So, we're moving from an old Cyrus installation to Zimbra. We considered moving to Dovecot, but the need for tight corporate calendaring that isn't hosted by big brother (Google or Y!) was too strong.
So, I call up Zimbra...
Me: Gimme that for Solaris.
Zimbra: No.
Me: Umm... It's open source and the "closed" bits are non-native Java.
Zimbra: Umm... It doesn't work on Solaris, just install Linux.
Me: Just give me a sound off-site backup strategy that works as well as ZFS.
Zimbra: Umm... Install Linux, it's easy.
Me: You're kinda missing the point.
I then turn to Sergey, master of brute force, on our SA team and said: you've got five days to run this on Solaris. Sergey says: "done."
From here, we test quite a bit, doing migrations from the existing solution and installation tests. Whiz, bang, whirrrrr. We're happy, and I go back to Zimbra with some trepidation.
Me: How much?
Zimbra: Fill out this form and fax it.
Me: Okay... [faxed form]
Me: I sent it.
Zimbra: Got it, you should have your license.
Me: Wow, that was easy.
While I like free software a lot. Boy is it refreshing to find a company that knows how to take your money without pain and suffering, like some companies I know.
I'm sure that Zimbra is just trying to limit the support platforms to help control their engineering costs. The support for Linux is a no-brainer -- it's the most popular new deployment platform for just about everyone. But, support for Mac OS X... as if there is demand for that in the enterprise?! WTF? I know all about developing mail products and I understand that Mac OS X support is often iintroduced due to the engineering staff owning MacBook Pros. But, come on... Tier 1 support for Mac OS X before Solaris, not very good market research here fellas.
Anyway, we've got Zimbra cooking on a sweet Solaris box attached to a Sun StorEdge T3. One zone runs Zimbra Network Edition and another zone runs Zimbra Open Source Edition. Both of these running on some nice ZFS mount points that are conveniently backed up with Zetaback... Bliss.
Oh yeah. One detractor to my bliss: I spent 2 days deleting old mail folders and eliminating cruft (built up over the last 10 years). 11 hours of imapsync to get my now down to 14 gigabyte mail store over is just painful. There should be a universal mail store format so that I can "burn" by old mail into a universal archive format and just plug that into mail any mail server. Right.
Tuesday, October 30. 2007 at 17:18 (Link) (Reply)
Yeah, I don't understand their reluctance to support Solaris. There seems to be quite a bit of demand for it and in the forums they have made vague references to working on a Solaris port. Then in a later port they say they will only do a i386 port because they don't have any sparc hardware. I guess $2,200 is too big of a commitment for Yahoo/Zimbra. They must be running on a really tight budget over there.
BTW- there is tons of interest on the forums for running Zimbra on Solaris so a write up on getting it running would probably be really well received.
Tuesday, November 13. 2007 at 13:14 (Link) (Reply)
I too would love to see a write-up on this. We've been having a lot of pain with our linux-based cyrus server these days, and want to move to Zimbra. I'd love to do this with Solaris 10! Please post some details and email me if possible.
thanks - Blake
Thursday, December 13. 2007 at 12:44 (Reply)
Any chance you could make a contribution to the community at the Zimbra forums by describing the steps you took to get the Open Source version running on Solaris
Thursday, December 27. 2007 at 18:44 (Reply)
It would be awesome to know how you guys got it running on Solaris. I would switch in a heartbeat.
Wednesday, January 2. 2008 at 07:41 (Link) (Reply)
Just wondering if you have published this anywhere. We are thinking of doing this soon. Did you deploy to sparc or x86. I wonder if they will support a brandz zones??
Friday, January 4. 2008 at 10:51 (Reply)
It was x86_64. The currently supported list of Linux distros that Zimbra supports are all 2.6 kernel based. The Brandz stuff only supports 2.4 and as I understand it there is no intention of upgrading that to support 2.6. So, brandz linux zones sounds just as painfult o deploy on as Solaris native zones.
Thursday, January 3. 2008 at 10:00 (Link) (Reply)
Wow! Thats very interesting. Is it possible to get more detailed review of this operation? We're also considering to use zimbra on Solaris x86 zone.
Thursday, January 17. 2008 at 07:21 (Reply)
Actually, there is Zones for Linux v2.6 half cooked. People have booted Ubuntu 7 on Zones. There is a tarball with CentOs 5 for those who like try out Linux 2.6 on Solaris.