When it comes to major investment into IT infrastructure the email or communications server is vital. With out email most business would grind to a halt, your solution must be reliable and secure. Weve seen in the past that "reliable and secure" doesn't describe many of the Microsoft products. Unfortunatly Exchange is also one of these products.

A few weeks ago one of our clients was looking to replace their Exchange 4.5(!) email server. None of the bells and whistles of either Exchange or Outlook were being used. This company was confident and secure with using Microsoft products and had other Microsoft servers in their production environment. After discussing pricing on Exchange they were reluctant to spent that amount of money, especially on a replacement to a server that had failed them many times in the past. Edoceo implemented a solution using Postfix and Courier-IMAP that has been running steady for 32 days as of this writing, sadly this is their longest email server uptime recorded.

The History

The client (whose name is intentionally witheld) had been using Exchange 4.5 for some time, since their install of SBS on NT4. It handled mail for multiple domains (>100) with the total number of mailboxes just above 150. Their server MTA would occsaionally stop, with out placing any hints in the NT4 logs, this would require a manual restart. Also at issue was the number of flaws discovered in the system that had to be patched, sometimes to disable the mail server for hours(!) at a time.

The owners knew this was unacceptable but did not have a solution.

Exploring the Solution

We priced Exchange for them (pricing info below) and the cost was not an easy burden to bear. To create this new Exchange based server they have the cost of the server hardware and operating system, the email server application and an access license for each user. The total was over $8000 USD in software alone.

Edoceo suggested an Open Source solution. By using a Linux kernel, some other GNU utilities, Postfix and Courier-IMAP we could create a mail server that would be more than adaquate for years to come. Edoceo quoted the cost of this server under $4000 USD including hardware.

Initally the decision makers were reluctant to accept the Open Source. The conversation went something like this:

If its open can't anyone break in?

No, 100 times more developers look at this code that look at any code on Windows.

Who makes this stuff?

Postfix primarily is made by a curt developer at an IBM research center. Courier-IMAP is by Inter7 Internet Technolgies. The SASL2 libraries are built by Carnegie Mellon University. It's supported by the developers (and a handful of very knowledgeable admins) on a mailing list (the mailing list is free).

Is it reliable?

The production versions of this software are just as reliable as any retail version, if not more. The Linux platform has long been known for it's reliability, and the mail packages are built on top of a solid foundation. It's tested (and patched if necessary) by 1000s of computer engineers around the globe.

After some more easy to answer questions they were in.

Impelmenting the Fix

Not so difficult at all, the $4000 USD paid for 7 hours ($120/hr) of setup and configuration and the hardware. I purchased a Dell PowerEdge something or other with 512MB and RAID 0 36GB SCSI (good enough for email right?). After it arrived I used my custom Slackware installation CD and then added the necessary packages. The installation and configuration was done in under 7 hours (still billed 7 ;^ ).

The server has now been running with out hiccup (as of this writing) for over 30 days. That is an uptime record for them.

The Downside

There is always a downside. With this paticular fix the clients current IT staff had some difficulty administering the server. A few simple bash scripts solved the problem.

In a worst case scenario however they are in a better position. A technical support call (to us of course) is the same price as Microsoft ($250). With SSH and a speaker phone we can simply login to check logs, or update files as necessary at same time communicating this information to their technical staff.

Summary

If Exchange is failing an OpenSource impelmentation can be used to replace it at considerable savings. A small learning curve should be taken into account if the current staff has little or no experience, this applies to any new software package. Support costs are roughly the same.

Please note the prices reflect this experience, yours might differ. The cost of Support also includes installation.

exit(0);

Document History

• 11 Feb 2005 - Added link to Nuntius.

XHTML 1.1. and CSS2.1/3 © 1999-2008 Edoceo, Inc.
Edit this Page