Hi, I will probably have to design an e-mail (and other components) infrastructure for a small ISP soon (WISP). I'm doing some research to determine which components would be best to offer e-mail services to their client and allow the staff to manage accounts easily. I usually use virtual machines a lot for isolation and easy backups and migration (when a hardware node is underpowered, it is easy to migrate one or more virtual machines to another hardware node easily). I have looked at iSCSI and drbd for high-availability of the storage: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/82284/san-on-the-cheap/page1.html. This looks like it should be doing a great job of high availability storage. For mail server, I guess I should look at an MTA and IMAP/POP server that supports LDAP and/or MySQL for users. Postfix should be a good choice for MTA, as I know it (at least a little, but I know sendmail better). For IMAP/POP, I'm not sure... Would dovecot be sufficient, or should I try cyrus. I'd rather use components that are available for base or extras repository (or rpmforge). I think that squirrelmail and horde would do a good job for webmail. There shoudn't be any troubles having some redundancy for DNS, web servers, mtas, but what about IMAP/POP? linux-HA? MySQL replication should be enough, I guess. Or maybe linux-HA as well. I wonder if I should add GFS to the mix to have multiple IMAP/POP servers use the same storage. Or maybe IMAP proxies? Any insights welcome :). Ugo
It's been awhile since I looked into it, but I recommend outsourcing your email. Companies like fusemail (http://www.fusemail.com/solutions/resellers.html) will give you accounts at $0.69/month/account for a 1GB account (last time I checked anyway). They provide an API and a dashboard for managing it. They also handle backups, I believe (read the fine print before you trust me). I think there is spam filtering and anti-virus built in too. On Jan 3, 2008 9:09 AM, Ugo Bellavance <ugob at lubik.ca> wrote:> Hi, > > I will probably have to design an e-mail (and other components) > infrastructure for a small ISP soon (WISP). > > I'm doing some research to determine which components would be best > to > offer e-mail services to their client and allow the staff to manage > accounts easily. > > I usually use virtual machines a lot for isolation and easy backups > and > migration (when a hardware node is underpowered, it is easy to migrate > one or more virtual machines to another hardware node easily). > > I have looked at iSCSI and drbd for high-availability of the > storage: > http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/82284/san-on-the-cheap/page1.html. > > This looks like it should be doing a great job of high availability > storage. > > For mail server, I guess I should look at an MTA and IMAP/POP > server > that supports LDAP and/or MySQL for users. Postfix should be a good > choice for MTA, as I know it (at least a little, but I know sendmail > better). For IMAP/POP, I'm not sure... Would dovecot be sufficient, or > should I try cyrus. I'd rather use components that are available for > base or extras repository (or rpmforge). I think that squirrelmail and > horde would do a good job for webmail. > > There shoudn't be any troubles having some redundancy for DNS, web > servers, mtas, but what about IMAP/POP? linux-HA? MySQL replication > should be enough, I guess. Or maybe linux-HA as well. I wonder if I > should add GFS to the mix to have multiple IMAP/POP servers use the same > storage. Or maybe IMAP proxies? > > Any insights welcome :). > > Ugo > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080103/927d75c3/attachment-0003.html>
On Friday 04 January 2008 00:09:06 Ugo Bellavance wrote:> I think that squirrelmail and > horde would do a good job for webmail. > > There shoudn't be any troubles having some redundancy for DNS, web > servers, mtas, but what about IMAP/POP? linux-HA? MySQL replication > should be enough, I guess. Or maybe linux-HA as well. I wonder if I > should add GFS to the mix to have multiple IMAP/POP servers use the same > storage. Or maybe IMAP proxies? > > Any insights welcome :).Hi Ugo, Congrats on your plan opening the ISP. For webmail, a professional touch would be nice for your customer. Instead of using plain squirrelmail, try using http://www.nutsmail.com/ instead. AFAIK, redundancy for mail server seldom uses linux-ha/any other failover stuffs. It is most common to use 'backup MX' in DNS settings. So, when the main server in unreachable, the sender mail server would try to the secondary MX through DNS query. -- Fajar Priyanto | Reg'd Linux User #327841 | Linux tutorial http://linux2.arinet.org 08:25:18 up 51 min, 2.6.22-14-generic GNU/Linux Let's use OpenOffice. http://www.openoffice.org The real challenge of teaching is getting your students motivated to learn. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080104/fc5334cb/attachment-0003.sig>
Fajar Priyanto wrote:> On Friday 04 January 2008 00:09:06 Ugo Bellavance wrote: >> I think that squirrelmail and >> horde would do a good job for webmail. >> >> There shoudn't be any troubles having some redundancy for DNS, web >> servers, mtas, but what about IMAP/POP? linux-HA? MySQL replication >> should be enough, I guess. Or maybe linux-HA as well. I wonder if I >> should add GFS to the mix to have multiple IMAP/POP servers use the same >> storage. Or maybe IMAP proxies? >> >> Any insights welcome :). > > Hi Ugo, > Congrats on your plan opening the ISP.Thanks, but I will only be doing some work for them, I'm not opening the ISP myself...> For webmail, a professional touch would be nice for your customer. Instead of > using plain squirrelmail, try using http://www.nutsmail.com/ instead.Good Idea> AFAIK, redundancy for mail server seldom uses linux-ha/any other failover > stuffs. It is most common to use 'backup MX' in DNS settings. So, when the > main server in unreachable, the sender mail server would try to the secondary > MX through DNS query.That's the easy part, but where do you store the e-mail once you have accepted it? If the pop/IMAP server is down for a while, people won't be able to retreive their e-mail...
Gary Richardson wrote:> It's been awhile since I looked into it, but I recommend outsourcing > your email. > > Companies like fusemail > (http://www.fusemail.com/solutions/resellers.html > <http://www.fusemail.com/solutions/resellers.html>) will give you > accounts at $0.69/month/account for a 1GB account (last time I checked > anyway). They provide an API and a dashboard for managing it. They also > handle backups, I believe (read the fine print before you trust me). I > think there is spam filtering and anti-virus built in too.Good idea, but that means no consulting fees for me ;). I'll consider it, that is a fairly good idea. Regards, Ugo
On Thu, Jan 03, 2008, Ugo Bellavance wrote:>Hi,>I will probably have to design an e-mail (and other components) >infrastructure for a small ISP soon (WISP).See my previous post on sizing mail servers. The setup there is in use at several of our regional ISP customers, and has been very solid. It's a design that has evolved since we started building and selling systems for ISPs in 1994.>I'm doing some research to determine which components would be best to >offer e-mail services to their client and allow the staff to manage >accounts easily.There are various tools available to do this. I have set up very restricted webmin configurations so the support people at the ISP could do the necessary things easily with minimal chance of major screwups (after I've patched some things in webmmin that allowed it to remove /home when somebody typed in a bad directory :-).>I usually use virtual machines a lot for isolation and easy backups and >migration (when a hardware node is underpowered, it is easy to migrate one >or more virtual machines to another hardware node easily).>I have looked at iSCSI and drbd for high-availability of the storage: >http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/82284/san-on-the-cheap/page1.html.>This looks like it should be doing a great job of high availability >storage.>For mail server, I guess I should look at an MTA and IMAP/POP server that >supports LDAP and/or MySQL for users. Postfix should be a good choice for >MTA, as I know it (at least a little, but I know sendmail better). For >IMAP/POP, I'm not sure... Would dovecot be sufficient, or should I try >cyrus. I'd rather use components that are available for base or extras >repository (or rpmforge). I think that squirrelmail and horde would do a >good job for webmail.The systems we build have postfix/amavise/clamav, courier-imap, and usually horde/imp for webmail. I personally don't like Cyrus as I prefer to use standard Maildir which allows easy clustering for mail delivery and IMAP/POP access.>There shoudn't be any troubles having some redundancy for DNS, web servers, >mtas, but what about IMAP/POP? linux-HA? MySQL replication should be >enough, I guess. Or maybe linux-HA as well. I wonder if I should add GFS >to the mix to have multiple IMAP/POP servers use the same storage. Or >maybe IMAP proxies? > > Any insights welcome :).I hope you're not charging your client for your learning curve. Bill -- INTERNET: bill at celestial.com Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC URL: http://www.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way FAX: (206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676 The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins. -- H.L. Mencken, 1923
> I will probably have to design an e-mail (and other components) > infrastructure for a small ISP soon (WISP). > > I'm doing some research to determine which components would be best to > offer e-mail services to their client and allow the staff to manage > accounts easily. > > I usually use virtual machines a lot for isolation and easy backups and > migration (when a hardware node is underpowered, it is easy to migrate > one or more virtual machines to another hardware node easily). > > I have looked at iSCSI and drbd for high-availability of the storage: > http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/82284/san-on-the-cheap/page1.html. > > This looks like it should be doing a great job of high availability storage. > > For mail server, I guess I should look at an MTA and IMAP/POP server > that supports LDAP and/or MySQL for users. Postfix should be a good > choice for MTA, as I know it (at least a little, but I know sendmail > better). For IMAP/POP, I'm not sure... Would dovecot be sufficient, or > should I try cyrus. I'd rather use components that are available for > base or extras repository (or rpmforge). I think that squirrelmail and > horde would do a good job for webmail. > > There shoudn't be any troubles having some redundancy for DNS, web > servers, mtas, but what about IMAP/POP? linux-HA? MySQL replication > should be enough, I guess. Or maybe linux-HA as well. I wonder if I > should add GFS to the mix to have multiple IMAP/POP servers use the same > storage. Or maybe IMAP proxies? > > Any insights welcome :).www.directadmin.com Been running it on CentOS for years. Added Clamav and spamassassin to it. It utilizes Exim and dovecot along with standard bind and apache stuff. You pay monthly or yearly license fee. Its pretty cheap really. You can also pay a one time fee for a given machine. Matt
> It's been awhile since I looked into it, but I recommend outsourcing your > email. > > Companies like fusemail (http://www.fusemail.com/solutions/resellers.html ) > will give you accounts at $0.69/month/account for a 1GB account (last time I > checked anyway). They provide an API and a dashboard for managing it. They > also handle backups, I believe (read the fine print before you trust me). I > think there is spam filtering and anti-virus built in too.Kept thinking that as well. Only issue is that 0.69 x 2000 equals a pretty good chunk of change for us. One thing I would reccommend though is putting it in a colocation facillity rather then local. Also start with a beefy machine because its a real pain to upgrade later. Matt