We Want to Hear From You

[ScalixSupport]

Our little Community has grown tremendously over the past year and yet we still haven’t achieved the type of interaction between Community Members that we had hoped for. Certainly there are some of you who do participate regularly and we thank you for that. However, we would like to bring more of you into the discussions.

So, we’re reaching out to you and asking for your feedback. We’re interested in finding out what motivates you? What incentives could we offer to entice you to participate more in the Community? We’re listening.

[sutton.ryan]

I just got the email notice regarding the 25 user edition......

Thank you for the notice...I was going to install and review the free edition tomorrow...I will wait and get the latest and greatest. This is an interesting move...Scalix is now much cheaper than Open Xchange to get started!!!!

I am a Network Administrator for a small government agency and I setup small business networks on the side. I administrate a 95% MS network and several small LAN's using Linux for all server services/firewall roles. I am familiar with NT4, 2k, and 2003 AD domains. The small Linux LANs rely on samba for PDC and file sharing. With the release of Fedora Directory (FDS) Server from Redhat (open source and free) and a product such as Scalix (or Open Xchange), I see a tremendous opportunity for Linux with small business and non profits. Scalix is the last piece I will add to my test lab....once it is working, I will have completely replaced all MS server services: DHCP, DDNS, SMB, LDAP(FDS), FTP, apache, squid, clamav, IPSEC site to site VPN, and finally groupware email.

A suggestion.....Since MS Exchange CALs are $69.00, paying $60.00 for a CAL running on linux seems high.....Scalix should break up the fees for the CAL say $39.00 and for the Outlook connector another $39.00 and offer them as seperate purchases....charge $59.00 for both purchased together.

Linux is about choice and not using Outlook is a choice, why pay for it...besides when people like myself look at $39.00 for a CAL..I think "almost half the price of MS, lets do it". If CALs are $39.00, it would also be cheaper than purchasing Open Xchange up to the 212th CAL (compairing the open xchange 25user price $850). The IT staff (like myself) would likely purchase the $39 Cals to over all users up front, while the die hard Outlook users will gladdly pay an additional $39.00 to use Outlook. Scalix would receive $78 per CAL in this situation.....more than your current $60, yet everyone would be happy.

Just my 2 cents...

Ryan Sutton
Arizona Network Professionals - Consultant MCSE Linux+
Studying RHCT/RHCE currently

[till]

It would be really great if you supported more systems. With Redhat and SuSE being the only ones, that turns a lot of people away. I know that this is probably a hassle to you, but I am sure that the community (who you are asking) would be glad to help. :-)

For example Debian, is a lot, lot better than those two distributions, but the difference is that Debian does not offer a support contract unlike the others. Especially with small to medium sized businesses this is not an issue. They don't have the money anyway and consider open source for that reason primarily. Big companies probably go Microsoft anyway. They just throw money on a problem and want an instant fix, and if MS promises this to them, they are fine.

Another thing is that I come from a BSD background and I would not want to replace BSD for Linux. Aside from administration, software distributions and security, there are not too many differences between those two (Unix and Linux, that is), for example you can get Linux compat-mode on FreeBSD, so it would be nice to get some insight as of why you decided to go Linux only.

I would only get Linux if I really must, and then I would rather choose Debian or Gentoo. My clients would not spend money on a contract with Redhat or SuSE/Novell anyway, they rely on me for that, and that's why in the end it comes down to what I think is suitable to run.

I know that you want to save your investment and will probably not disclose any source, so I have no idea about a practical approach to the problem, but I would be happy to provide test beds and a lot of feedback if needed.

Thanks,
Till

[jch]

From my perspective, SuSE and RHEL (or Fedora) are good because we know what's in them. I'd personally like to see support for CentOS, but that's just me. I know that there's a lot of Debian users out there would love us to support Debian and that's possible because Debian plays nicely and Debian users are pretty knowledgable. Gentoo I think is a non-starter because of the way that Gentoo builds itself: support would be a total nightmare.

FreeBSD is probably possible but Scalix is a large, complex project: my build tree for the server is a shade over 1Gb. I have a Linux kernel build tree as well and that's about the same size. I don't mean that the server is as complex as the linux kernel, I just want to give you a feel for the complexity of a port.

Back to CentOS? Have you considered CentOS as a free alternative? Various people in the forums have persuaded Scalix to install on CentOS.

jch

[till]

FreeBSD is probably possible but Scalix is a large, complex project: my build tree for the server is a shade over 1Gb. I have a Linux kernel build tree as well and that's about the same size. I don't mean that the server is as complex as the linux kernel, I just want to give you a feel for the complexity of a port.

Not sure if I stressed this enough, but let someone else try then. :) Outsource the efford to the community. I'd be happy to spend some nights on the installer to make it run.

[jch]

Can you send me a message? I've got some questions that don't belong here. Just send to my username at scalix.com.

jch

[KimVette]

A suggestion.....Since MS Exchange CALs are $69.00, paying $60.00 for a CAL running on linux seems high.....Scalix should break up the fees for the CAL say $39.00 and for the Outlook connector another $39.00 and offer them as seperate purchases....charge $59.00 for both purchased together.

I disagree.

Microsoft Exchange costs more than that (referring only to legal licenses - you can find them listed cheaper but I question the legitimacy of the licenses):

Microsoft Windows: $129 to $200+ for Windows XP Pro
CAL: $69.00
Windows 2003 Server Std. Edition: $700+
Exchange 2003 Std. w/5 CALs: $900+
Microsoft Outlook: $94

Now don't forget: You'll need to buy open relay filters, spam filters, antivirus solutions (the spamassassin hack for Exchange is implemented in a way I would not trust - ditto for the ClamAV hack), which can cost you another $300 to $1,000 PLUS the per-seat licensing, PLUS I have had unfortunate experiences where bugs in commercial spam filters caused the filter to delete several hundred emails one day after a security patch was automagically downloaded and applied, changing the spam filtering rules. When you take all that into consideration, the $69/CAL price for Scalix is downright reasonable, especially if you install on say, SuSE Pro or Fedora Core. You can go with Scalix Enterprise and come out thousands ahead.

This does not even take into account that:

- Scalix offers a full CLI for maintenance and admin tasks
- Scalix integrates well with open-source antivirus and spam solutions
- Need to back up? Back up the live filesystem. If you HAVE to restore by untarring a backup file, just run a consistency check afterward. What would absolutely kill an Info Store disaster recovery in the Microsoft world is at WORST a minor inconvenience and a handful of lost emails in the *nix world.
- Maintenance can be run live (ZERO downtime) rather than having to shut the message store (Information Store in Microsoft nomanclature) down for maintenance. Remember: When Microsoft publishes their TCO and Uptime comparisons, they always, ALWAYS disregard the "scheduled maintenance" downtime in their calculation. Why? Because downtime due to maintenance is not "downtime" in their view, nor are required reboots for security patches. Downtime and manual updates cost you money in terms of salaries/wages paid during that time, not to mention potential loss of business.
- Disaster recovery in Microsoft Exchange can be extremely painful given the monolithic info store in combination with most shops' reluctance to schedule the recommended maintenance (which again, requires the info store to be dismounted). By neglecting regular integrity checks and defrags on an info store, you set yourself up for a very painful and VERY expensive experience down the road, whereas if you can conduct maintenance against a live system safely, you overcome objections to best practices because there is then no justification to delay or prevent the maintenance tasks.

[ScalixSupport]

Great post KimVette, the true costs of an Exchange environment are certainly underestimated by many. As well Ryan, your licensing suggestion is very interesting - can see where it would have some appeal to customers.

Just a quick note about your post Kim in regard to backup of Scalix. We really preach the use of rsync with LVM and snapshot capbilites, which cost-wise and efficiency-wise cannot be matched by Exchange. Some of our customers like it so much, they rsync four times per day. You only need to temporarily suspend write activity to Scalix (omsuspend), take your snapshot (must be an LVM-enabled partition), then release the suspension. You then simply mount the snapshot and rsync the data (differential only) to another system. There is effectively zero read downtime for Scalix, and typically the write downtime is less than 3 seconds. Because you are only backing up the files that have changed (or been added or deleted) in the filesystem since the last rsync copy was made, the rsync process is very fast. Exchange can't do this - because they have hulking database files in the information store - they always change, you would always back up all files.

You can expand further on the restore aspect, where we have some advantages as well. That other system you rsync the data to, could also be a Linux host with Scalix installed. With some minor scripting there, you could be building tar.gz files and keeping a few days or weeks worth of complete, point-in-time copies of your Scalix data (depending on the available disk space, of course). Point is, this other system can deliver somewhat of a backup buffer, which can easily be used for message or mailbox recovery in a way more expediant manner. You flat out can't copy Exchange data to another system and bring it up as easily as you can with Scalix.

Anyway - thanks for the feedback!

kb

[axsom1]

Hello KB,

Do you have any example scripts for the rsync backup you describe?

I'm kinda new to linux and have stuck with the ommaint script that you all provide, but I'm always looking at faster and more effecient backup strategies.

Thanks,
John

[jch]

I don't have the scripts, but take a look at http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ deals with the basic stuff. LVM snapshots deal with getting the volume to back up (mount them read-only with the 2.6 kernel) and use omsuspend to get the message store into a safe state before you create the snapshot.

Something like this:

Code: Select all

omsuspend -s 299
sleep 30 # wait for stuff to settle down
lvcreate ... --snapshot ...
omsuspend -r
rsync ... --link-dest ...
lvremove ...

The man pages cover omsuspend, lvcreate and lvremove. The tricky part, the rsync stuff, is covered in some detail on that web page. Also, Google is your friend :-)

jch

[ScalixSupport]

Here's some more help on using rsync.

Note - I used on RHEL 3, update 5 - although rsync should be the same on other flavors/versions - please test first in your respective environments.

Single Server Solution

Code: Select all

rsync -avz --delete /var/opt/ /backup

This will recursively copy all files from the directory /var/opt to the directory /backup. The files are transferred in "archive" mode, which ensures that sym-bolic links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships etc are pre-served in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to reduce the size of data portions of the transfer. In this example the /backup directory will then contain a /scalix directory (with all subdirectories). This does mean the / or /backup partition must have as much space available as is stored in the contents of /var/opt/ - which is typically rare. Run it initially, then run it again, notice the second time only a few files are copied. Write a message into a mailbox on Scalix, run it again, you'll notice now more files are copied from /user and /data directories.

Two Server Solution

Code: Select all

rsync -avz --delete /var/opt/ backup.company.local:backup

This does the same as above, only it copies to the /backup directory on the host "backup.company.local". This assumes the backup.company.local host is nfs mounted from the Scalix server. On the backup machine you could then set a nightly cron job to build a day-of-week .tgz file to another area, which is backed up to tape weekly.

Karl

[zach]

Say I use a backup script similar to the code below. What if the rsync backup takes longer than 299 seconds? Is rsync copying the data from the temporary snapshot partition, therefore keeping its integrity?

Code: Select all

omsuspend -s 299
sleep 30 # wait for stuff to settle down
lvcreate ... --snapshot ...
omsuspend -r
rsync ... --link-dest ...
lvremove ...

[mephisto]

Is rsync copying the data from the temporary snapshot partition, therefore keeping its integrity?

Yep, that's the general idea.