Re: email questions

Matthew Schumacher wrote:

>bob@estimations wrote:
>
>
>>I'm toying with the idea of setting up an email server for a small business
>>(about 10 employees). Email is currently being provided by a remote
>>webhost. The webhost has
>>
>>I have a number of questions I'm hoping I can get some feedback on.
>>
>>First of all, should I do it? What are the risks and/or rewards? I'm
>>thinking that the primary risk is that I don't know what I'm doing, so may
>>leave some security holes open in the installation, and that it might be a
>>hassle to maintain. But I'm thinking that the primary reward is that I can
>>more easily filter incoming mail, intercept spam at the server, etc.
>>
>>Secondly, if I *do* try it, what is a good package? I've been looking at
>>qmail, and even found a couple of installation howto's that look like
>>something I could do. e.g.
>>
>>http://www.flounder.net/qmail/qmail-howto.html
>>http://www.qmailrocks.org/
>>
>>Does anyone have experience with qmail and/or others that they may like
>>better? Also, any recommendations on spam killer applications?
>>
>>Thanks in advance,
>>
>>Bob Crosby
>>
>>
>>
>
>There are several advantages to having your own mail system:
>
>1. You can setup filters any way you want and you only worry about your
>own user base. Don't need email outside the country? Reject it. Don't
>want to allow zip files that are password protected? Drop them. The
>sky is the limits. I manage a bunch of mail systems, and the large ones
>get more spam simply because I can't ban away.
>
>2. You configure your own message size limits, message quotas, etc.
>Your not stuck with someone else's solution.
>
>As far as how hard is it to setup, depends on what your doing, and what
>package you go with.
>
>I personally stick with sendmail/mimedefang because you have completely
>control of very aspect of the filtering process. Want to reject mail
>sent to a specific address, but only if the user didn't authenticate, or
>if the message length is more than 10k, no problem, 5 lines of perl and
>it's done.
>
>I personally don't care for qmail because the default install doesn't
>filter mail until after it has been accepted. In order to fix this you
>need to use the qmail-queue patch which passes the message to another
>program during the smtp connection. While this works fine, it can cause
>a pretty large performance hit if the filter isn't real efficient or
>daemonized. The sendmail solution talks to its filters via tcp/local
>sockets so you can run the filter on another host if you want, and it's
>always in memory ready to go.
>
>Most find qmail much easier to setup, but I'm not sure it's any easier
>by the time you get all of the patchs and programs working together.
>
>
For qmail admins I would reccommend looking over John Simpsons site. He
has a combined qmail patch and much more..

http://www.jms1.net/qmail/ (PS: He won't let IE into his site).

>Now as far as Tim's comments with exchange, yes you can go that route,
>but you won't get anywhere close to the filtering ability unless you
>purchase filtering software such as GFI which is pretty expensive.
>
>
Yes, MS has released several "built-in" filtering options but they can
be difficult...

>Don't forget that you will be kicking it a couple of times a month to
>patch it, and backups can be very difficult and complex.
>
>Far and wide Microsoft software is easy to setup and get running, but
>when you start thinking about moving stuff to different hosts, backups,
>restoring data that has complex dependencies, ssl certs, etc, it starts
>getting every bit as complex as any unix solution.
>
>
Another good point..I have clients buy Veritas if they want to feel
confident about backing up the Exchange database. Your price just went
up about another $400-500 bucks.

>In short, I think having your own mail server is a good idea, but by the
>time you get it all working and filtering the way you want it,
>regardless of platform, you going to have some learning curve, however I
>think it is well worth it.
>
>schu
>
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Received on Fri Jul 1 09:53:48 2005