Short of first line support, I do the whole show. I write the checks (well, save the CC info. I don't write checks. Checks suck.) for the servers and the support contract, upgrade the servers, build the servers, reached out for blacklist remediation the three times I've been blacklisted in 15 years of running a mail server, etc.
Sorry, not everything. My fiance folds, stuffs, stamps and mails the paper invoices to the customers that still want them. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest Internet Exchange http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lewis Bergman" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 10:31:00 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube What I get out of this discussion is that the guy who thinks it is no trouble or that expensive is not the guy writing the check. No offense, but I often have a much different view of a reasonable cost for something than my people do. Sometimes I think it is worth a lot more, sometimes a lot less. I am sure your system is nice and it sounds like it works great. As long as it works for you. On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 10:27 AM Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote: 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 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: <blockquote> 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. <blockquote> ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com </blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> Midwest Internet Exchange http://www.midwest-ix.com </blockquote> <blockquote> From: "Josh Baird" < [email protected] > To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 8:59:10 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube </blockquote> <blockquote> Seven servers (yes, I know they are VMs), as awesome as Zimbra may be, is a little ridiculous for a few hundred users. </blockquote> <blockquote> On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 9:44 AM, Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote: </blockquote> <blockquote> <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. </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> Midwest Internet Exchange http://www.midwest-ix.com </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> From: "Lewis Bergman" < [email protected] > To: [email protected] </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 8:29:00 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> 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. </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 8:11 AM Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote: </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <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. </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> Midwest Internet Exchange http://www.midwest-ix.com </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> From: "Lewis Bergman" < [email protected] > To: [email protected] </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 8:08:29 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> 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. </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> 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. </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 7:18 AM Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote: </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <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. </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> Midwest Internet Exchange http://www.midwest-ix.com </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> From: "Chuck Hogg" < [email protected] > To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 6:01:35 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Roundcube </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> 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> </blockquote> </blockquote>
