[Dovecot] Creating an IMAP repo for ~100 users need some advice

[Kaya Saman]

On 03/18/2012 09:16 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> On 3/17/2012 4:24 PM, Kaya Saman wrote:
>
>> Long story but we don't have any control over our mail server which is
>> handled by the parent company abroad and is on MS Exchange.
>>
>> To use an IMAP storage solution is the only way to get rid of pesky MS
>> .pst files which have been causing everyone grief and havoc.
> It's been many years since I used, or supported, MS Outlook.  That said,
> for the 10+ years I did support it, ~1996-2006, the corporate version of
> Outlook, not to be confused with Outlook Express, did not store any mail
> in local .PST files unless specifically configured to do so.  By default
> it keeps all mail in the user account in the Exchange server store.
>
> Thus I would assume these Outlook clients have been manually configured
> to use .PST files to keep copies of mail locally, for faster access and
> to keep inefficient MS Exchange (MAPI) traffic off the WAN link?
>
> Is your problem with the PST files themselves, or merely the fact
> they're stored on the local PC, probably in the users' roaming profiles,
> thus creating the problem of large data movement during logon/off?
>
> If the problem isn't with the .PST format for storing the emails, why
> not simply setup a local Samba server and configure the Outlook clients
> to store users' PSTs on Samba shares?
>
> Better yet, if you already have a file server for home directories,
> simply use a folder redirection policy to put the PST files in folders
> in users' home directories.  This is an extremely common practice in the
> MS world because all Microsoft Windows apps store everything in the user
> profile directory by default, which again, causes big problems with
> roaming profiles, which many/most enterprises use.
>

Thanks Stan for this,

currently our users have about 270MB space located on the Exchange 
server which we have no control over.

Therefor users are currently manually backing up their information to .pst.


Since all contact/calendar/other information is already stored on the 
server the IMAP solution is a better one. It also means that a more 
UNIX/Linux centric approach is being ask for/tolerated which is where I 
come in being the only full-bread UNIX engineer on site.

I couldn't comment on the MS side of things as I have never really used 
MS stuff before but my plan using ZFS and FreeBSD should be the best. 
Again it's going to be **scalable** storage which is perfect!

-Also easy to maintain; otherwise I don't think there would be anyone 
left who will be able to admin the SMB/local directory method (I can't 
as I don't understand MS) - additionally there isn't much space 
available and bandwidth either meaning we would purchase a dedicated 
server or build a dedicated server for this (well I would :-) ).


Regards,


Kaya