Potential new Zimbra user

[uxbod]

Hi,

First post so please be gentle.

We are currently using a combination of Postfix, MailScanner, Greylisting and RoundCube webmail but I have been looking at Zimbra with interest (especially the Ajax web client).

What I would like to know is whether Zimbra will reside on another port, instead of 25, so that I could continue to use my own Postfix installation with all the goodies I already perform?

Thanks,

[dkarp]

Zimbra is a combined AJAX front end and backend mailstore. I believe that you can run Zimbra's postfix instance on an alternate port, but if mail never hits Zimbra's postfix then it'll never make it into the system. You'd be left with a pretty AJAX UI with no messages in it!

Since Zimbra also uses postfix, why not try integrating your existing MailScanner and Greylisting into Zimbra's postfix?

[KevinH]

Or have your postfix deliver LMTP directly into Zimbra. With this option you'll lose distribution lists as that expansion happens in postfix.

[uxbod]

Dkarp/KevinH,

Many thanks for your replies. I certainly do not want any SPAM being handed over to the Zimbra Postfix daemons hence removing as much as I can prior to Zimbra seeing it.

Also, as we run solely Gentoo Linux I presume we would have to go the Community or SVN edition only ?

TIA

[phoenix]

You'd have to build it yourself, there's no version available for Gentoo.

[uxbod]

Is a more generic package going to be available in the future to support other distros ?

[phoenix]

It's not likely in the short term. Which other distros do you mean?

[uxbod]

64bit releases on other distros. I certainly do not support RedHat's business model, and Suse is a non contender.

Would be great to see Zimbra on a 64bit Ubuntu installation, especially with the LTS in place.

Are there plans to release a version of Zimbra that is not bundled with Postfix, Amavisd, DSPAM etc. ie. just the Ajax client and backend server ?

[phoenix]

The problem is that most users of RHEL & SLES are business customers, the ones who pay the bills, so those versions will get priority.

I'd expectt there will probably be a version for rpath linux (as it's just been used for the virtual appliance) but not soon. As Ubuntu is now a supported platform, I'd expect to see a 64bit version sometime but the 'sometime' is rather flexible. In the long term there are plans to make Zimbra more modular so that components could be updated individually but again the killer is 'long term'.

The problem with providing any of these versions is resources, Zimbra as a company is limited by how much of it's resources it can devote to each version of Linux and the support needs of the product and operating system - not an easy act to accomplish.

[uxbod]

Agreed Bill. The product certainly appears to be the best OSS collaboration suite out at the moment. And I do understand that people's wages have to be met.

I look forward to seeing how Zimbra progresses, and will run with the 32bit for the time being.