Fully FOSS EMail solution
- by Ravi
I am looking at various FOSS options to build a robust EMail solution for a government funded university. Commercial options are to be chosen only in the worst case scenario. Here are the requirements:
Approx 1000-1500 users - Postfix or Exim? (Sendmail is out;-))
Mailing lists for different groups/Need web based archive - Mailman? Sympa?
Centralised identity store - OpenLDAP? Fedora 389DS?
Secure IMAP only - no POP3 required - Courier? Dovecot? Cyrus??
Anti Spam - SpamAssasin? what else?
Calendaring - ??
webmail - good to have, not mandatory - needs to be very secure...so squirrelmail is out;-)?
Other questions:
What mailbox storage format to use? where to store? database/file system?
Simple and effective HA options? Is there a web proxy equivalent to squid in the mail server world? software load balancers?CARP?
Monitoring and alert?
Backup?
The govt wants to stimulate the local economy by buying hardware locally from whitebox vendors. Also local consultants and university students will do the integration. We looked at out-of-the-box integrated solutions like Axigen, Zimbra and GMail but each was ruled out in favour of a DIY approach in the hopes of full control over the data and avoiding vendor lockin - which i though was a smart thing to do. I wish more provincial governments in the developing world think of these sort of initiatives
As for OS - Debian, FreeBSD would be first preference. Commercial OS's need not apply. CentOS as second tier option...
