OS Requirements for Network Edition

[mrichard]

Hello,

We're looking at Zimbra to possibly replace our postfix/cyrus setup to add collaboration capabilities. We'd also need to sync cals and contacts with outlook, so we'd need Network Edition.

I was looking at the requirements document and it listed _only_ RH Enterprise for Network Edition. Is it the only option ? Is it regarding support or is it a technical issue (beyond Network Edition not coming with a LDAP package from what we can see so far). Can we do Network Ed on Fedora Core?

We're building the business case, comparing all costs between going for Exchange or for Zimbra.. Of course RHES is a cost to consider.

Thanks !

[KevinH]

As you noted we currently only support the Network edition on Red Hat. This simplifies support on our side and let's us ensure the Network Edition is well tested with the under lying OS. One technical issue is that in multi-server cluster deployments we use Red Hat's cluster suite. In the future we do plan to expand the supported OS's for the Network Edition. As you can see we already ship the OSS version on several other OS's including Fedora.

As for LDAP the Network Edition includes this just like all the OSS builds.

[ms2k]

So now that we're almost into December, 2006, I wonder if there is any kind of projection date for releasing Network Edition under Fedora Core. We have been successfully running OSS under Fedora for a while, and would appreciate the extra features of NE. However, there is no current workable upgrade path that I can determine. I tried installing on CentOS and then copying "/opt/zimbra" into it, but it was rejected with massive errors during the "upgrade". Since this method isn't supported anyway, I'd like to just do a straight upgrade and subscription to NE. Any update plans?

As you noted we currently only support the Network edition on Red Hat. This simplifies support on our side and let's us ensure the Network Edition is well tested with the under lying OS. One technical issue is that in multi-server cluster deployments we use Red Hat's cluster suite. In the future we do plan to expand the supported OS's for the Network Edition. As you can see we already ship the OSS version on several other OS's including Fedora.

As for LDAP the Network Edition includes this just like all the OSS builds.

[phoenix]

RHEL & SLES9 are the supported operating systems for Zimbra NE, if you're keen to use NE and it's features then why not set-up another server and move your mail via IMAPSYNC to that? There are some threads on the forums about moving to another o/s of hardware platform.

[ms2k]

IMAPSYNC would clearly work, but I'm sitting on a large number of user accounts and tremendous amounts of messages and address lists. Additionally, any system down-time of significance is lost money for the company. If I knew that NE for Fedora Core won't be released in at least 6 months, I'd probably bite the bullet and do the sync (late on a Saturday night!). But if any plans for an earlier release are projected, my preference is to wait. So I'm just feeling around for any inclinations on such release plans.

[phoenix]

My guess is that it wouldn't be any time soon, the problem is that resources are limited and commercial interests will prevail. You could, if you haven't already, contact sales@zimbra.com and tell them of your interest - I believe they keep count of requests for NE on alternate flavours of linux.

[phoenix]

Oh, I forgot to add that products like SLES and RHEL have support form commercial vendors - other versions don't. So I that means it won't be soon, if at all.