Bram Kortleven’s Weblog

Zimbra, the collaboration suite, gives you a complete MS Exchange server replacement, as far as I can see.
Email, Contacts, Calendar, Documents, Tasks, … everything is in there!

There is an Open Source edition, where you can get the basics for free, without support that is, and can install it on a number of systems. According to Wikipedia and the FAQ it consists of a number of Open Source packages such as postfix, clamav, and such (full list is on the wikipedia article), combined to make a solid Groupware suite.

I recently re-started looking to replace the old Exchange 2003 system I’m still running in a VM, but was always confrontend with either a do-it-yourself approach (combining an mta, antivirus and antispam solution, some ical stuff,… myself), or a you’ll-have-to-pay-a-fee for a complete basic solution.

I knew about Zimbra, and had played a bit with it a couple of years ago. In the beginning of this year, I started looking at the Zimbra Desktop as an email client with integrated calendar and task management modules, because of the platform support. It has an installer routine for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and could easily replace Outlook and other proprietary email/groupware clients at some of the customers of the firm I work for.

The server side installation was done in a VM’ed Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS 32 bit running under VMWare Server 2.0. Installation is quite easy for the Open Source edition (and I presume that the installation routine is the same for all editions…?). You run the big installer package you downloaded, and answer a couple of questions regarding desired modules. It came to tell me a couple of dependencies weren’t met, which were easily installed through apt-get.
After the installer finished, it proposed me a list of settings. In this list, the installer required me to set an admin password, which wasn’t all that clear at first. I asked to quit, because I didn’t see what the installer needed. Seeing, after quitting, that it didn’t start the server daemons, I knew I missed something. I quickly did a reinstall of the package, and when the list was proposed again, I noticed the *** before the password line.
After setting the password, I could Activate the settings, which wasn’t possible before.
Once activated, the install routine ended with a start of all the services.

I redirected a browser to http://serverIP:7107 and was prompted for a username and password. I logged in with the details I entered in the installer, and got a nice and complete configuration module.
Setting up a user for myself, and fiddling around with the settings, the first installation was completed.

I changed my MX records to the newly installed Zimbra server, and noticed mail coming in… It was working.

Next up:
-setup another user to check calender sharing and such
-zpush configuration for Activesync based push email and synchronization
-export-import Exchange mailbox into the Zimbra server mailbox
-shutdown Exchange server VM at last

I’ll keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Server Management, System Management, linux, ubuntu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.