Mail server, spam/virus blocking, firewall, webmail in the same package?

[GreenGhost]

Hi.

We tried several linux distros in the past 2 years but they all l gave us different troubles. Now we have something form ClarkConnect. Works very well but it suddenly slows down to a crawl, and we cannot access the IMAP server until the server is rebooted. POP3 was problematic, too.

Some people here want the shiny Apple box (G5?) with OS X server. Anyone with experience with that? Cool interfaces but I don't know if it is reliable. Besides, we have a rack full of dual Athlons that are not much used, so there's resistance to buying more hardware.

What's the most reliable setup, preferably for Linux. I was told MS Server would be too expensive because of the licensing scheme, function of the number of users, don't know much about it...

Thanks for any suggestion,

GG

 

[dphantom]

Based on your title, MS Small Business Server may meet many of your requirements. It hosts the OS, Exchange server and ISA (firewall) all in one. I think it supports up to 50 users. Outlook 2003 has good (not great) built in spam control. Webmail version included. About the only thing missing is A/V.

Put it on a good server, and your up in running.

 

[Thoreau]

I've used products from MDaemon.com extensively over the years and have never had any complaints about them. They don't have anything to cover your firewall requirement, but webmail, a/v, antispam (very good too), you name it.. it has it. Very easy to use and much less expensive than MS Exchange based options.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Use multiple machines. Putting all fo that on a single machine is horribly stupid.

I'd use OpenBSD + spamd + clamav + squirrelmail for the mail server and OpenBSD + Pf for the firewall.

 

[blemoine]

Esoft offers an all in one box called Instagate or you can get the Threatwall ISO and use an old pc to install the software on. it is a firewall/email/spamfilter/proxyserver/contentfilter. we have 50 machines on it and it works great. no problems whatsoever. we have been using this box for about 3 years. its very easy to setup and since it runs on linux we have no problems with it crashing. go to www.esoft.com and give it a try.

 

[GreenGhost]

Thanks for all the replies! More things to investigate...

 

[nife]

So far I have gentoo running basically that and It took me 2 days to get it entirely set up to enterprise level.(it was faster scanning incomming smtp traffic than the several thousand dollar counterpart) Basically linux is the way to go if you can set aside the first few days to set it up and test it, if not then go with something pre-packaged. There are several appliances that I have seen( though I remember none of them because I am a little bit of a *nix fan-boy, sorry).

Here are some links to setting up gentoo ( the distro of my choice ) to filter mail pretty well. for that number of people its really not that bad at all.

Here are some resources if you decide to try the *nix route. While they are gentoo related everything after the emerge(the install) *should* be able to be moved to the distro of your choice, or for the even more preformance seeking LFS. Anyway here they are:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Email_Virtual_Hosting_with_Courier_and_MySQL

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/virt-mail-howto.xml
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/mailfilter-guide.xml

I've never used Courier as an smtpd so I can't really help you adding spam filtering and virus scanning, but I have done postfix and it was pretty easy.

 

[randal]

I've used postfix+courier/IMAP/POP3+Amavis(spamassassin+clamav), with Squirrelmail/Horde on Apache for access, to great effect on low-mid machines multiple times ... the average p4-2.4GHz/512MB cheapo server from dell.com can easily handle 30,000 messages a day, which is probably Way more than you're moving around ... in addition to hundreds of clients checking their mail every minute. I can honestly say that I have personally put at least 8 of these setups into production, and they all have zero performance problems, even in high-demand environments.

From there, if your email demands grow enormously, it's very easy to configure postfix & courier to work with a NAS (just set up nfs/smb & change working paths), and also very easy to break out the SMTP services, virus scanning, spam scanning, storage, IMAP/POP3 services & web frontends onto multiple machines. I worked on one of those setups, and it does 100,000+ emails/day without blinking (it's really underloaded). I've made a pretty penny off of email, and in another lifetime, email was my life's blood - it runs companies, and knowing it inside out and backwards is invaluable.

I can't say enough good things about those programs -
Postfix - extremely fast, very secure, and very easy to setup
Courier - as fast as I've seen in imap/pop servers, *great* IMAP support, again, easy to configure
Amavis - makes it super easy to add on virus scanning & spam scanning
spamassassin - the choice for spam scanning. I've sure you know about it
clamav - a Great open source virus scanning package. super fast virus updates, quality product
Squirrelmail - lightweight, tons of modules / extensions
Horde/IMP - heavy web-IMAP client, but has tons of features

edit - I personally prefer this setup over Exchange, MailSite, IMail (god forbid), Merak Mail, Vircom's VOP mail, sendmail, qmail, and more. I've used them all, and they all have their benefits, sure -- Exchange can't be touched when it comes to groupware/collaboration -- but the design I use is not only 100% free across the board, but it's a very stable setup, a workhorse, and does all of the things with precision, speed, and is very fire & forget. If you tie in MySQL (easy to do), you can get web-based box administration through postfix-admin, or tie in maya mail for even more control.

If you're unix-savvy in the slightest and are looking for a very strong package, please consider going open source -- sure, it might cost you a day of your time, but when it comes to cost/benefit, it can't be beat.

 

[cmetz]

http://www.flakshack.com/anti-spam/wiki/index.php

Works like a champ, pretty much fire and forget. I've set these up for companies, they don't even know they're there, and I haven't heard a peep out of 'em. Some have been running like this for more than a year now.

 

[GreenGhost]

Thanks for the great comments. Luckly I don't have to put it together myself, but I can't agree with the idea that Mac OS will solve all problems. It may be a great package, but it is built on the same open source components used by the Linux distros. I'm sure the guys here are clueless when setting up the servers, and they always build a new one when the first problem arises.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: GreenGhost
Thanks for the great comments. Luckly I don't have to put it together myself, but I can't agree with the idea that Mac OS will solve all problems. It may be a great package, but it is built on the same open source components used by the Linux distros.

That's a bad thing?