Doubts about a few components: apache, webproxy, proxy

[nublaii]

Hi there

I have been reading the docs and different posts I've found on the forum about these things, but I still have some doubts about a few components of the zimbra install. Anyone care to explain a little more in detail?

- apache: what is it for? my understanding is that the spellchecker is the only thing that uses it, so why offer it as a separate component?

- imap/pop3 proxy: this is only useful on multiserver deployments, but as far as I understand it takes off the load of authentication from the store servers, as well as offering a single point of entrance... is it only useful on a multi store-server installation?

- webproxy: what is this exactly for? is this for security? or for load balancing?

Seconda part: I guess my question can be easily made with an example:

With 2 servers

- one acting as mta and facing the internet
- the other one with contains the store, mta, spellcheck/apache and ldap

Does it make sense for a small multiserver install like this to use any of those proxying technologies?

[brian]

In your scenario you could deploy a webproxy on your mta host and give it a name like webmail.company.com. The benefit of this is that if you add an additional mailstore in the future you don't have to shuffle hostnames and communicate multiple server names to your endusers, you'd just maintain the single hostname.