New Mail Server – The Search

Horde

Sigh. Another product that requires manual editing of files. Seriously, how hard is it to create an installer?

Next….

Zimbra

I’ve heard of Zimbra on many occasions. I know the product has been around for a while. By now it must be pretty mature and well polished. Let’s try installing that.

I had to register on the site to get a copy of the installer. Apparently an answer Nothing is not a valid response to Existing solution. Heh.

For some reason postfix is not starting…to be troubleshooted later.

[root@mailtest ~] cd /tmp
[root@mailtest tmp] wget http://files2.zimbra.com/downloads/8.0.4_GA/zcs-8.0.4_GA_5737.RHEL6_64.20130524120036.tgz
--2013-08-01 22:58:27--  http://files2.zimbra.com/downloads/8.0.4_GA/zcs-8.0.4_GA_5737.RHEL6_64.20130524120036.tgz
Resolving files2.zimbra.com... 184.84.243.193, 184.84.243.217
Connecting to files2.zimbra.com|184.84.243.193|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 595697371 (568M) [binary/octet-stream]
Saving to: âzcs-8.0.4_GA_5737.RHEL6_64.20130524120036.tgzâ

100%[=============================================================================================================>] 595,697,371 12.9M/s   in 45s

2013-08-01 22:59:13 (12.5 MB/s) - âzcs-8.0.4_GA_5737.RHEL6_64.20130524120036.tgzâ

[root@mailtest tmp] tar zxvf zcs-8.0.4_GA_5737.RHEL6_64.20130524120036.tgz
[root@mailtest tmp] cd zcs-8.0.4_GA_5737.RHEL6_64.20130524120036
[root@mailtest zcs-8.0.4_GA_5737.RHEL6_64.20130524120036] ./install.sh

  ERROR: Installation can not proceeed.  Please fix your /etc/hosts file
  to contain:

    

  Where  is the ip address of the host,
   is the FULLY QUALIFIED host name, and
   is the (optional) hostname-only portion

Same procedure as with Blue Mind. Modify the hosts file, restart the install and we’re good to go. The install took a few minutes but seemed successful. After the admin password was configured via a shell wizard, the installation continued…and ended.

Going to https://mailtest.test.local:7071/zimbraAdmin I was greeted with an admin login screen.

The admin interface looks a lot like VMWare vCenter Web Console. There’s plethora of configuration options and a nice wizard guide to finish the configuration

First thing is first. Does it come with anti-spam and anti-virus? Well, it sure does.

Configuration was relatively painless. Took a bit to navigate through the menus. Once I created my test domain and account I logged into the public webmail and damn. It looks good!

This was so far the most pleasant experience dealing with a mail product. Next step would be to see how it fares trying to configure this for production use.

Summary:

• Painless install
• Very slick interface
• MTA didn’t start. Most likely a trivial issue
• Built in Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus

Conclusion: Looks very promising. Definitely up for round two where I’ll attempt production configuration

Next…