Evaluation Version--Requirements and General Questions

[WY-IT-guy]

Greetings.

I am about to install the evaluation version of Scalix on an older (low-end) computer. I am the systems administrator and I think that Scalix would suit us well. I want to get the evaluation version up and running as a demo to convince my Boss to buy it.

(Isn't that what the evaluation version is for?)

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Question # 1
I have been using SuSe for a while and I already have a copy of SuSe 9.0. In the documentation, it says that SuSe 9.0 can be used for evaluation version only. Only a purchased version of Linux is supported for the actual install. (circa $500 for SuSe)

Why is that?
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Question # 2
The documentation says that it requires a minimun of 512MB of RAM.

Can I get by with less RAM for my Demo? (maybe 5 mailboxes total)
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Question # 3
I was hoping for some more detailed documentation on installation. Specifically, what packages I need to install, where I get the correct version of TomCat for SuSe 9.0, Can I implement SpamAssassin, exactly what is supported on the Outlook 2000 client side (e.g. permissions for: shared contacts, shared calendars, shared inbox) .

Is there a place I can find more detailed installation and product information?
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Question # 4
Since our budget is smaller than many, I may end up building our own server (choosing the hardware). I want to ge the most bang for our buck. Based on your experience with Scalix, where would I best boost my performance? Dual Processor? Hardware-based RAID? Extra RAM? Two NICS (inside outside)?

In other words, what is the typical bottleneck of the server?

Note: One of the reasons that we are looking at Scalix is that it can all run off of one server--both the Web-Interface and the many mailboxes plus anti-spam and SMTP. To boost performance on MS, they recommend installing multiple servers.

[ScalixSupport]

Question # 1
I have been using SuSe for a while and I already have a copy of SuSe 9.0. In the documentation, it says that SuSe 9.0 can be used for evaluation version only. Only a purchased version of Linux is supported for the actual install. (circa $500 for SuSe)

Why is that?

It has been our experience that customers will evaluate Scalix using the "free" versions of the distributions we support but (for their own benefit) will purchase the corporate versions so they have platform support as well as application support.

The "free" versions also tend to be a lot less stable in terms of updates, i.e. there are usually lots of them. We like to hope that customers are looking for stability ;-)

The documentation says that it requires a minimun of 512MB of RAM.

Can I get by with less RAM for my Demo? (maybe 5 mailboxes total)

For your demo, yes you probably can. It all depends what you are using. If you intend to run tomcat for SWA on the same server, the more RAM the better.

I was hoping for some more detailed documentation on installation. Specifically, what packages I need to install, where I get the correct version of TomCat for SuSe 9.0, Can I implement SpamAssassin, exactly what is supported on the Outlook 2000 client side (e.g. permissions for: shared contacts, shared calendars, shared inbox) .

Is there a place I can find more detailed installation and product information?

The installation guide is the best place for you to look. Page 15 lists the URLs for tomcat versions. The package requirements are on page 4.

For Spam Assassin, this is outside of the scope of the evaluation but "integration" is achieved by having sendmail listen on port 25 instead of the SMTP relay and using something like spamass-milter.

Shared Contacts and Calendars are made available through Public Folders. You need to create them through the Outlook client, there isn't a command-line method for that. Shared inboxes is handled via the standard Outlook delegates functionality (Tools->Options->Delegates to set up a delegate). You need to use Tools->Scalix Options->Advanced to add a principal to your profile.

Since our budget is smaller than many, I may end up building our own server (choosing the hardware). I want to ge the most bang for our buck. Based on your experience with Scalix, where would I best boost my performance? Dual Processor? Hardware-based RAID? Extra RAM? Two NICS (inside outside)?

In other words, what is the typical bottleneck of the server?

Note: One of the reasons that we are looking at Scalix is that it can all run off of one server--both the Web-Interface and the many mailboxes plus anti-spam and SMTP. To boost performance on MS, they recommend installing multiple servers.

Again, it depends on how you are using your server.

We normally recommend as much RAM as you can throw at the machine and also as many disks as you can spread /var/opt/scalix/data.

Cheers

Dave Kelly
Senior Support Engineer
Scalix Corporation