Correct server shutdown technique

[nufan]

hi there, sorry if this sounds like a stupid question. Since I have taken over administering our Zimbra server I have not had to reboot it once though. I have a hardware issue (have to replace some faulty RAM) and am needing to shut it down. I am just curious what you guys recommend for the correct shutdown procedure. Eg. should I do zmcontrol stop, then shutdown as normal, replace the RAM, switch on computer, then do I need to do zmcontrol start or will services start automatically? Are there any other tips so that mail won't get lost in the short time I have the server down?

Cheers for any help, running on an Intel OSX 10.4

[soxfan]

Not sure about OSX, but on a Linux install the Zimbra services would typically be stopped and started during a server shutdown / startup. It probably wouldn't hurt to do the 'zmcontrol stop' prior to the shutdown. After restarting you could always double-check to make sure Zimbra is started by running 'zmcontrol status'.

Unfortunately unless you have some sort of edge MTA or your ISP provides some type of store-and-forward email service I don't know of any way to guarantee that you won't lose messages during the down time. You would hope that most sending email servers would have some type of retry mechanism setup.