Installing Zimbra 7.0 (ZCS) on an EC2 instance

[elijahpaul]

Finally managed to get ZCS 7.0 running on an EC2 instance, with the help of this forum.

Installing Zimbra 7.0 (ZCS) on an EC2 instance | Elijah Paul

Would appreciate any feedback or thoughts?

Eli

[fruitloaf]

Its a nice guide and pretty much what I've done to get Zimbra working on EC2. Two points though.
Firstly you probably don't need all those firewall ports open. I would only open what you need and I find there are very few cases now where you shouldn't only use the SSL version of a protocol.
You haven't mentioned changing the hostname or the fact that when you have to reboot the machine you need to update all the IP addresses as your private IP (and possibly your public one if you haven't reserved one) will change.

I have a document somewhere with what I update on a reboot and I'll see if I can find it.

[fruitloaf]

Here it is

    * Edit /etc/bind/db. to reflect the new IP address. Increment the serial no.
    * Edit /etc/hosts to reflect the new IP 

sudo nano /etc/hosts

    * Restart bind 

sudo /etc/init.d/bind9 restart

    * Stop the Zimbra server 

sudo su - zimbra -c "/opt/zimbra/bin/zmcontrol stop"

    * Restart Zimbra 

sudo su - zimbra -c "/opt/zimbra/bin/zmcontrol start"

[elijahpaul]

Hey,

Thanks for the tips. I'll update the guide with your recommendations.

I think you can update the /etc/rc.local file with the hostname info to prevent it being lost on reboot.

That document would be great. I'm wondering if the required private IP address updates could be automated and enclosed into a boot script.

Thanks again for your feedback.

[elijahpaul]

Just seen your post.

That's great. Will include this on the guide.

[elijahpaul]

Also found that you need to remove the following line from the /etc/resolv.conf file to allow Zimbra to route incoming mail properly.

search ec2.internal

[elijahpaul]

Seems that the some people had issues with the ec2 dhcp client overwriting the resolv.conf file configuration:

Here's a possible resolution:

Edit the /etc/dhclient.conf file (create one if it doesn’t exist) to look like the following:

supersede domain-name "yourdomain.com" ;
prepend domain-name-servers xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx ;my internal EC2 IP address

Where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx represents your EC2′s internal IP address (e.g. 10.x.x.x)

Next, run the following command to force the changes (if need be).

$ dhclient -r ; dhclient

After doing this, check your /etc/resolv.conf file to ensure the changes have indeed been made.

The resolv.conf settings should now remain permanent, and persist during normal daily operation of your Zimbra server.

full tutorial: Updated: Installing Zimbra 7.0 (ZCS) on an EC2 instance | Elijah Paul