Hi,
Here at work we are finally getting rid of lotus notes server/client for our mail. Hoorah! Hoorah! We are replacing it with, cough, MS Exchange and a front end of our choice. My brother wants to use a linux box with Opera for his mail, and I would do likewise or use exim-mutt type things. Does anyone have any experience with linux and ms exchange? Is it pop3 or imap? Does it keep its mail in weird format that Opera won't be able to read? etc etc.
This is a great opportunity to start running linux as a work desktop, as Notes and the odd word doc are all I need ms windows for now, and I don't intend to miss it!
jen
Jenny_Hopkins@toby-churchill.com wrote:
Hi,
Here at work we are finally getting rid of lotus notes server/client for our mail. Hoorah! Hoorah! We are replacing it with, cough, MS Exchange and a front end of our choice. My brother wants to use a linux box with Opera for his mail, and I would do likewise or use exim-mutt type things. Does anyone have any experience with linux and ms exchange? Is it pop3 or imap? Does it keep its mail in weird format that Opera won't be able to read? etc etc.
All of this is IIRC, and no doubt someone will shout if I'm wrong!
Exchange is fully proprietary, and doesn't run IMAP. You're restricted to Outlook as a client. Note too that it's impossible to restore individual emails if lost, one can only restore an entire instance of Exchange resulting in guaranteed data loss if the internal DB dies (which it is prone to do). To overcome this, big corporate users run two instances of Exchange, and restore to the "dummy" one whence individual emails can be copied out, and the "live" one left alone.
Exchange uses an internal DB to store email (as opposed to IMAP/POP) because NTFS isn't good enough at securing private emails, so the DB adds an extra layer of permissions, ACLs etc.
Frankly, a mysql-driven postfix system using SASL and courier with any client you like is way better, and a helluva lot cheaper...
This is a great opportunity to start running linux as a work desktop, as Notes and the odd word doc are all I need ms windows for now, and I don't intend to miss it!
Don't forget you'll need to keep Outlook!
Cheers, Laurie.
On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 12:22:23PM +0100, Laurie Brown wrote:
Exchange is fully proprietary, and doesn't run IMAP. You're restricted to Outlook as a client. Note too that it's impossible to restore individual
Not 100% correct, the old version 5.5 of exchange does support IMAP (may be a plugin though) and does support pop3 etc. So you are not restricted to Outlook as a client. If you have Exchange 2000 with web access enabled you could buy the proprietary plugin for evolution from Ximian which will allow you to do calendar sharing etc. with Outlook users which may be handy. If you only want mail access then make sure the people who set it up leave pop and imap turned on (you will have to check out the imap status yourself) and preferably web access which means you could even use a browser to get your email.
Of course the rest of what Laurie says is correct, Exchange is very nasty and I really hate it, of course there is no other "all in one package" that I know of right now (apart from Lotus Notes) but then I don't see why you have to make groupware and email the same thing.
I think you should point out to your management that going the exchange route is not a great idea.
Adam
Just to put poor Jenny's mind at rest.
Far be it for me to openly defend a MS product but Laurie you are a bit of the mark with some of your comments :o)
Exchange is fully proprietary, and doesn't run IMAP.
2000 does and 5.5 could be made to with some persuasion.
You're restricted to Outlook as a client.
But only if you want all of the Exchange functionality and even then as Adam and others have pointed out it is possible to use other clients (or even the Web access thing on it's own, mind you good luck if you want it to play nicely on anything other than IE)
Note too that it's impossible to restore individual emails if lost
Not true, it is difficult to restore individual mail boxes and was even more so on 5.5. But if you have the right backup solution or a clever admin it is not impossible.
guaranteed data loss if the internal DB dies (which it is prone to do).
5 and 5.5 were especially was known to damage their Information stores if they crashed in some instances, but even then it was possible to run repairs to the DB and get it back. To say that Exchange is prone to doing this is a bit of an exaggeration. I think I have encountered it about 2-3 times on 5 or 5.5 and never on 2000. Honestly if you have an Exchange server that is doing that regularly then I would suggest that there is something wrong with it.
To overcome this, big corporate users run two instances of Exchange, and > > restore to the "dummy" one whence individual emails can be copied out, and the "live" one left alone.
I think you may be confusing a few things here, One is a repair technique that can be used if you only have Mickey mouse backup software (like the rubbish that MS provide) and need to restore an individual mail box, another is a repair technique that can be used if half the DB is shot (ie the Public store is dead but the private one is ok) but the main reason you will see more than one Exchange server is that due to the innefficiencies of Exchange it does really need to be multi homed once you start to scale up the number of users
Exchange uses an internal DB to store email (as opposed to IMAP/POP) because NTFS isn't good enough at securing private emails, so the DB adds an extra layer of permissions, ACLs etc.ers.
Exchange uses a DB because frankly it's the right thing to do given what Exchange does. To prove this point go to a site that has say 200 user mailboxes and send an all staff mail with a 1MB attachment. Notice how quickly that message got to all users ? See how the Information store didn't grow by 200MB ? That's why Exchange uses a DB it has nothing to do with permissions.
Frankly, a mysql-driven postfix system using SASL and courier with any client you like is way better, and a helluva lot cheaper...
True but can it provide everything (from an end user perspective) that Exchange/Outlook can, to my mind this is one of the big gaps in any potential Linux Migration. I've tried several things but I have never been able to provide every feature without resorting to several client applications. After working with Outlook for so long end users are quite settled into having everything in one place.
I'm sorry Laurie, I don't mean to attack your post here. But to my mind Exchange/Outlook is possibly the best thing MS ever came up with and it's the one thing that there isn't any Plug in and go Linux equivalent of. I'm not saying it's without it's flaws and I've spent many a cold night banging my head against a dead exchange server, but for many people it works very well and for the most part it is reasonably reliable.
SuSE Openexchange is getting there, but not quite.
On Wed, 2003-07-16 at 11:16, Jenny_Hopkins@toby-churchill.com wrote:
Hi,
Here at work we are finally getting rid of lotus notes server/client for our mail. Hoorah! Hoorah! We are replacing it with, cough, MS Exchange and a front end of our choice. My brother wants to use a linux box with Opera for his mail, and I would do likewise or use exim-mutt type things. Does anyone have any experience with linux and ms exchange? Is it pop3 or imap? Does it keep its mail in weird format that Opera won't be able to read? etc etc.
This is a great opportunity to start running linux as a work desktop, as Notes and the odd word doc are all I need ms windows for now, and I don't intend to miss it!
jen
Why the move to Exchange?
As far as I am aware Exchange supports imap and pop3 as mail interfaces. This should support any Linux mail client.
You should be able to run your notes client under wine without too much problem.
See the this link for info about it.
http://www.winecentric.com/notes5.shtml
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 Jenny_Hopkins@toby-churchill.com wrote:
Hi,
Here at work we are finally getting rid of lotus notes server/client for our mail. Hoorah! Hoorah! We are replacing it with, cough, MS Exchange and a front end of our choice. My brother wants to use a linux box with Opera for his mail, and I would do likewise or use exim-mutt type things. Does anyone have any experience with linux and ms exchange? Is it pop3 or imap? Does it keep its mail in weird format that Opera won't be able to read? etc etc.
This is a great opportunity to start running linux as a work desktop, as Notes and the odd word doc are all I need ms windows for now, and I don't intend to miss it!
jen
Hi Jen,
We have MS Exchange at work, anmd I have successsfullly been able to conect to it using Pine as an IMAP client. Our exchange servers also support LDAP, so you can connect to that to get at things like the company address list.
HTH
Chris
** Jenny_Hopkins@toby-churchill.com Jenny_Hopkins@toby-churchill.com [2003-07-16 11:25]:
Here at work we are finally getting rid of lotus notes server/client for our mail. Hoorah! Hoorah! We are replacing it with, cough, MS Exchange and a front end of our choice. My brother wants to use a linux box with Opera for his mail, and I would do likewise or use exim-mutt type things. Does anyone have any experience with linux and ms exchange? Is it pop3 or imap? Does it keep its mail in weird format that Opera won't be able to read? etc etc.
This is a great opportunity to start running linux as a work desktop, as Notes and the odd word doc are all I need ms windows for now, and I don't intend to miss it!
** end quote [Jenny_Hopkins@toby-churchill.com]
I pity you here, I used to work at company that ditched an IBM mainframe system as part of the y2k issue and almost went to Notes. Thankfully they saw the light and went the Intranet route (the cost of Notes was the winner here!). We must have been one of the early Intranet setups back in 1995, but by no means the first.
The setup we chose was ideal for dropping a Linux client into - Netscape servers for web, mail, LDAP and calendar functions, mail and calendar being on old RS6000 boxes. After a few years with this, and when we looked at upgrading the Netscape software we found the licensing costs had changed, this lead to management considering goign the Microsoft route with Exchange - thankfully we managed to hold this off for a long while (till after I'd left) because to replace a single ageing RS6000 supporting around 1000 clients with around 3500 mail addresses (the joys of migrating companies and therefore mail domains!) we would have had to implement 4 Intel based Windows NT servers each running Exchange - way too expensive. I've heard they've gone the Exchange route now, but that's largely due to having reduced the size of the company to about 1/4 what it was, and the need to support some of the legacy mail addresses must have reduced too.
It could be worse though, I ended up moving to yet another company when half of the original was sold off (before I finally left) and in the process was witness to moving to IIS for web servers, ditching LDAP and calendar completely (although I did implement the Star Office calendaring server the new management didn't support the functionality provided by shared diaries!), and moving mail to MDaemon (spell check usually wants to change this to Madmen!). This MDaemon server was administered via a 33.6k direct dial modem link from my desk (UK) to the 'server' in Holland (running Windows 98 and dialling via ISDN to pull mail and then send it back out again) - nasty. Still this implementation was defined by a manager to insisted we switch to ethernet from token ring so that we could use TCP/IP to communicate with our AS/400 boxes, and who was faxed a virus hoax, typed it out and emailed it to me insisting that I emailed it on to all managers within the company (even though I explained it to him!). I was saved this embarassement by him not being able to give me email addresses for all the company managers! Anyone still wondering why I left?!
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abower＠thebowery.co.uk -
Chris Glover -
Douglas Willis -
Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com -
Laurie Brown -
Paul Tansom -
Wayne Stallwood