How do I set up a...

[Rilex]

"Better" than Exchange? LOL!

SBS is limited to 75 CALs and Exchange has the same limits as 2003 Standard -- in otherwords, nothing applicable to the home environment.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Rilex
"Better" than Exchange? LOL!

SBS is limited to 75 CALs and Exchange has the same limits as 2003 Standard -- in otherwords, nothing applicable to the home environment.

exchange cannot filter based on valid email addresses (i.e. if you don't have a bob@org.com, it sits and churnes for a while). I consider that to be a critical feature for keeping crap off my corp mail servers.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

500 bucks is a "huge" licensing fee?

For a non-profit home server? Hell yea! Especially when I can get arguably better software for free. And I don't remember the specifics but I know that SBS is limited in certain ways compared to 'normal' Windows Server + Exchange.

Depends, if he want something simple and easy to manage, 500 bucks for an OS that does all the above is pretty cheap.

It also comes with 5 seats so he should be covered legally if he is worred about it.

 

[Rilex]

Exchange 2003 can drop all messages that are not sent to a valid SMTP address in the directory.

E.g., if bob@org.com does not exist in the directory, the SMTP Virtual Server will just drop the message. So I'm not sure what you're looking for.

Of course, this is a problem if you're on mailing lists.

 

[Nothinman]

"Better" than Exchange? LOL!

For my usage patterns? Definitely. The only thing Exchange offers that I don't have is a shared calender and I don't want one.

Depends, if he want something simple and easy to manage, 500 bucks for an OS that does all the above is pretty cheap.

I'm not saying it's not worth the money if that's what you want, but for me I'll take the freely available, more extensible software any day.

 

[Rilex]

For my usage patterns?

So how would server-side software be affected by your "usage patterns"?

 

[Nothinman]

So how would server-side software be affected by your "usage patterns"?

Because part of that usage is me managing them and it's easier for me to manage them this way. Can you name something that Exchange does that my current setup of Postfix, Cyrus, SA and Horde/IMP don't already do for free?

 

[Rilex]

MAPI, RPC over HTTP(S), Recovery Storage Groups, Active Directory integration, Query-based Distribution Groups, a decent web mail interface, Exchange ActiveSync (OTA).

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Rilex
Exchange 2003 can drop all messages that are not sent to a valid SMTP address in the directory.

E.g., if bob@org.com does not exist in the directory, the SMTP Virtual Server will just drop the message. So I'm not sure what you're looking for.

Of course, this is a problem if you're on mailing lists.

it churns on it for a while, and clogs up the servers. look around almost all enterprises hide theire exchange servers behind *nix servers (we do Suse running postfix/spamassasin). Why do that if it's not any better?

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Pandamonium

I feel like going 100% MS would simplify things, but that seems a bit expensive for a basic home server. Would linux/samba/sendmail/apache be able to mimic a MS domain/active directory/exchange server?

I haven't read the other posts, and it's too late for me to give detailed information, but I can get you started if you want to go the opensource route:

Samba: will work as a domain controller (with roaming profiles), a file server, and a print server.

Apache: will do multiple websites from one install using virtual hosts. As a bonus, install php and use Joomla to manage your site (will also need a MySQL server).

FTP: there isn't really a hard and fast standard app for ftp on linux (on Windows it would be filezilla server), but ProFTP and vsftp are very popular.

Exchange-ish server: I would recommend eGroupware. Zimbra is also really cool, but is only partially opensource (still very functional with the free components).

As a bonus, install VMWare Server (free, though closed source) and run each role within a separate virtual machine. This will make is easy when it comes time to change things, or problems occur, or you want to expand.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Genx87

That is a laughable explantion of why somebody who doesnt pay attention should move to Linux. Because it is linux, they will suddenly pay attention and read dialogs.

Not exactly on topic, but one bonus for me: the desktop support techs like to go muck around on the servers when one workstation is having a problem. They will click around in windows and change the most rediculous things (which I then have to go back, figure out what they messed with and fix it, since now EVERY workstation is having a problem) but they don't mess with the linux boxes. With CLI only, they don't even know where to start. So the more linux boxes I have, the less I have to worry about the techs messing things up. Now, why all the techs have admin access to our server is a whole 'nother can of worms...

 

[Genx87]

Now, why all the techs have admin access to our server is a whole 'nother can of worms...

Hehe, well if you give admin rights to people who shouldnt have it, you will have that problem on every OS

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Pandamonium
I currently have 3 machines that I rotate through. The main reason I want AD driven roaming profiles is so that I don't run back and forth all the time trying to figure out which machine has the most updated version of an ongoing document, for example. If I consolidated all of my work to one profile, it would make my life a lot easier.

You could do that by just having a file server. I have my main home desktop, plus a home laptop, and my work laptop. I keep all my documents on a Samba file server so I can access the same file from any computer (Plus I have Raid1 on the file server).

Right now I'm leaning towards a Windows SBS server because some of my earlier websites are coded in ASP and my more recent work is in PHP. I figure with SBS I can host both versions natively and not feel the urge to recode my older code. (I am not aware of any low-cost ASP-enabling *nix package.)

There is an ASP module for Apache.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Now, why all the techs have admin access to our server is a whole 'nother can of worms...

Hehe, well if you give admin rights to people who shouldnt have it, you will have that problem on every OS

Well everyone actually has admin accounts on all the *nix boxes, too, but like I said, everyone is either too scared, or just don't even know what to start typing, to mess with them.

My boss is so scared of them, he came running to me when he noticed the screen was black on one of our *nix boxes cuz he thought it had crashed (which is a good thing, that he came to me, he would have attempted to "fix" the Windows servers). First of all, he wasn't even going to attempt to reboot it. Second of all, if he would have calmed down, he would have realized our Windows boxes do this too, and all he had to do was move the mouse or hit the keyboard and the screen would have turned back on.

The mear mention of the word "linux" instills fear in the heart of n00bs!

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: Genx87

Now, why all the techs have admin access to our server is a whole 'nother can of worms...

Hehe, well if you give admin rights to people who shouldnt have it, you will have that problem on every OS

Well everyone actually has admin accounts on all the *nix boxes, too, but like I said, everyone is either too scared, or just don't even know what to start typing, to mess with them.

My boss is so scared of them, he came running to me when he noticed the screen was black on one of our *nix boxes cuz he thought it had crashed (which is a good thing, that he came to me, he would have attempted to "fix" the Windows servers). First of all, he wasn't even going to attempt to reboot it. Second of all, if he would have calmed down, he would have realized our Windows boxes do this too, and all he had to do was move the mouse or hit the keyboard and the screen would have turned back on.

The mear mention of the word "linux" instills fear in the heart of n00bs!

LOL!!

 

[Rilex]

Originally posted by: Brazen
home laptop, and my work laptop. I keep all my documents on a Samba file server so I can access the same file from any computer (Plus I have Raid1 on the file server).

That is not the same as roaming profiles, where your entire profile folder (minus temporary files/anything you choose to exclude via Group Policy) is kept on the server so your profile is available regardless of what computer you're on. Document redirection is either done automatically via GP or manually, but it only covers certain folders.

There is an ASP module for Apache.

A poor one. And no ASP.NET support.

Also, Samba can only act as an NT4 PDC, not DC.

 

[Pandamonium]

Hmm.. maybe I'll tinker with the software Brazen suggested for a while and see if I can do without paying $500 for a server OS =) Thanks guys.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Rilex

That is not the same as roaming profiles

Yeah, that was the point.

 

[Nothinman]

MAPI, RPC over HTTP(S), Recovery Storage Groups, Active Directory integration, Query-based Distribution Groups, a decent web mail interface, Exchange ActiveSync (OTA).

I guess I should have been more specific and asked for things that I might actually care about. And Horde/IMP is a decent web interface, although I don't need to use it much.

 

[Rilex]

I don't know what /you/ might actually care about. I'm not you. Since you seem to disregard any benefits of Exchange anyways, I'm not sure why you even clarified your "question".

 

[Nothinman]

I don't know what /you/ might actually care about. I'm not you. Since you seem to disregard any benefits of Exchange anyways, I'm not sure why you even clarified your "question".

But that was my point, I don't need or want all of the fluff that Exchange does. I wanted a fast IMAP server, SMTP to receive mail for my domain, SpamAssassin and server-side filtering rules and my Cyrus/Postfix/SA setup does all of that for free so I don't see the point in spending $500 for SBS just for myself.

 

[Rilex]

*Shrugs* You have no need for Exchange, then you have no need for Exchange. No one is trying to convence you of that otherwise, but you should at least acknowledge that your solution lacks all of those features and is inferrior in a Windows environment.

 

[Nothinman]

but you should at least acknowledge that your solution lacks all of those features and is inferrior in a Windows environment.

I have no problems acknowledging that Exchange has more features than what I currently have, but IMO most of those features are nearly worthless. And it goes both ways, my setup has some features that Exchange doesn't.

And, also IMO obviously, my setup isn't inferior in a Windows environment unless you're using Outlook and it's Outlook's poor IMAP support that would make it inferior which has nothing to do with my setup.

 

[stash]

but IMO most of those features are nearly worthless

A feature that you don't personally need is not a worthless feature. Nor is a feature you don't personally need 'fluff'. That would be like me saying Linux is a piece of shi!t because I don't have any use for it.

 

[Nothinman]

A feature that you don't personally need is not a worthless feature. Nor is a feature you don't personally need 'fluff'. That would be like me saying Linux is a piece of shi!t because I don't have any use for it.

And people do say that about Linux, but that's not what I meant. I guess I assumed that people would take the "IMO" and expand that to also mean "to me" at the end of the sentence. And I do consider most of Exchange's features fluff since they're not needed for any of the core functionality. I can definitely see some uses for most of them, but not really for a home user which is where this thread started out. And some don't make sense at all, for instance why should the server have any ActiveSync features? That's a client-side thing and should stay on the client.