Re: [PLUG] Linux as mailserver for small corporate office: advisable for newbies?

["Will Dyson" <will.dyson@gmail.com>]

On 10/26/06, Greg Helledy <gregsonh@gra-inc.com> wrote:
> I work in an office with about 15 people.  We have a machine running
> Windows XP and MDaemon (http://www.altn.com/) as our mailserver.  The
> hardware's about 4 years old and struggling under its load.
>
> We could just replace the hardware, and a dual-core CPU would allow us
> to take advantage of MDaemon's newest release being a multithreaded app.
>
> I have been using linux at home for years but really as a desktop, so
> have no familiarity with MTAs.  Are there any products (including
> commercial ones) that are designed to be administered by people with no
> linux experience?  (I don't want to have to be the only one who can do
> anything).  Are they any good?
>
> Would there be any concrete advantages in a small office setting to
> going that route vs. just XP and MDaemon on a new machine, given that
> the rest of the office is an XP/2000 monoculture?

Hi Greg,

The question of whether linux can breathe new life into your old
mailserver hardware hinges on the following question. What is the
performance bottleneck of the current software? How many messages per
second are you processing? Are you running spam filtering? You may
need new hardware to handle the load even if you switch to linux for
an OS and postfix for an MTA.

For easy management of your linux based email server, check out
vMail.Admin[0]. There are a couple other similar web-based control
panels for your email domain. vMail.Admin looks nice, but you should
do a little comparison shopping before making a selection.

Your question about concrete advantages is hard to answer. Many of the
advantages of free software are a little abstract. Perhaps you should
look instead for a lack of concrete problems. If you can identify no
big problems to the migration, then your concrete advantage is the
license fees you will not be paying.

Another advantage (depending on your needs) may be the opportunity to
start using one of the many excellent free groupware suites on top
your email system.

[0] http://www.vmailadmin.org/

--
Will Dyson
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