Using existing email infrastructure?

[prescor]

We are evaluating Zimbra (along with several other products) as a replacement for Meeting Maker. While we are looking chiefly at the Calendar aspects Zimbra has to offer, one can not deny the attractiveness of having "everything" in one place: email, addresses, and calendar. We have never been nor are we ever likely to be a location that runs Outlook/Exchange.

I have downloaded and successfully installed the Open Source version of Zimbra. I quickly discovered how to have accounts authenticate against our campus LDAP server. And the calendar features seem to have everything we are looking for.

However, we are NOT looking to abandon either our existing LDAP server or our existing MTA (qmail) infrastructure, both of which have been highly customized. Thus, if we went with Zimbra we would want Zimbra to use the existing LDAP directory and MTA infrastructures.

Is this even possible? Can Zimbra be configured to "point" to another directory and to reference an already-existing IMAP serer and NOT retain its own data store?

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by prescor

Is this even possible? Can Zimbra be configured to "point" to another directory and to reference an already-existing IMAP serer and NOT retain its own data store?

This has been covered many times in the forums and the answer is no, you can't split out components. Zimbra is a complete Collaboration Suite with all the components tightly integrated. You could use your external LDAP for authentication but you can't replace the MTA in Zimbra with another MTA.

[gettyless]

Can you do something like a Split Domain - Zimbra :: Wiki but not migrate your users to zimbra? i.e. put zimbra as primary MTA, forward all mail from zimbra to your existing qmail box, where you do this for every zimbra account:

zmprov ma bar@zimbra.example.com zimbraMailTransport smtp:qmail.example.com:25

Then for calendaring users either -
* go to the zimbra web interface
* point Lightning (or whatever iCal client) to zimbra

..and email remains intact?