[OT] Re: MS Exchange server on FreeBSD?

[Bob Johnson]

Ean Kingston wrote:

>>On Fri, 2005-03-18 at 08:06, Christian Tischler wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>I would like to run an MS exchange server. But I am not at all willing
>>>to set up an MS box at all. As I know I could run something like VMware
>>>virtual server or Wine, but I do not know if such an combination would
>>>be stable (sopken in terms of windows stability). The next consideration
>>>would be the performance of the overal setup.
>>>
>>>Any hints or suggenstions would be great.
>>>      
>>>
>
>As someone who has inhereted an Exchange server I have a few hints for you.
>
>1 Run Exchange on a Dedicated Windows Server (2000 or 2003). Do not fiddle
>with VMware or Wine. You are going to need a license for Windows to run
>Exchange under VMware (or bochs). You are probably going to need a license
>of Windows to run it under wine (if that is even possible). In any case,
>you will lose stability if you don't dedicate a system to Windows.
>
>2 You need to keep the disk where Exchange stores its mail database at
>least 55% free or Exchange will not work properly. This is because you
>need to periodically rebuild the Exchange database to keep performance
>tollerable. Also when mail is deleted in an exchange mail store, it is not
>actually deleted but just marked for deletion. You need to take the mail
>store offline (so nobody can access their mailbox) periodically and run a
>tool to purge the deleted items. This takes hours on any decent sized mail
>system. When this happens it creates temporary files roughly 110% the size
>of the mail store.
>
[etc.]

As someone who used to administer and Exchange Server, I agree. 
It is a serious pain, and requires constant handholding.

I know someone who _loves_ Scalix (http://www.scalix.com).  It's an
Exchange replacement that runs on Linux (and maybe FreeBSD),
but that's all I know about it.  If you need to support Outlook clients,
it might work for you, and it's probably cheaper than Exchange.

- Bob