Hello,
I'm trying to determine which server setup to choose to replace our Windoz server.
This is our current setup:
Very old Athlon running w2k server with Mdeamon (by alt-n.com) mail server with Outlook connector.
We have several domains (such as mycompany1.com, mycompany2.com, ..., mycompanyn.com) with dependent domains (such as my-company-1.com, my-company-2.com, ..., my-company-n.com) as aliases, each domain mail goes into a pop-mailbox off an outside server. Mdeamon fetches each of these pop boxes and distributes the mail to the user accounts. Some users have accounts on several domains both for sending and receiving. All users have aliases.
Mdeamon supports Groupware and we share inboxes, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, etc. as well as having some public folders. All of this data is stored by the server but the mail client (Outlook) may retain local copies. It also provides a webmail feature to login from anywhere.
The server is also used to for file sharing.
Most client machines are winXP with Outlook. There are less than 20 clients.
Despite being on a very old hardware the server runs reasonably well but we experience many issues on the client side with Outlook and Outlook Connector.
I've been working for some time to move the company over to Linux. We have selected PClinuxOS as our distro of choice.
Here is what we plan / have done:
I have installed PClinuxOS on the 2 conference room laptops plus the spare PC and as dual boot on my laptop and PC.
We will be able to convert all but one PC and one laptop, since we have one specific soft that requires Windoz and MS Office – might be able to run that with VMware but have to test first.
We got a new hardware for the new sever (ASUS P5B with Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2 GHz, 2 x 2 GB DDR2, 2 x 320 GB S-ATA2 16MB (RAID)).
We have now spend close to 100 man-hours installing the Linux server with openSUSE 10.2 and Scalix. It is now working in a kind of test mode and failing miserably:
- file sharing via samba is no problem;
- Scalix webmail is unusably slow: takes over 1 min to bring up even the login screen.
- Scalix connector with Outlook is buggy and cumbersome: I managed to copy my +/- 500 contacts which took about 10 mins but it lost lots of info randomly: some contacts are missing tel numbers, other email addr, etc etc.
- copying mail attachments is NOT supported.
- etc., etc.
Conclusion: this setup is by far less performing than the old production server and is unusable. Oh, and to top it all up, I have come to hate Suse - I find my way around a lot easier and more productive using PClinuxOS.
Thus now I'm out shopping for new solutions... However I'm too Linux Newbie to figure what I should try next and I have no intention to waste another 100 or so man-hours. I would be very glad if some of you experts could guide me to which software I should try next.
Which Server Setup to Choose for Mail / Groupware?
