[SLL] Post-Path Email server

[Derek Simkowiak]

    I ran Zimbra on my personal email server for a few months.  I had a 
negative experience.  It uses a lot of Java on the backend (JSPs), and a 
lot of (unoptimized?) AJAX and Javascript on the front-end web client, 
and it is very, very slow.

    I read several complaints about the slowness issue on Zimbra web 
forums -- too much CPU and RAM usage on the server, and a slow enduser 
experience (due to overladen JScript and slow server).  One forum post 
suggested dual-core and 2GB RAM as a minimum for a Zimbra server.  I 
guess they emulated Exchange a little /too/ well.

    I went back to Postfix + Clam AV + SpamAssassin (and postgrey, and 
RBLs, etc.), and it's flying along on a weak AMD Geode 5W embedded 
processor (current load: 0.09).  But of course, that doesn't provide 
Exchange functionality or any kind of shared calendar.

Bill> /postfix, amavisd, and clamav to clean out the virii before they 
get to Zimbra. /

    Hmm, that seems a little odd, since Zimbra ships with spamassassin 
and clamav.  One of the features of Zimbra is that it gives you a nice 
web-based Admin GUI to manage all that stuff, as an alternative to 
editing config files by hand.  I guess the client needs faster 
performance before getting to the Exchange emulation side of things...?


--Derek

Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 05, 2008, Andrew Sweger wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Bill Campbell wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Have you looked at Zimbra?
>>>       
>> Keep in mind that Zimbra is owned by Yahoo. If Microsoft gets their hands
>> on Yahoo in any significant way, I can't imagine them letting it live much
>> longer.
>>     
>
> There is also an open source version of Zimbra with an active
> community.  I'm not familiar enough with Zimbra to know what
> parts are proprietary, and what is open.  I do have an ISP
> customer who is using it, and we just installed a new Zimbra
> system at a client site replacing an Exchange server.
>
> This new site is running CentOS 5.1 with our normal configuration of
> OpenPKG servers, with Zimbra running in a VMware virtual machine getting
> its messages forwarded internally after processing through the current
> versions of postfix, amavisd, and clamav to clean out the virii before they
> get to Zimbra.  This allows Zimbra to pretty much own the VM while we
> control everything else.
>
> Bill
>