NEW POLL: What OS port should be next?

[KevinH]

Thanks Daniel, While we have a couple customers who've asked for Solaris the majority aren't. That said Solaris is something we'd like to support but with the current interest level in near term customers so low it's just not a priority. Many of us here at Zimbra have spent more time deploying apps on Solaris than any other OS so it's not a technical challenge as much as the interest from near-term prospective customers.

[daimer77]

But, in some ways I guess we are also talking the Hen and Egg problem. Which of them did arrive in the first place If You start out with a Solaris Port more people would consider it a solution for the Company/Case. But as long as Solaris does not offer that kind of option, nobody pays attetion to this great opportunity.

Well I just mean, that I understand the main interest comes from opensource interested guys like me. Most of them has adopted Linux as the primary OS for daily use. Since Solaris was opensourced one year ago it has not yet gained the same status as "the peoples" OS like Linux had.

It is growing in popularity, and after openening the source more and more start to download it for personal use. Also due to the fact, that in many companies it is a clear advantage to know Solaris as an IT proffesional, so students and young people starts to play with Solaris just to prepare themsleves and be ready for the "real life".

Solaris is mainly deployed in very proffessional environments so I find it a natural effect that You don't see many Solaris folks messing around here voting for Solaris and so on.

I know I sound a bit obstinate, but I really do believe Zimbra on Solaris would be the MS exchange killer everbody has been waiting for in a decade.

Since I am already involved in several projects I put the Solaris migration on hold myself, also because I am not experienced in packaging up Solaris software. But as soon as I get some space in my schedule I will happily grab the challenge myself.

Another way around, could be waiting for Solaris to run XEN dom0, and then deploy a Debian or Redhat as domU (guest OS) on it.

Only time will show which option wins the race

BTW: Happy birthday Kew - nice pic there... he he

- Best regards, Daniel Mersebak

[mcleung]

I strongly give a vote to Solaris port too.

I totally agree that porting Zimbra to Solaris will help Zimbra to establish good business opportunity in enterprise market.

of course, as stated in many post, we could build from source as we wish.

however, in Enterprise market sector, a good offical support is the key to success. without the endorsement from zimbra, this is no way to sell zimbra in existing solaris environment at all. no way!

pls support solaris for both (x86 and sparc) thanks.

[sparcdr]

I'd like to add that SPARC should and will generally be the first target for the Solaris port. A good example is Macromedia Flash, Sun Studio, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Java, and Realplayer, which all except Acroread are available on both x86 and SPARC architectures. The majority of Sun customers buy SPARC because Sun fine tunes their SPARC systems before they fine tune their lower end entry level Opterons. The performance across the board when running Sun if you know what you are doing is truely a killer to Exchange. Because the creator of Java who embodies and extends the vision of Java has influence on the development of Java, it generally is more scalable and faster on their own systems.

This arguement has been proven time and time again when people ask why Apple during their life with PowerPC and hardware manufacturing was even a good solution. The main concept is that the vendor makes the hardware and software, and deliver the most tuned and most economical for the price solution. Apples to Oranges if you are comparing the cost of say a Sun support option to near zero policy with Linux. Because Sun explicitly has targetted the enterprise over the last two decades, and is now coming to the people at a slow pace, ISPs, the government, and people with mission critical needs chose Sun. This isn't necessarily about Linux or BSD or the prevalence of Open-Source oriented software in mission critical environments, but the established security and backing is what people buy. Because Zimbra is a drop in replacement for Exchange, which is used by huge enterprises for some reason or another, it'd be beneficial for Zimbra Inc. to first port to SPARC so that they could leverage a great product on a great well established platform with a large array of corporate backing and high-end customers running multi-thousand user loads concurrently on load-redundant clusters and leased or virtualized grids, such as Sun Grid.

Zimbra does offer the source code and GA releases of their product, which are actually quite functional considering. I'd personally try copies of the community and enterprise versions of the next beta officially available for the site on my dual UltraSPARC system. The next port naturally would be one of the BSDs in my own opinion because the number of datacenters supporting and implementing it. Long story short, get in contact by viewing my profile if you want a Sun customer and Sun supporter, IE. me, to try your next port of Zimbra. Thank you, and have a good day!

[Tomas]

I agree with Zaf...

Corporate organizations will have one of two scenarios. If they pay for Linux, they will be RH. If they don't pay for Linux they have the expertise to compile on their own.

I'd love a Debian release, because that is what I prefer (free and easy). But I am willing to compile on my own so the developers can concentrate on features instead of platforms. Don't we want Zimbra to be more "feature-rich"?

In fact, die-hard users can create platform packages as they have with Debian. I can download and install a Debian package today if I want to accept the options that are compiled by the person that submitted the Debian package.

I choose to do it myself... That's just the way I am.

BTW- I just voted for Debian even though I compiled it myself.

Tomas, Ph.D.

[webguyinternet]

Just going through the discussion board it looks like people want some 64-bit versions of the binaries. Even a RHE 64-bit would probably help. I know that I am going to have to drop down to 32-bit on my box to run Z.

Especially now with the big push for dual core processors by manufacturers since they can't seem to get the Mhz up any higher.

[raraki]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Thanks Daniel, While we have a couple customers who've asked for Solaris the majority aren't. That said Solaris is something we'd like to support but with the current interest level in near term customers so low it's just not a priority. Many of us here at Zimbra have spent more time deploying apps on Solaris than any other OS so it's not a technical challenge as much as the interest from near-term prospective customers.

Kevin,

I agree with the need to be customer driven; so here I am with my push for Solaris (either Sparc or x64). At our (small) company we are fully embracing the thin-client concept from replacing Outlook with Zimbra, to replacing PC's with SunRay's.

thanks,
Ricardo

[brwatters]

I would think CentOS 4.x would be the next OS to port to or confirm working as its a direct off shoot of REDHAT ES4 and is of Enterprise grade ..

BRW

[KevinH]

First 64bit build is posted:

http://www.zimbra.com/forums/announcements/3610-zcs-64bit-support.html#post20507

[lpe397]

As most Linux folks Know CentOS is just a source compiled, binary compatible, version of RHEL 4. However, there are hiccups in the install, and it would be nice to have true support for the Network Edition of Zimbra so that some of us small businesses can save some $$.