Small Business Customer Questions

[Dimitriy]

Hi,

Its not the first time I have been here but today I several questions on deploying Scalix in a small business environment. I am looking to try Scalix out and see if its what is what I desire. Lastly I am not interested in a virtual machine test and similar test cases. I would like to put a box down and see how it works in a real-world environment. So here goes.
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1. Is it possible and feasible to run Scalix on a low-end pc? I am talking about a 800mhz 512mb machine. The expected clients (Outlook) is 1-5 and live web clients is expected to be 1-3 occasionaly. After all we are just serving up mainly text and perhaps some attachments for a very small client range.

2. Is it possible and feasible to run Scalix off a 1.5/384k (down/up) static ip DSL connection? I realize that I will need to supplement it with a service online that holds unfetched mail untill it is fetched (Due to the unrealiblity of DSL and etc.). Ideas for this concept (DynDns)?

3. I have purchased a domain name and am curious of just how complex or if its possible to even run a mail server off a single domain name? If another is needed that is not a problem. However I would much rather have to manage a single than multiple stuff (see questions 8 and 9 for why)

4. I believe that Scalix offers a IMAP or similar like protocol to connect with clients. I know that they also offer a Outlook module that allows connection to the Scalix server (as opposed to MS Exchange Server). Does Scalix play well with Microsoft Office 2007 and 2003?

5. What OS/Distro should I use? I am not sure if BSD is supported but thats irrelevant. Remember looking to deploy on a low end pc. The OS/Distro is not whats important. The most important features are headless deployment with user friendly setup. Auto updating of items would be great as would down to earth and simple setup.

6. What would be the most cost effective way to implement the above scenario? I realize the Enterpise edition has all of the bells and whistles along with no doubt some fantastic support. However Scalix was dubbed as the cost effective alternative to Microsoft Exchange along with many other features.

7. Can Scalix work as an appliance? Meaning it can be headless, always on, auto updating, and recovers without skipping a beat. Simply put; Something that requires no to very minor physical adjusts/control once it is setup. I live in an area that occasionly has power outages and while I do have UPS its possible that some unforeseen accidents occur.

8. Is Scalix adaptive to different environments? (See below for more in-depth)

9. With a proper set of tools (Dynamic updating of address and so on) shouldn't it be possible to move Scalix from location A to B and simply adjust port forwarding setting along with along the domainname settings to and have the mailserver work without skipping a beat?

10. Expected setup time of a Scalix Mail server for the above scenario?

[philjohn]

I'll leave 1 up to someone who knows better than myself, although that sounds OK (as long as your message volume is relatively low).

2. We're doing something similar. If you think about ADSL your incoming (people sending you email) is pretty fast, the outgoing is slow, but then again you use the same speed with an external email server because you are still using that same connection. The only time that may be a bit slow is if you are sending to a lot of recipients.

As for backup mail spool's we use EasyDNS which offer this service, it's not free though so you may want to set your ISP/Domain name seller as a higher priority MX with a catchall and use fetchmail to download any messages when you come back online.

3. We are running on a single domain, the single most important thing is having the reverse DNS pointing properly, ask your ISP if they offer this service. We have a block of 8 static IP's that we use for various internet facing servers (VOIP, CRM etc.) and we can set reverse DNS on each of them.

4. 2003 yes, 2007 I'm not sure (it worked with one of the BETA's)

5. We've installed with CentOS (Binary Compatible Redhat Enterprise Clone, compiled from the Source RPM's RedHat supply). You will need to change your /etc/redhat-release file to read "Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant)". CentOS is free to download and use and updating the system is as easy as typing "yum update" at the console (wouldn't recommend setting that up automatically in case things go wrong - blindly accepting automatic updates is a bad idea). Just make sure you install krb5-server or Scalix stup will fail inexplicably.

6. We're using the community edition (free) as we're still a fairly small company (13 full time staff, 7 more contract). We'll be looking to upgrade at a later date to a paid version as we grow, which Scalix seems to support.

I'll leave 8-10 to people who know more than me!

Hope that helps.

[kanderson]

Nothing you talk about there is going to be a significant problem. I'll tell you that you will want a bigger box as the number of clients grows, but it'll work with 10 users.

2007 does not work yet, but expect to see it resolved in the next 2-3 months. The 2007 Betas generally worked, but 2007 gold didn't.

Headless operation is no problem, nor is moving the box around. If you move it, the only thing that matters is don't change the FQDN. Changing the IP is fine. With a bit of work, th FQDN can also be changed.

Plan about 4 hours for the setup of the OS and Scalix. Perhaps longer if this is your first install.

with only a few users, if you install community, you'd be set up at no cost.

Kev.