usual as we are looking to start moving on this in the next few weeks

ta

jpor

iTrader: (1)

I think your only alternative I can see is to move over to a LINUX enterprise solution. I know in the past the alternative to MS Exchange for E-mail and the like was Lotus. Lotus are now owned by IBM, looking at their website looks as though they can offer you something similar:

IBM Lotus - Software - United Kingdom

Maybe worth a chat to them.

Hopefully someone else may come along and provide you with a better solution.

Markus

The first option would obviously be to look at OS X Server's mail server facility. It might do exactly what you want. I'm going to guess it probably leverages postfix, as OS X is unix based, in which case, you could simply use an OS X machine and fiddle with postfix (have a read of this). It may also be worthwhile having a look at this too.

As for other mailservers on OS X, hmm, Eudora Internet Mail Server springs to mind as that is what I used to use, many, many years ago. I've no idea how good it is these days though.

As for backup with RAID, hmm, my first thought would be to look at EMC Retrospect. I'm not sure if it handles RAID, but would expect that it probably does.

Expansion is interesting. It looks like the xserves come with three drive bays, and the MacPro comes with four, so you're talking a one bay difference. I guess it depends on what the cost of a MacPro is vs the XServe, plus, I'd assume the server is geared to being, well, a server, whereas the Mac Pro isn't.
I'm guessing that with PCI support that external storage can be added, but I'm not totally sure on that.

HankScorpio

Can't help on anything but curious on b)
Are you looking to:
Backup a RAID 5 device?
Backup to a RAID 5 device?
Backup to striped tape array?

Markus

I've just had a quick scan of the MailServe For Leopard link I gave and on first look, it does seem to be very impressive, and could well be a good solution if you don't want the expense of OS X Server for just the mail server aspect of it.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

I knew you would be along soon
I have looked at the structure of the internal built in mail postfix program in OS X Server 10.4 and now 10.5 and it looks fairly adequate, though without being able to evaluate in it the office then it is hard to know its limitations. I assume that if the mac clients swapped from Entourage to Apple mail that would solve some of the issues.

The main problem is the size of the mailboxes. In Exchange and entourage, the limit of 2GB , although not a problem on the mac, does cause issues with drop outs, lost mail and constant rebuilding of the databse in Entourage. Obviously with it not being a true MAPI client doesnt help either.

Now Mactopia are running a beta (or Alpha) version of the new version of Entourage that talks to Exchange 2008 and it seems to go well. So my question is : is it worth waiting until that is working and go for that and remain on the windows platform or:

Scrap the windows server and go for Mac all the way, taking onboard either the Kerio solution (or similar) or the built in one. Though the lack of GUI does mean more work

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Sorry, I typed my original question wrong. I will either be using an xserve with 3 bays or a Mac Pro with 4 bays. Then looking to back that up to either a tape device (AIT etc) or something similar. I was just curious on the best way and software recommendations if indeed that path or using something like rsync

Markus

Switching to Mail.app could well help things. I believe there is an importer that will convert from Entourage, so I would suggest you have a look at that as part of your solution. You could possibly trial that on one of the accounts now, just to see if there are any issues there.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

It does look impressive, but unlike exchange which handles SMTP mail the info on there seems to deal with the clients accessing IMAP and POP ?
Is that correct ?

Markus

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought POP and IMAP were used for accessing mail, whereas SMTP is only used for sending mail. From what I can see, the "Outgoing" options in MailServe seem to include options for SMTP, and it appears it's using the postfix SMTP server for SMTP.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Okay, we may need a 101 email lesson here
but if you have pop and imap disabled on your exchange server, then what is the client using to talk to the mail server

Obviously in a pop account, the SMTP side is the outgoing mail server

Markus

Cheeky sod
I've only ever really used POP accounts, and my understanding was that POP/IMAP would handle the incoming side of things, and it was SMTP that handled the outgoing, obviously this isn't always the case.

diazamet

Zimbra - Products

Markus

I've had a little read and it seems that it's quite common for Exchange servers to have IMAP and POP disabled, and thus it's using something else to handle things. I'm not sure what this "something else" actually is though.

Looking at Leopard Mail.app, it seems that you have options of POP, IMAP and Exchange when you setup an account. So from the client side, you could get things working with an Exchange server.

As for the flip side of things, my guess is that MailServe does not allow you to disabled POP and IMAP as you will need one of those as it does/can not replicate whatever it is that exchange uses (which I'm guessing isn't SMTP).

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

No, no, you misunderstand me , my maple eating, deck shoe wearing mac using friend . I always had exchange down as the protocal for smtp mail on windows servers. hence if you turn off POP and IMAP then taht would provide both incoming and outgoing mail services. Also why Port 110 is closed on many servers.

So I was curious, on the Mail server for leopard, what would it use if you disabled or did not want to use POP. Also does that mean if you are using the POP client in Mail or Exchange does that mean the mail is local to the client or on the server (like the exchange store etc) ?

Markus

Ok, let me have a look at the proper mail server in OS X Server...

Right, in "General" it's got options for "Enable POP" and "Enable IMAP" as well as "Enable SMTP" It seems you can disable all three, which I would guess means not a lot would happen. However, if SMTP is disabled it does have a greyed out "allow incoming mail" option which is "checked".

I'm not sure if that is of any help to you at all.
If using POP then yes, mail storage will be local. Obviously you can specify that incoming messages stay on the server for X days, but that's it. If you want server based stuff then it has to be IMAP.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Okay so are we guessing that Mailserve for leopard just provides a GUI front end for the postfix app and thus it will use the same protocols for mail i.e pop, imap etc ?

Ideally I want something like Exchange for Mac whereby the mail is kept on the server and the clients get their mail delivered to the desktops but for backup purposes and the ability to hotdesk etc, I want it synched from the server. if it is left local as in POP, then all is lost if the mac dies apart from personal backups.

Markus

Yes, it does look like Mailserve is just a GUI for configuring things on Mac OS X Client (rather than Mac OS X Server).

Sounds like you basically want IMAP then, as from what I understand, the data is stored on the server and simply accessed via the mail application.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Well in a effort to evaluate the best scenario, we are downloading a copy of OSX Server Leopard and will try that on a G5 in the office using some of the utilities you mentioned .
Also as a different tack, we are downloading a trial version of both SBS 2008 and the beta version of latest version Entourage 2008 for exchange web services
IT Pros - Entourage for Exchanges Web Services - EWS | Mactopia

The trick is trying to get all versions running in test mode and to try and mimic a heavy load session over the 2 week trial period. At the same time we need to sort out the various backup scenarios etc. Should be a busy few weeks !!

hodgy0_2

the confusion is with the mail/client server model

smtp is a server to server mail transport protocol -- these actually send mail

pop, imap imap4 are all client to server protocols -- i.e. download the mail to a client with various levels of functionality, the most obvious is that imap support folders on the mail server whereas pop just downloads it to a client

traditional outlook clients connect to the exchange server using MAPI over rpc -- this is a microsoft protocol (the other protocols, POP, are open source) and is what givies outlook its rich feature set when connecting to an exchange server i,e public folders calenders, junk mail filters etc etc etc

dont know what prototol entourage uses

hope this helps

Markus

Ah ha!, MAPI over RPC. That's the "something elusive" part then, and from a quick search, OS X Server's mail facility won't, unsurprisingly, do that.

A quick search reveals that Entourage does not support MAPI connections, so that level of control isn't possible, thus I'd say we're back to looking at IMAP.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

It certainly does mate, thank you for that

Unfortunately we are at the mercy of microsoft and their crappy exchange information stores with its legacy code on the database so whilst exchange 2007 may be a better coded application, if it is built on the same underpinnings as exchange 5.5 etc then I forsee us having similar problems in the future with macs and the size of their mailboxes.

Unless some expert exchange manager can point out the errors of my ways and inform me that exchange 2007 is a winning app and has been rebuilt to alleviate us of these issues ?

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

We are indeed. Entourage has always been the poor cousin of Outlook and whilst Outlook 2001 was about the last half decent version of a mapi client on a mac, microsoft went and buggered it all up with Entourage. At last they are starting to listen and who knows, maybe the Exchange web services for Entourage may indeed be what we have all been waiting for.

NotoriousREV

Swiss, take a look at Symantec Enterprise Vault. It may bit a bit overkill for the size of solution but basically it archives mail off, indexes it to make it searchable and just leaves a stub in the users mail client. We use it with Outlook and Entourage and it works well.

hodgy0_2

the 2007 version of owa is very good, worth a look and zero deployment costs

i also think that MS are releasing a new version of MAPI that can be licensed by 3rd parties

maybe Apple have plans for that, i'll dig out some more info

ps dont know what problem you are having with the exchange databases r.e. size, they can be bigger than 2 gb that just the limit in the Exchange System Manager GUI --- for larger mailbox sizes you have to edit the AD schema attribute