ZCS NE and ZCS Community Edition Integration

[kelaneks]

Hi All,

My first post ! Please be gentle

My company has 600 users across the country and 200 of them in HQ.
We ran very native mail server (Postfix+CourierIMAP+Webmail+SASL) and its time for us to switch.

But the budget is a constrains for us. So we plan that out of 600 users 200 of them in HQ is allocated for ZCS NE and the rest we would like to place the user in ZCS Community Edition (CE). I know this is possible for this kind of deployment after some readings somewhere on the net.

In case we would like to have a 2 unit brand new server, we expect 1 box for ZCS NE and another ZCS CE. Both zimbra server should not have any issue for calendar sync, authentication, documents I believe.

So anyone out there have any experience on this kind of setup mind to share ?

What bothers me much is how those 2 server talk each other ?
What to configure ? GAL access ? Authentication ? How about mail routing ? How about login for users which is not in server A but in server B ?

Lots of those things running on my mind now, hope someone shed some light.

Thanks.

[kelaneks]

and if anyone could possibly share any issue or limitations doing this kind of setup is most welcome.

[catnipper]

I am not an expert on this, but I also plan to work with both editions as an custom archiving solution.

1. I guess using Proxy services to have a unique interface might be a good idea in your case. This should allow to run identical domains on different servers. The proxy will the decide from which server to get the mailbox.
2. As far as I can see both editions use the same LDAP structure - using a single LDAP might also be a good idea.

There was so far only one issue I did not yet follow up: I was having trouble with external authentication on the community edition having multiple domains on the server.

Hope this will give you some ideas where to start!

Unfortunately I have no experience with Multi-Server Environments and how calendar sharing etc. works in such cases. But I will certainly follow up this interesting topic/conversation!

[raj]

@kelaneks
You can read the solution and details i gave to another user.
you can assume instead of 2 servers in 2 countries..you have 2 boxes sitting next to each other
they can be NE + OSS or OSS + OSS

Multi-country secondary servers

let me know if this is you trying to achive.

Raj

[kelaneks]

Hi Raj and Catnipper,

Thanks for the reply and suggestion.

So intergration between FOSS + ZCS NE still have the flaw.

Calendars should be working fine according to Raj how-to but briefcase, documents and task will it work as well for both system ?

GAL should be working both server as we can set the search using Both internal and external.

Any other idea's and thought ?

Thanks.

[Klug]

My feeling about this is that you'll spend a lot of time (= money) trying to get this to work with NE+OSE and to support the glitches of the solution.
You have to add the cost of "double hardware" too (and no backup and no HSM for OSE).

I'm quite sure it's cheaper to build a single server and buy the licences.

[LMStone]

My feeling about this is that you'll spend a lot of time (= money) trying to get this to work with NE+OSE and to support the glitches of the solution.
You have to add the cost of "double hardware" too (and no backup and no HSM for OSE).

I'm quite sure it's cheaper to build a single server and buy the licences.

Absolutely agree!

It's important in these kinds of analyses to include all of the costs associated with NOT choosing NE over FOSS, and certainly the lack of seamless backups/easy restores and mobile integration can be significant.

Hope that helps,
Mark