Microsoft Exchange server

[The_Unbeliever]

It's a good product, got lots of bells and whistles which will make your life easier.

However, if you get a nasty trojan/worm/virus which messes up your Windows server (which your Exchange server runs on) you're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Especially if it's a 0-day exploit.

So, in general, I'll rather trust a Linux server, which is, by default, already hardened against such exploits and funjobs.

What are your views and arguments?

 

[Park@82]

I'm better at removing viruses then configuring Linux.

 

[Peon]

Look Lib, Im a Linux fanboi. But I will give credit where its due. I like Active Directory and Exchange. If secured properly it can be productive. About 0-day exploits well, thereotically everything is vulnerable, its holes just have to be found.

What do you make of Zimbra compared to Exchange?

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Look Lib, Im a Linux fanboi. But I will give credit where its due. I like Active Directory and Exchange. If secured properly it can be productive. About 0-day exploits well, thereotically everything is vulnerable, its holes just have to be found.

What do you make of Zimbra compared to Exchange?

I'm going to configure a Linux server, install Zimbra and have a comparison.

I must say Exchange does have its strong points though.

 

[Nuro]

Just to put it out there, for small to medium sized installations, google apps for business makes sense. It is basically their mail and calendar apps, but for your domain. Includes stuff like shared calendars, 99.9% uptime SLA, no worry about backups/administration etc at $50 per user per year.

 

[HazMan]

Libs, have you tried Scalix or the slowly evolving Openchange as Exchange alternatives ?

 

[Asha'man X]

A 0day is always possible, but if you have Windows Update turned on, a decent anti virus and sensible use policies, your server is less likely to be hosed. I mean, without Flash, Java, Acrobat Reader, no net surfing per se and so on, your server is far less likely to get infected than a desktop. I scanned our main server today, and NOD32 had 2 false detections in over 2 million files. Our Exchange Server just works away, doing its job.

Part of the power of Exchange is the fact that it leverages Active Directory so well, as well as offering really nice features. The closest is perhaps Google Apps, but interestingly enough, Microsoft has licensed ActiveSync to both Apple and Google for push mail because they couldn't come up with a better solution.

 

[kingrob]

Hi Libs,

Think you must use Microsoft Forefront as anti-virus product on MS fileservers, but I've used AVG file server edition for over a year, without any problems.

Closest to Microsoft Exchange must be Zimbra, which runs on Windows PCs, Macs and Linux + connector tools for Blackberry Enterprise server & other mobile phones.

I've installed Zimbra before (on CentOS 5.4), just make sure nothing else is running on that server + it can resolve DNS names. Just have a DNS server with BIND9 running on your network and you'll be fine.