Multi-country secondary servers

[rajeshkodali]

Hi,

I am looking at deploying multiple secondary servers in two different countries and I want those country users to use these servers. I want to know exactly what servers are to be installed on those servers.

I think that I need:

1. Zimbra LDAP secondary server
2. Mail store
3. Need to change POP3 and IMAP to POP3/IMAP proxy

My doubt is with the MTA part of it. Should the existing server (Primary server) handle all MTA traffic??

Are there any best practices or any others users in this forum have implemented this solution ?? Please help ....

[rajeshkodali]

Can any one respond Pls ??

[raj]

can you please explain in more deatil your network or business topology for your required solution, there are many complex or simple ways to do this.

if your users are using "a" serve per country then its not "secondary"..so please explain?

Do you want 1 integrated domain where users can do Collboration Across Country or you want independet servers in each country for the SAME DOMAIN but different users and so on. ?

How many domains or users you will have?

What version of Zimbra u will be using NE or OSS ?

more deatiled information you will provide the better, your orignal Q is very loose in requirements and no one here replying coz there can be so many solutions..

Raj

[rajeshkodali]

Hi,

I am using ZCS OSS V.5.0.14. The requirement is

I have around 200 users in the present server. Most of the users use IMAP. There is huge latency for users in US and UK ti get the IMAP sync. So I wanted the mailboxes of US users to be moved to servers in those office locations.

So now I am looking at an optimized solution so that the transition can be smoother.

[Klug]

If you're using IMAP, you don't need ZCS.
I know it's a bit rude, but it's true...

ZCS is designed to be centralized and setting up several servers in several contries (that means at least mailbox, ldap-replica and mta per country) using the same domain will lead into issues (I saw people unable to login in one country because the server of another country was down).

Wouldn't it be possible to have a central server but hosted in a place (country) that has good connectivity for everyone (and not excellent connectivity locally and bad connectivity abroad) ?

[rajeshkodali]

Hi,

It's true to keep a server at centralised location. I am looking at something that MTA will be centralised but only mailboxes are decentralised.

[raj]

Assumptions:
You’re Company Domain: YOURDOMAIN.COM
Total Users: 200 [1-100 in COUNTRY1 and 101-200 in COUNTRY 2]
Logical:
- Full collaboration (CALANDERS) only between single country users
- All users can see GAL list
- Emails can be sent to any user under the domain from any country
- Emails can be received by any user in any country thru MX
- Some Admin is maintaining the creations of users and settings required when a user is added or deleted

MX [COUNTRY WITH GOOD CONNECTIVITY 24X7] can be 2 in number in diff countries
- Full Zimbra Install (core apache ldap logger mta snmp spell store)
- HOSTNAME: MX.YOURDOMAIN.COM
- CREATE DOMAIN: YOURDOMAIN.COM
- CREATE ALL 200 USERS [Passwords don’t need to know to users..so create strong random ones]
- NEED TO FWD EMAIL FOR EACH USER TO RESPECTIVE COUNTRY: Command line code below
zmprov ma user1@domain.com zimbraMailTransport smtp:MAIL1.DOMAIN.COM:25
or
zmprov ma user101@domain.com zimbraMailTransport smtp:MAIL2.DOMAIN.COM:25

* With the above setup all email which will arrive on this MX server it will be seamlessly forwarded to the destination country server

MAILBOX [COUNTRY 1]
- Full Zimbra Install (core apache ldap logger mta snmp spell store)
- HOSTNAME: MAIL1.YOURDOMAIN.COM
- WEBMAIL/POP3/SMTP/IMAP Address: MAIL1.YOURDOMAIN.COM [users of this country will use this]
- CREATE DOMAIN: YOURDOMAIN.COM
- CREATE USERS FROM 1-100 [Passwords needs to be know to end user]
- CREATE USERS FROM 101-200 [Passwords don’t need to know to users..so create strong random ones]
- NEED TO FWD EMAIL FOR ALL MAIL2/COUNTRY2 USERS TO RESPECTIVE COUNTRY: Command line code below
zmprov ma user101@domain.com zimbraMailTransport smtp:MAIL2.DOMAIN.COM:25

* Outgoing mail for MAIL1 will be delivered locally
* Outgoing mail for MAIL2 will be forwarded to MAIL2 server directly

MAILBOX [COUNTRY 2]
- Full Zimbra Install (core apache ldap logger mta snmp spell store)
- HOSTNAME: MAIL1.YOURDOMAIN.COM
- WEBMAIL/POP3/SMTP/IMAP Address: MAIL2.YOURDOMAIN.COM [users of this country will use this]
- CREATE DOMAIN: YOURDOMAIN.COM
- CREATE USERS FROM 101-200 [Passwords needs to be know to end user]
- CREATE USERS FROM 1-100 [Passwords dont need to know to users..so create strong random ones]
- NEED TO FWD EMAIL FOR ALL MAIL1/COUNTRY1 USERS TO RESPECTIVE COUNTRY: Command line code below
zmprov ma user1@domain.com zimbraMailTransport smtp:MAIL1.DOMAIN.COM:25

* Outgoing mail for MAIL2 will be delivered locally
* Outgoing mail for MAIL1 will be forwarded to MAIL1 server directly


* When you create user you need to create it on ALL 3 server and do the correct settings
* When you delete user you need to delete it from ALL 3 servers
* don’t keep Orphan Users in MX which will bouce back from MAIL1 or MAIL2
* Technically speaking you can have all 3 servers listed as mx servers for maximum redundancy
IN MX 10 mx.domain.com.
IN MX 20 mail1.domain.com.
IN MX 30 mail2.domain.com.

Volla!! you have "one way" of setting up stuff you want. there can be few more ways..but this one works for sure

In real life i take lot of money to tell someone this..lol..but in the spirit of open source and zimbra..here you go

Raj

[brian]

I've been meaning to document this on the wiki for sometime. This is essentially how Zimbra runs it's corp email system although our motivation is slightly different.

We have 2 distinct ZCS systems for the zimbra.com domain with a shared MTA infrastructure. The MTA's are configured to look at both systems and deliver messages to the appropriate mailstore.

This allows us to maintain a system with a stable ZCS release for our sales, support and other staff with a second system runs our bleeding edge release and contains accounts for our engineering and QA teams.

There are a couple caveats.
1. can not share calendars/folders between systems.
2. delivery addresses (accounts, aliases, lists) can only exists on one of the systems.

I'll attempt to document the details in a wiki when I get a chance. The short version is all the mail routing is handled on the mta's by creating custom delivery maps that reference both systems master ldap.

[rajeshkodali]

Hi Raj..

Thank you for the answer.. I was also thinking to implement the same way. And you really helped me a lot. Now I'll see how I can implement this and get back to you guys with results

Brain I am looking for a wiki in Zimbra website, This would make more users understand Zimbra's true multi-site capabilities

[srini]

Hi,

I configured this and it is working quite well.

But our users are expecting to use one common URL for web access (instead of mail1.yourdomain.com and mail2.yourdomain.com) while retaining all of the split domain functionality.

I thought about it quite a lot, but have no clue how this can be achieved.

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Regards
Srini