Submitted by Everyone knows that Microsoft Exchange is expensive – but ubiquitous – and plenty
of open source projects and vendors have been trying a variety of technical
approaches to replace it. While none is yet a drop-in replacement, a PC World article looks at ways that some administrators can get a cost advantage by switching.
its an unfortunate state of affairs with open source etc.
I know some bright person will suggest zimbra, I am about to suggest why you WOULDNT want to use zimbra. (Please note I’ve run tons of zimbra servers in production for a couple years, so I do have plenty of experience)
1) web ui is sluggish and slow, and the “desktop” client is an entire webapp server distribution etc. WAY WAY hefty.
2) Its built on common unix mailers and packages etc (yeah I guess it could be a positive and a negative, however I consider it mostly a negative)
3) Licensing and pricing is f–king out of control.
4) Configs, startup scripts are fragile as hell, and the server would eat resources until ultimately it’d stop accepting connections.
5) Load balancing, Backup procedures etc are assinine, even for the commercially supported version.
I think most of my complaints are more so how unix developers tend to approach problems… than the actual server itself. I invested a TON TON TON of time migrating some 8000 odd accounts and 3000 domains, and I’ve got to say, I’ll never touch it again. Ever.
My answer is a “yes and no. It depends”.
It’s not sluggish. Maybe it was previously but the 5.x series is not. The desktop client is a dog though but that’s why you have the Outlook plugin.
I consider this irrelevant as long as it works.
I dont know where you got your licenses but we dont have that problem. Not that I know what you mean by “fscking out of control”.
I dont know why you put load balancing and backup in the same point but whatever. Never had any problem with the backup procedure being asinine.
Never used the load blanacing so I cant say anything about that.
I’m pretty sure migrating 8000 accounts and 3000 domains is a pain no matter what system you migrate to and from. It sure isn’t a breeze in Exchange.
Edited 2008-08-28 18:55 UTC
“I dont know where you got your licenses but we dont have that problem. Not that I know what you mean by “fscking out of control”.”
Well, they probably got the licenses from Zimbra.com
http://www.zimbra.com/products/pricing.html
For the life of the product it becomes more expensive then MS Exchange.
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/howtobuy/default.mspx
So am I to understand that less-than-clear MS page that the Exchange CAL’s are valid forever and you only pay for them once?
“So am I to understand that less-than-clear MS page that the Exchange CAL’s are valid forever and you only pay for them once?”
The page is quite clear actually, with price lists and everything.
Yes, you only pay for CAL’s for a version one time. For example, if you have 50 users, we will keep it small, and are using Exchange 2007, once you buy those CAL’s they are good until you upgrade your Exchange, which is normally about every 5 years or so.
With Zimbra, you pay that price per user every year, so over 5 years, it is more expensive than Exchange in per user costs.
There are a number of solutions that on the very face of it appear to be more attractive than Zimbra.
Apart from those already mentioned, here is yet another possibility:
http://www.citadel.org/doku.php
“Citadel is here today and is actively maintained – it’s neither vaporware nor abandonware.
Citadel is true open source (GPL) software. Unlike other groupware servers, it isn’t a cut-down version of an expensive proprietary ‘pro’ version. We make our very best work available to everyone on the same terms.”
No per user fees at all.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9357
“Microsoft Exchange, Meet Your Replacement
The time has come to consider moving that expensive, high-maintenance Windows system to a sleeker, more robust Linux system.
…
Although migrating users from applications such as Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org is generally an intuitive task, the 800-pound gorilla that’s keeping you up at night is e-mail and groupware. How are you going to provide and manage Microsoft Outlook-like functionality to the masses? In a word, Citadel. “
Edited 2008-08-29 06:33 UTC
While that is on the surface a sweet deal it’s not the whole story.
You do not get any virus or spam protection with the Exchange CAL’s or with Exchange but you have to pay extra for that and it may come at quite a price. Then there’s of course the cost of Exchange itself and the cost of the Windows server license and as a company you also want a support contract for Exchange. None of this is cheap.
I’m not saying that Zimbra is the sweetest deal on planet earth but just comparing the cost of the Exchange CALs to the Zimbra licenses isn’t an accurate cost comparsion.
“I’m not saying that Zimbra is the sweetest deal on planet earth but just comparing the cost of the Exchange CALs to the Zimbra licenses isn’t an accurate cost comparsion.”
True enough, so along with Zimbra go the cost of the server and the RHEL/SLES support license. So if we want to compare, we still can, and is still more expensive. I prefer to deploy CentOS where possible as a server myself, but the fact of the matter for anything truly mission critical, like email, the bosses want to see the support contract. If there is not 24/7 phone support, whether it is ever used or not, you can bet if something *does* happen you may not have a job.
Really? Based on what numbers? Did you add AV cost? Anti-spam cost?
True enough. Since I am the boss I do want to see support contracts although the exact nature of it does depend on what in-house skills you have and how critical email is to operations.
“Really? Based on what numbers? Did you add AV cost? Anti-spam cost?”
Anti-spam is free and at no cost with Spamassin. Always use a *nix box to do that work before passing it onto Exchange. ClamAV running on the *nix machine is free, though on Exchange the AV is roughly $300 for 2 years.
“True enough. Since I am the boss I do want to see support contracts although the exact nature of it does depend on what in-house skills you have and how critical email is to operations.”
Unfortunately that is rare these days. Since everyone has a computer at home, they claim to *know* what needs to be done, especially the bean counters.
Email is a critical service anywhere these days, since almost all business is conducted through it for a business. If email goes down, heads role, even with a planned outage.
What, you use software without support contracts for your mission critical mail? What about the cost for the extra server(s) you need?
If your business can’t operate without email for a shorter period you’re doing it wrong and I sure as hell will not fire anyone for a planned outage.
“anything truly mission critical, like email”
Har, har.
Sorry – this still cracks me up. I’m a systems/network admin at a service provider, so I realize that, apart from connectivity, our two major customer facing services are DNS and email, but it still makes me chuckle when I see the words “critical” and “email” in the same sentence. Maybe I’m just jaded, but to me, “critical” means SCADA or life support, not 50x forwarded Dilbert cartoons.
Sorry for the digression – carry on.
I have to agree. The web client is damn slow, even on a “normal” computer. It’s almost unusable.
Same problem here. It uses huge amounts of resources.
When I see people recommend Zimbra, I wonder if they even used it.
When I see people saying the web client is damn slow and near unusable I wonder if they even used it.
I and almost everyone else here use it every day and damn slow and unusable it is not.
Indeed, we are using it here too with no problems regarding speed.
And on _really_ slow machines you can always switch to the html interface anyway.
>1) web ui is sluggish and slow, and the “desktop” client is an entire webapp server distribution etc. WAY WAY hefty.
>2) Its built on common unix mailers and packages etc (yeah I guess it could be a positive and a negative, however I consider it mostly a negative)
You must be refering to the use of postfix, the more modern, faster, easy-to-administer, and secure alternative to sendmail. I think postfix is a far better than MTA functionality of exchange. There is the added advantage that any scripts I had for postfix can be used with Zimbra.
>3) Licensing and pricing is f–king out of control.
This seems like FUD to me, I have seem the pricing they offered a local school for the network ed. (comes with 24/7 support) and it was very good.
You are forgetting it is opensource, my company pays nothing. Since each member of the zimbra stack (which are by no means exotic), as well zimbra itself have large communites, the organization with a competent UNIX staff does not necessarily require the network ed.
>4) Configs, startup scripts are fragile as hell, and the server would eat resources until ultimately it’d stop accepting connections.
I have found the setup robust and have never seen this kind of problems on my servers, so I am inclined to consider user(-admin) error as a factor here.
>5) Load balancing, Backup procedures etc are assinine, even for the commercially supported version.
I wrote my own backup solution for the community ed. so I can’t comment on that. But in my experience a zimbra server can handle many times the load of an exchange server.
Can you imagine what managing postfix is like for someone who has been a windows jockey their entire career? It’s no surprise at all to me that exchange admins wouldn’t care for it. I’ll admit that I worked on sendmail for years before ever touching postfix, and do find postfix to be a better alternative for security and scalability, but I have yes to see/understand the “easier to manage” aspects of it. As far as I’m concerned, both are equally as confusing. And yes, I’m down and dirty on the CLI with vim, not using some gui frontend for either.
Edited 2008-08-29 14:39 UTC
It’s obvious you have never used Zimbra.
You don’t have to manage postfix, everything (except if you WANT to go hardcore) is managed with a web interface. No CLI or vim skills required.
whole only 1 of these 3 are open source there are extrememly cheap alternatives:
Mdaemon: Version 10 is great and affordable and every easy to use and full featured.
http://www.altn.com/Products/MDaemon-Email-Server-Windows/
MailEnable Standard Edition: Free and very feature packed, version 3.5 is great. there are also paid versions with more features. http://www.mailenable.com/
Last and cetainly not least hMailServer: Version 5 (now in beter) absolutly rocks and this IS Open Source. http://www.hmailserver.com/?page=frontpage
all of these are capable to rivaling exchange, and 1 is open source and runs multi platform. There are options out there. you jsut have ot know where to look. as far as TRUE OSS goes nothing Zimbra would be the closest for me. the newer version 5 releases are much less memory hogs (still an issue though) and are fairly easy to set up and configure. the new desktop client is also sha[ing up nicely.
in other fun news Cisco just bought PostPath (an exchange alternative for linux). more details here:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2224887/cisco-guns-exchange
Edited 2008-08-28 18:27 UTC
Another good (although not open source) alternative is Kerio MailServer. It’s cross platform and it doesn’t matter what mail client you want to use.
actualy thats a really good point out. I forgot abotu that (which is interesteing since i used it for 3 years) but ya http://www.kerio.com/kms_home.html is great.
another vote for MDaemon
Incredibly quick, very lean on memory and processor (i.e. practically any computer will work as a quick server). Very stable with lots of functionaility.
I know it costs money but it really is a good system.
Obviously Open Source can replace Exchange as an email server quite easily. First SMTP, POP3 and then IMAP4 have made it possible.
To viably replace the contact, to do and meeting functionality, we need standards for those. And since 2007 we have them: CalDAV, GroupDAV and soon CardDAV. And its growing, quickly. Thanks to Apple’s iCal.app the majority of alternative server vendors (whether Zimbra, Google, ScalableOGo …) are adding CalDAV support, given the user a broad choice.
With the growing server support, we get growing client support. iCal.app got everything running, Mozilla Lightning is in the works, and CalDAV connectors for Outlook are also nearing completion.
A bit of luck, and we finally get a really open environment, not an Exchange alternative which locks in the user at almost the same degree.
While Groupwise is neither free nor open source it’s a very viable alternative to Outlook and Exchange.
With that said. The Groupwise client is free. Maybe some of these backend systems should at least consider creating some interoperability with it. It’s a good front end client that work with Windows and Suse Linux (that’s a con).
***
On a side note. I think e-mail is handled quite nicely by a number of backends and clients. That’s not really in question I don’t think. The problem is the calendars and contacts and such.
“It’s a good front end client that work with Windows and Suse Linux (that’s a con).”
Ermm..how is working with Windows and Linux a con? Cross platform is a good thing, so this statement confused me.
I think he was implying Suse Linux is bad due to the “evil” Novell and their agreement with Microsoft.
But groupwise is a Novell product so that still doesn’t make sense…
It’s not supposed to make sense if they are complaining about the Novell, MS deal. No argument for or against really does.
off topic discussion
End
The con is that it only works with Suse Linux. They don’t provide or support Groupwise (backend or client) for any other Linux distro.
PostPath for Exchange server.
http://www.linux.com/feature/146451
“from the network and Windows PC’s viewpoint, PostPath actually appears to be an Exchange server.”
Maybe OpenChange will get there also, but it hasn’t announced a release yet.
http://www.openchange.org/
Samba and CUPs for file and print servers.
http://www.howtoforge.com/running-a-file-and-print-server-with-ebox…
Alfresco as a replacement for Sharepoint:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/073108-alfresco-open-source-s…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10004398-16.html
Active Directory replacement (Likewise or just Samba4 by itself):
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,s…
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Likewise-Extends-Act…
LAMP stack on your Linux servers. Squid for proxy. MySQL, PostgreSQL or Firebird for SQL database server.
Freedom from CALs!
Compatible with existing Windows client machines, and will also integrate Linux desktop machines.
Just to clarify something mentioned in the parent..
Likewise is *not* a replacement, it actually brings your non-Windows systems *into* Active Directory. The free version is very limited, it is not much more than an automation for samba+keberos+pam+nsswitch setup tasks, which is nice.. until it breaks..
If I decide to join a Linux box to AD, I usually just do it manually.. or if the customer insists, I set it up using NIS/NIS+ & AD.
Just to clarify your clarification … wouldn’t it be possible to use Samba 4 as the replacement for Active Directory, and in addition use Likewise to manage it?
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/New-Samba-targets-Active-…
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,s…
http://www.likewisesoftware.com/products/
Sure, but Likewise Enterprise ain’t OSS and that’s what you need to manage the AD.
That’s good, but there are several problems:
1) Lots of vendors
2) probably poor support – you might have to pay for Microsoft support, but it is VERY good
3) lots of different applications from different vendors will almost certainly lead to it being a biatch to maintain.
Far easier to use one vendor imho.
Dave
I’ve just deployed a citadel box to a client who needed a fast email server, but utilized a CRM tool that had a built in pop3 client. Anyone else not using the CRM tool would just use Outlook or Outlook Express.
But, in the future, I will probably switch to Zimbra, providing the hardware purchased is quite large. Why Zimbra? Because of the desktop client.
To really create an exchange killer, you’re going to need a server like citadel or zimbra, and a very good desktop client.
Many will say that you still need to support Outlook. I say this is rubbish. I’ve seen it with several clients who were forced to use built in pop3/imap clients in a CRM tool. The switch from Outlook went well. It can be done, users can be trained.
You know, I was going to reply saying how unimpressive the Desktop client is but then I decided to check out the latest version and …
lo and behold, it’s pretty good. It has improved immensely since I tried it last around 6 months ago.
It still lacks some features we’d like to use though, such as local folders.
IMAP + WebDAV + LDAP + web services in Entourage scares our IT team witless. The amount of work needed for a small number of clients poisons any idea of moving more users off Outlook.
I would like to see Evolution or KMail with the OpenChange connector (let’s hope it’s good) running natively on Windows & Mac. For IT to even entertain the idea, there needs to be a drop-in replacement for Outlook – even Outlook 2001 for Mac would have made a better argument than Entourage, Thunderbird or Mail.app.
Hopefully the GTK+ and QT4/KDE porting efforts will deliver something better than we have now. I’d hope it would encourage Linux adoption too.
Client side:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontact
http://www.kontact.org/
(Windows clients can use Outlook).
Groupware servers:
http://www.kontact.org/groupwareservers.php
http://www.kolab.org/
http://www.citadel.org/doku.php
http://www.egroupware.org/
Lots of FOSS solutions out there, for both the groupware server and the clients.
But my whole point was about not using Outlook. It was about providing Windows & Mac ports of apps like that to ease the transition from Outlook, Exchange and eventually even Windows.
Edited 2008-08-30 22:41 UTC
http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE4+Windows+Port
http://windows.kde.org/
http://windows.kde.org/news.php#itemAnnouncementReleaseofKDE410onWi…
http://www.kolab.org/pipermail/kolab-users/2008-August/008555.html
Maybe soon.
Easily
What does ‘ — mean?
Zimbra, Open-Xchange, PostPath, Scalix, eGroupWare, phpGroupWare, and Citadel.
http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2008082903135OSOO
OpenChange will make eight.
“Maybe the real message is that anyone trying to make sense out of procurement decisions is doomed to frustration.”
Well, yes. there is no real rational basis for anyone choosing MS Exchange any more, at great and on-going expense to their company, but doubtless most will continue to choose MS Exchange, and doubtless most bosses won’t even be aware they are paying through the nose and bleeding funds to MS needlessly.
Edited 2008-08-30 11:42 UTC