RHEL4 - MTA , Choices
 

Hi, This is my first post here on LQ and i just like to say hey. I have a few questions about RHEL4 as a mail server using the MTA postfix. I have read alot of articles about qmail and other mailing solutions people have put on the web. But i would like the honest opinions of those that use LQ. I hear postfix is far better than sendmail but from personal experience i have only really setup exchange mail servers and one sendmail server. Our company is wanting to break away from the exchange server as they no longer use any of its features but the mailing aspect. The company is wanting to switch to Linux for the security and for the robustness of the Operating System. The problem is going to be establishing the multiple domains and virtual users for the mail server. For my only sendmail server it was only one domain and users that had accounts on the machines were the ones using the mail.

Exchange setup is far easier but alot less secure and it goes down alot =(. I want to make this transition easy for everyone but my experience with Linux mail servers is not that much. I would like to know of any other MTA's that could be a better deployment with my experience or would jumping into the Postfix config and knashing it out over sleepless nights and lots of coffee(Linux user creed?) be better in the long run? Also I need for it to function as a Imap server as they have requested. Now i can easily just install a ms based imap server and they would never know the difference. But this is really intriguing and i am a Linux user on personal machines and would love the experience. So if anyone has anything they would like to contribute please let me know. Thanks

It's possible to do what you're asking with Postfix & an IMAP daemo, like Dovecot, Cyrus, Courier, etc... Personally, I would not recommend that approach and I've been doing e-mail for about 8 years now as a professional.

I would go with something like Zimbra for the simple fact that it's easier to manage. You have an interface for creating users, interface for managing queues, setting up domains, etc, etc... You can do all that from the command line with Postfix + Dovecot (which is what I run for my personal e-mail server), but if you ever have to make changes or manage a lot of users, it can become painful. The other benefit to using a groupware solution, like Zimbra, is that it has the other collaberation stuff, like calendering, distribution lists, mobile support, etc. Maybe you don't need or want it now, but in the future you'll probably need it so might as well go with a platform that will support it.

Thanks for the information, I am currently reading the documentation and the pricing for the software. This looks like an excellent solution to my problem. Thanks for your time.

But at the same time, postfix is not that hard to setup. You can also have it authenticate to ldap or a mysql database, which can make management very easy. And remember... postfix will be around forever and has a huge user base... Zimbra is too new to tell.

Postfix is just an MTA; Zimbra is a groupware suite. There is a huuuuuge difference.

Thanks again for answering my questions.