Any had success in Virtual Hosting?

[Unfor]

Just checking to see if anyone ha had success instaling this app in a linux/Cpanel/WHM type virtual hosting invironment. I have a rather beefy virtual hosting account that I would love to try this on.

If anyone has instaled and got it running, could you post some of the problems or issue you mght have run accross?

Thanks,

[KevinH]

It might be possible but you'd need root shell access and would need to disable cpanel and it's friends.

[OxnardMontalvo]

Originally Posted by Unfor

Just checking to see if anyone ha had success installing this app in a linux/Cpanel/WHM type virtual hosting environment. I have a rather beefy virtual hosting account that I would love to try this on.

Thanks,

I've got a server that I run as a Virtual host w/DirectAdmin as the CP. I have looked at Zimbra after installing it on one of my test boxes. As much as my clients would love o have something like this, it is not compatible with a virtual hosted server, even if installed by the admin. IMHO, it would be next to impossible to install this if you were not root on the box.

The only way to deploy in that type of environment would be to install on a separate box and run it as the mail server for all the domains. Even then, since it's outside of the control of your CP, you couldn't setup email accounts, etc form your CP but would have to do that from Zimbra. And since there is no concept of 'domain level admins' in Zimbra, anyone you setup as an admin would be able to admin all domains on the box. (bad mojo)

Not blaming Zimbra for any of this, it just wasn't designed for this type of environment.

IMHO, etc.
=C=

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by OxnardMontalvo

Even then, since it's outside of the control of your CP, you couldn't setup email accounts, etc form your CP but would have to do that from Zimbra. And since there is no concept of 'domain level admins' in Zimbra, anyone you setup as an admin would be able to admin all domains on the box. (bad mojo)

Zimbra will support delagated admin in the upcoming Network release. This will allow you to specify a admin for some or all of your domains. I think this would address you ISP or service provider type use case.

[OxnardMontalvo]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Zimbra will support delagated admin in the upcoming Network release. This will allow you to specify a admin for some or all of your domains. I think this would address you ISP or service provider type use case.

Kevin,

Yes, that would address some of it and I just read that in another thread. However, CP and DirectAdmin (and all other CPs that I am aware of) like to install their own web and mail services in a very specific way so that they can manage it. It is my opinion that it would be very difficult if not impossible to make Zimbra work in a shared hosting environment.

IMHO, etc.
=C=

[linksavage]

That's what my shared host admin told me too.

[andreychek]

Originally Posted by OxnardMontalvo

Yes, that would address some of it and I just read that in another thread. However, CP and DirectAdmin (and all other CPs that I am aware of) like to install their own web and mail services in a very specific way so that they can manage it. It is my opinion that it would be very difficult if not impossible to make Zimbra work in a shared hosting environment.

Indeed, this is true of many control panels. Further, I can't speak to any of the commercial ones, which I have no experience with, but many shared hosts use.

However, it is my full intention to install Zimbra in a shared hosting environment, and I am confident that it can be done.

I am currently pursuing webmin and virtualmin for this. They allow you to disable modules, such as the ones for email.

If you stopped there, you could just have two control panels... one for handling email (Zimbra), and another for handling everything else (Webmin). That would work the very day the Network Zimbra is released, with no additional effort.

But I don't think you have to stop there.

Webmin is modular, and has instructions for building add on modules. Further, the ability for Zimbra to add users is trivial to do from the command line. Together, I think this means that building a Webmin module for handling Zimbra would not be all that hard.

So, it is my intention to do so :-) I may not be able to help with Zimbra itself, as I don't know Java. But I do know Perl, what Webmin is written in, and I think we can make a useful Zimbra module there that would work well in a shared hosting environment.
-Eric

[raj]

Hi..it all depends..if you don’t know how your CP system can give you custom hooks to call external scripts or API to use ZMPROV then its difficult.
We have our own custom in house Control Panel system managing wide range of sofwares..once Zimbra is in production we plan to hook it up to our CP.

As long as Zimbra is providing SOAP API to create and manage stuff you will see these CP companies integrating, as zimbra is more promising than the small email server software’s many CP's support

Just my opinion
Raj S Vrach

[wsk]

Eric, Raj,

I am considering getting something like a virtualmin+zimbra setup going. I see from the thread that you were looking at the same too a while ago. Were you able to make any headway here? Or did you find another solution that works?

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience.

Kannan

Originally Posted by andreychek

Indeed, this is true of many control panels. Further, I can't speak to any of the commercial ones, which I have no experience with, but many shared hosts use.

However, it is my full intention to install Zimbra in a shared hosting environment, and I am confident that it can be done.

I am currently pursuing webmin and virtualmin for this. They allow you to disable modules, such as the ones for email.

If you stopped there, you could just have two control panels... one for handling email (Zimbra), and another for handling everything else (Webmin). That would work the very day the Network Zimbra is released, with no additional effort.

But I don't think you have to stop there.

Webmin is modular, and has instructions for building add on modules. Further, the ability for Zimbra to add users is trivial to do from the command line. Together, I think this means that building a Webmin module for handling Zimbra would not be all that hard.

So, it is my intention to do so :-) I may not be able to help with Zimbra itself, as I don't know Java. But I do know Perl, what Webmin is written in, and I think we can make a useful Zimbra module there that would work well in a shared hosting environment.
-Eric

[raj]

Yes..we did integrate zimbra into our shared and dedicated hosting system using its API's its very much possible.
i posted some screenshots of it
Moral Question - Imail Migration Tool & OSS Zimbra Admin

I hope internally we can agree on releasing the "Delegated Admin" part of our CP to zimbra open source. Its lot of work to create a stand alone admin as our CP had most of skeleton of everything we just integrated the zimbra part in it.

Raj