I might not need all 14. I may only need ten, but I'm prepared for 14.
For me it isn't about scale, it's about performance and resiliency. Well, not
that performance is much of an issue.
I don't really have any e-mail headaches, so I guess I'll take that.
All that's really different between four servers and 14 servers is the number
of boxes to log into to run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y. Well, and
every so often I have an extra "wget {URL to new mailserver version" and
"./install.sh" hitting enter a few times.
I also don't expect many WISPs to have geographic and network redundancy for
their backend. Once complete, everything critical to operations will be geo and
network redundant. I just got the MariaDB multi-master cluster online and will
be migrating my RADIUS, authoritative DNS, etc. to run off that cluster instead
of the local boxes they are now.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com
Midwest Internet Exchange
http://www.midwest-ix.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Josh Baird" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 9:25:11 AM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube
But, do you anticipate having to scale at that rate in the next few years? At
one job, we host over 14k Exchange 2010 mailboxes on (4) servers (and two of
those are idle doing nothing unless the primary boxes or datacenter goes boom).
At the WISP, we do ~1000 mailboxes (not Exchange) on two boxes. Yeah, it's a
single point of failure, but it's also in a multi-host VMWare cluster.
In my opinion, it's a waste of resources (and headaches) to have 14 servers for
a few hundred mailboxes. I would be willing to bet your headaches will get
worse if you scale to 1000+ users, maybe not because of your infrastructure,
but because of the users themselves.
But, hey.. it's your headache, not mine!
Josh
On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote:
Primary LDAP, backup LDAP, primary MX, backup MX, two mailstores (before I knew
they wouldn't provide redundancy to each other, to be solved in about a year
with a new version) and a proxy to handle that there's more than one mailstore.
That's why I said with the given infrastructure I could handle 10x - 50x the
mailboxes with no appreciable difference in cost other than disk space.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com
Midwest Internet Exchange
http://www.midwest-ix.com
From: "Josh Baird" < [email protected] >
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 8:59:10 AM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube
Seven servers (yes, I know they are VMs), as awesome as Zimbra may be, is a
little ridiculous for a few hundred users.
On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 9:44 AM, Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote:
<blockquote>
I have a few hundred mailboxes.
I don't really have much for user support issues. I've had to revoke accounts a
couple times from users that kept handing out their password like it was candy
at a parade. No real forgotten password problems. Setup just works. Hack
attempts are shut down before they even try valid credentials.
I'm running a seven server Zimbra cluster. Whenever I can get a little bit of
time, it'll be geo and network diverse (separate cluster for all but mailboxes
elsewhere with the mailboxes coming in about a year). It will be up to about 14
servers by then.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com
Midwest Internet Exchange
http://www.midwest-ix.com
From: "Lewis Bergman" < [email protected] >
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 8:29:00 AM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube
How many thousands of users do you have? Running the service is pretty cheap. I
built my own sendmail+Dovecot system which was really cheap. Then I got to a
place where I didn't want my time tied up with that so we went to Magicmail
which was still pretty cheap. Through all of it it was the support that was the
big dollar sign. If you set expectations differently maybe yours would be
cheaper. All I know is I spent a lot of user tech support time on it. More than
anything else by far. Kind of a hidden expense but definitely still there. We
had, I think, 8000 users on the system when we sold. Maybe a couple hundred
domains.
On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 8:11 AM Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote:
<blockquote>
What are people doing that's so expensive? I could have 10x - 50x the number of
mailboxes as I have and it wouldn't cost me any more than it does now, other
than some disks.... which aren't expensive.
I guess I would probably move from the community version to the service
provider version, but at that point that's under $0.20/mailbox/month. Not
really a major expense.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com
Midwest Internet Exchange
http://www.midwest-ix.com
From: "Lewis Bergman" < [email protected] >
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 8:08:29 AM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube
For me it wasn't about difficulty it was about expense. Email, at least how we
did it, was a cost center not a profit center. I kept it until I sold and wish
I would have ditched it much sooner. It was by far the biggest tech support
PITA.
I did learn afterward that the longer someone has an email address the more
they are willing to pay to keep it. I have been raising he fee we charge to use
those old emails. I am now at $250 a year for a single email and I have people
begging me not to cut it off. I am still going to, but I think it is
interesting since I used to give it away.
I guess what I am saying is that if you do not charge a decent amount for it,
why do it? The there is the whole minimum volume to be profitable thing that
comes into play. I just would not keep doing something that doesn't make money.
If it does, more power to you.
On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 7:18 AM Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote:
<blockquote>
There seems to be two camps. One where people are running away form their own
e-mail servers and then those that embrace it. I haven't found e-mail to be
that difficult to manage.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com
Midwest Internet Exchange
http://www.midwest-ix.com
From: "Chuck Hogg" < [email protected] >
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 6:01:35 AM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube
I hope you are charging handsomely for email. We just quit it for our customer
base...and only had 2-3 complaints. Everyone already has an email address.
Regards,
Chuck
On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 3:22 AM, Eric Kuhnke < [email protected] > wrote:
<blockquote>
Any tips of tricks for success with using Roundcube to provide webmail to
individual end users (not a single domain corporate environment)?
Server side is postfix + spamassassin + dovecot.
I have a successful 'test' setup of roundcube running in a VM doing TLSv1.2 on
smtp and imap, logged into several user accounts on test domains on the dovecot
server.
Wondering if anyone has run into hiccups or weird things when using roundcube
in a production environment.
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
