Considering migrating to Zimbra from Scalix - questions!

[sparky]

Hi, as the title suggests I'm currently using Scalix on one box for a sub-domain but what I'd really like is to aggrogate the full domain and sub-domain together so that users from say sub.domain.com and users from domain.com can all be put onto one machine.

Discovering this post: [SOLVED] scalix user, looking at zimbra
I decided to ask my own questions! :-)


I know Scalix can definately handle this but since I'm using Postfix on the other system I would really like to bring everything together.

My primary reason for submitting this thread however is that Scalix seems to have left out one highly important feature which is the mail client integration for Linux systems. I have a small setup and am trying to 0 costs (were possible) so basically don't need the extra MS overhead, so I'm moving all my desktop systems over to Linux (CentOS 5.3 to be specific).

Now the Scalix connector for Evolution doesn't seem to support my version and isn't supported by Scalix anyhow as help is very limited infact 0 for my questions as the source seemed to not want to compile.

I have some questions about Zimbra, just to see if it is gona be worth me migrating or sticking with what I have already and just using the Webmail interface of Sclalix.

1. Although reading the post above and doing some Google'ing I haven't worked out yet if it is possible to transfer or convert Scalix users data to Zimbra. - mail, calendar, and contacts

Without MS Outlook!! Otherwise I will need to create a virtual instance in Suns Vbox which is a headache in itself for every single user. Also last time we did that and put everything into CSV files in calendar and contacts information was missing :-(

2. Anti virus and spam support - Scalix supports this although is 3rd party and takes a while to setup. I have done it good information on the WIKI but very fiddly. What's Zimbra's take here, is it integrated or similar principle to Scalix?

3. Encryption support (SSL and TLS), Scalix offers SSL just about withthe use of an external program called tunnel if I remember correctly which tunnels the port from non-secure to secure. Simple but again not integrated into the system.

4. Mail client integration? How easy is it to integrate Zimbra with mail clients? Basically in Linux and also Sun Solaris so that I can sync mail like an MS Outlook Connector but with other clients. I need Contact and Calendar integration aswell as mail. Scalix uses CalDAV which is readonly from Evolution but only for calendar no contacts :-(

I think this might be what I'm looking for: Ajax email client: Open Source collaboration software ????

5. Webmail client? The products page on the main site suggests the Ajax Webmail client. That's part of the Zimbra server package isn't it?

6. The last question for now (there might be others later) is basically if I can use mail from multiple domains? At the moment my Scalix setup is so that the machine is a standalone server but then uses fetchmail to recieve mail from ISP and other POP/IMAP mail boxes and distribute them to each user individually. So currently mail.isp.com account is masked to a particular user so they can send/recieve mail from either ISP or internal account. Is this possible with Zimbra??

[edit]7. One final over looked question! Can all this be done from the Open Source version? And is mail client free also??

That's all the questions I have for now other then checking out the Sun Java Communications suite, but somehow I think that only works with Solaris or Connector for Outlook. Will have to re-read.

Many thanks for any responses!! :-)

[fcash]

Originally Posted by sparky

Hi, as the title suggests I'm currently using Scalix on one box for a sub-domain but what I'd really like is to aggrogate the full domain and sub-domain together so that users from say sub.domain.com and users from domain.com can all be put onto one machine.

Very simple to do with Zimbra.

My primary reason for submitting this thread however is that Scalix seems to have left out one highly important feature which is the mail client integration for Linux systems. I have a small setup and am trying to 0 costs (were possible) so basically don't need the extra MS overhead, so I'm moving all my desktop systems over to Linux (CentOS 5.3 to be specific).

Now the Scalix connector for Evolution doesn't seem to support my version and isn't supported by Scalix anyhow as help is very limited infact 0 for my questions as the source seemed to not want to compile.

There's a Zimbra connector for Evolution, as well, although it is now community developed and supported. Never used it (can't stand Evolution, personally), though.

Zimbra is full standards-compliant, though, so you can access you mail (IMAP/POP3), calendars (iCal), contacts (vCard/LDAP), Tasks (iCal), and Briefcase (WebDAV) from just about any client application.

There's also a standalone Zimbra Desktop client.

And the Web UI is perfectly usable.

1. Although reading the post above and doing some Google'ing I haven't worked out yet if it is possible to transfer or convert Scalix users data to Zimbra. - mail, calendar, and contacts

If you can export to CSV, iCal, vCard, LDIF, or similar formats, then you can transfer data from one system to the other. For mail messages, you can either use an IMAP client to copy/paste or drag'n drop messages from one server to the other; or use imapsync to automate it; or use the External Account feature in Zimbra to have it automatically pull data from external IMAP/POP servers (once the pull is complete, you can drag/drop the folders within Zimbra, then remove the external account).

Without MS Outlook!! Otherwise I will need to create a virtual instance in Suns Vbox which is a headache in itself for every single user. Also last time we did that and put everything into CSV files in calendar and contacts information was missing :-(

Outlook sucks, period, for data transfer. Each version stores data in the .pst file differently, and each version exports it slightly differently as well. Our Systems Analyst spent many a day working out automated data migration scripts for all the different Outlook setups people use. It's almost easier to just say "you use Outlook, you lose data".

2. Anti virus and spam support - Scalix supports this although is 3rd party and takes a while to setup. I have done it good information on the WIKI but very fiddly. What's Zimbra's take here, is it integrated or similar principle to Scalix?

Built-in to the system. Uses Amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, and ClamAV by default. Amavisd-new allows you to add extra checking software very easily.

3. Encryption support (SSL and TLS), Scalix offers SSL just about withthe use of an external program called tunnel if I remember correctly which tunnels the port from non-secure to secure. Simple but again not integrated into the system.

SSL support is built-in to the system. Using it with a self-signed certificate will cause a lot of warning pop-ups. You can even configure the system to force all access to use SSL/TLS, and to redirect people automatically if they try not to use SSL/TLS.

4. Mail client integration? How easy is it to integrate Zimbra with mail clients? Basically in Linux and also Sun Solaris so that I can sync mail like an MS Outlook Connector but with other clients. I need Contact and Calendar integration aswell as mail. Scalix uses CalDAV which is readonly from Evolution but only for calendar no contacts :-(

See above. There are connectors for Outlook 2003/2007 and Evolution. There are methods for accessing Zimbra data via Kontact. You can use other mail/calendar/contacts apps. There's a Zimbra Desktop standalone client. And there's always the web interface.

5. Webmail client? The products page on the main site suggests the Ajax Webmail client. That's part of the Zimbra server package isn't it?

Zimbra is one piece, you get everything, you can't split it up and install just bits and pieces.

[quote]6. The last question for now (there might be others later) is basically if I can use mail from multiple domains? At the moment my Scalix setup is so that the machine is a standalone server but then uses fetchmail to recieve mail from ISP and other POP/IMAP mail boxes and distribute them to each user individually. So currently mail.isp.com account is masked to a particular user so they can send/recieve mail from either ISP or internal account. Is this possible with Zimbra??[/quote

Yes.

[edit]7. One final over looked question! Can all this be done from the Open Source version? And is mail client free also??

You can do everything except use the Connectors, and sync PDAs/smartphones, with the open-source version.

[sparky]

Many thanks for the reply I really appreciate it!

I forgot to mention this also, but is there a way to get all my emails from my other server running Postfix into Zimbra. Basically it's Maildir format? As in convert since that server will be re-installed with a new OS and mail system since Postfix is malfunctioning on it...... Otherwise of course Load into IMAP client and transfer, if only I should be so lucky.

Although I did ask this previously but within Scalix there isn't anyway to export the contact and calendar information

As stated before Evolution doesn't read that only CalDAV for readonly calendarso not sure what migration technique to use with that apart from getting the poor users to manually copy everything from old server to new server. I think I'd be hung!

I mean I have also checked stuff like Sun's Java Communication suite and SurgeMail although I think that one needs to pay for SurgeMail even though it runs on BSD. But to be honest I just really want to have a totally integrated system. Zimbra looks pretty much the way to go right now.

Ok probably not an everyday task and hardly anyone will know this but the Zimbra webmail client: can that be installed on any UNIX system or is it only Linux specific? Reason is that I have a mixture of Linux and Solaris based systems now and I need to get these things integrated. More so then just read only CalDAV!

[fcash]

Originally Posted by sparky

I forgot to mention this also, but is there a way to get all my emails from my other server running Postfix into Zimbra. Basically it's Maildir format? As in convert since that server will be re-installed with a new OS and mail system since Postfix is malfunctioning on it...... Otherwise of course Load into IMAP client and transfer, if only I should be so lucky.

See my answer above. So long as you can access the messages via IMAP, then they can be migrated over to Zimbra (manually using an IMAP client like Thunderbird, semi-automatically via imapsync, automatically via External Account feature in Zimbra).

As stated before Evolution doesn't read that only CalDAV for readonly calendarso not sure what migration technique to use with that apart from getting the poor users to manually copy everything from old server to new server. I think I'd be hung!

Evolution doesn't read what? Can it access the calendar? If so, are you trying to say that Evolution can't export a calendar that it can read? If so, time to switch applications.

Ok probably not an everyday task and hardly anyone will know this but the Zimbra webmail client: can that be installed on any UNIX system or is it only Linux specific? Reason is that I have a mixture of Linux and Solaris based systems now and I need to get these things integrated. More so then just read only CalDAV!

The webmail client is accessible using any web browser on any system. Hence the term "web" mail.

The Zimbra server can be installed on just about any Linux system.

[sparky]

Ok probably not an everyday task and hardly anyone will know this but the Zimbra webmail client: can that be installed on any UNIX system or is it only Linux specific? Reason is that I have a mixture of Linux and Solaris based systems now and I need to get these things integrated. More so then just read only CalDAV!
The webmail client is accessible using any web browser on any system. Hence the term "web" mail.

I'm sorry I meant mail client, web mail is reffered to anything from browser!

On the products page it claims Win, OSX, and Linux although the install for Linux is a shell script so I'm wondering if that would install on other UNIX's too? Sorry for the mix up!

As stated before Evolution doesn't read that only CalDAV for readonly calendarso not sure what migration technique to use with that apart from getting the poor users to manually copy everything from old server to new server. I think I'd be hung!
Evolution doesn't read what? Can it access the calendar? If so, are you trying to say that Evolution can't export a calendar that it can read? If so, time to switch applications.

Evolution reads Calendar through CalDAV but I don't know if it can export to start with and it doesn't read Contacts at all.

My users actually complained about the lack of facilities in Evolution when compared with MS Outlook and when we tried the Mozilla alternatives they hated them even more. Basically in contacts there weren't enough fields and calendar didn't have enough extra's like birthdays and what not.

I'm not a fan of Outlook either but what can I do when my users sware by it?

Yeh so I have no idea what will read all the fields from Scalix and export them apart from Outlook with MS Connector which was used initially to migrate everyone from a groupware suite which was so strange that it had seperate floors inside the system for different tasks and users??

[sparky]

Ok well I've now got a test instance up and running!

So far am pretty pleased with what I see, migrating the domain at least was very streamlined.

Update DNS A and MX records then create an alias back to domain.com from x.domain.com and that's it!

I posted in another post so i guess no point me saying the few errors I'm getting with transfer of IMAP data.
Hmmm......

I will try using IMAP v4. although I don't know if issue is Evolution or the version of IMAP or Zimbra??? or even Courier IMAP which is sitting on my Desktop currently.