Due to some limitations with the Zimbra ZCS Open Source edition, especially the missing ActiveSync protocol feature I’ve decided to update my mail server to Zimbra Collaboration Suite Network Edition. The upgrade was easy going, just start the ./install.sh script and let it go. The installer asks you for holding the configuration data and after 10-15 minutes my server was running the commercial version with a much better feature set. ActiveSync and mobile devices support are not the only features which I wanted. Also the integrated backup and software updating function was a good enhancement as I see today. I love the software update check which can be configured on a daily, hourly or minutely basis. It will inform you directly when a new release of the collaboration server is available. Great for me because I’m always forgetting to update my services to the newest release.

The good thing is that the update feature is not automatically upgrading your server when a new version is available. You can just configure ZCS to send you an email if a new update is available at the Zimbra website.

Also the backup is great. In the Open Source edition I had to write a script and run a Cron job to backup my server but now, with the Network Edition this is implemented in the admin console. Just selecting the Backup link offers me the option to do a full or an incremental backup of my server.

It’s also possible to do an easy restore for all accounts or just the accounts which have maybe a corrupt database or the users having deleted their data by mistake.

I think Zimbra ZCS Network Edition is a great competition for other collaboration solutions. It’s great that Zimbra can run in either the private or public cloud. If you haven’t  seen Zimbra yet, you should definitely  check it out at www.zimbra.com.

I’m using the Zimbra Collaboration Suite for some days now and I have to say that I’m really happy with it. The user web interface is just awesome, easy to use and I love the Ajax stuff. I’m also using it on my iPhone and it runs perfectly. There was just one thing which made me feel a bit uncomfortable with. After the installation the Webmail component was just accessible via HTTP which is not encrypted. During the last years I got some bad  experience with other applications which needed to be changed from HTTP to HTTPS and this time I had a uneasy feeling but it was without any reason.

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During this week I spent every night at my laptop, to get the the server running. Not because the installation is so hard, no because I don’t want to RTFM. So I had to run the setup several times. It’s important that you have a valid A-Record and MX-Record for your Zimbra Collaboration Server. During the setup those two DNS parameters will be checked. It seems that you can install the software even when you have not configured it but I read in some forums that you can get errors. You’ll also need to edit the /etc/hosts file in order to get a successful installation.

127.0.0.1            localhost.localdomain   localhost
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx      mail.thatsmyview.net       mail

As with every fresh installed Ubuntu system you should also run apt-get upgrade to get the latest fixes. If you start the ZCS installation now it will stop due to missing dependencies. I had to install some additional packages.

apt-get install libpcre3 libgmp3c2 libstdc++5

Possibly you’ll have to install more or less packages depending on your core installation and the selected options. The Zimbra installation can begin. First untar/gunzip the archive file and then start the installation through the installation script.

./install.sh

The installer will ask you which components should be installed. As I’ve to less RAM for all of them I’ve decided to leave the proxy, logger and the memcached option. After that you can configure loads of parameters but the only one which is really needed is the admin password. Press menu 4, then 3 to set the password. Then press a to apply the options and save the configuration in a file as suggested. The setup will try to start the services after the installation but here I got in trouble. The RAM was already full and the Java virtual machine couldn’t be started. Bad for me and I first thought of getting more RAM for my Vserver but in the end I found some more helpful stuff on the web to go on without expanding memory and spending more money. In case you have a Vserver or physical box with just 1 GB of memory, wait for an upcoming article which will give you the needed parameters to successfully run ZCS.