Actually yes :) A former company was a mergers/acquisitions maniac, so we faced fairly often. We took the easy way out, not actually merging the Exchange instances, but simply migrating user mailboxes into the main distributed/redundant system. Sometimes reused the acquired HW to expand the main system.

Migration is much much easier than merging ... With merging you run into issues with the mailstore databases etc. Icky.

On 12/10/2013 10:44 AM, Charles Marcus wrote:

Thanks for the feedback...

Have you had any experience with two separate companies 'merging' their separate Exchange instances?

The reason I ask is, it seems to me that in many cases, it might actually be easier to migrate a non Exchange system into an existing Exchange system, than merging two separate Exchange systems...

True or false? Or 'it depends'?

Thanks again

On 2013-12-10 9:49 AM, Dean <deano-dovecot@areyes.com> wrote:

...

One of the issues you'll face is that Exchange is much more than just a mail server. Once you've begun drinking the Micro$oft koolaid, it's hard to refuse the rest. It does offer a large feature set, and tight integration with a lot of other "things". That's both good and bad of course ...

While I may sound like I'm touting Exchange, I think it definitely has it's place so long as that place is well defined. If you have problems/issues that it will solve, then by all means, use it. But don't let them cram it down your throat just "because it's industry standard" or that "we can always sue Micro$oft if it fails" or any other such nonsense. Use the right tool for the job.

Personally, I use Exim4/Dovecot/Spamassassin/Roundcube for my domains and ones that I support. I have my own auto-installer that can spin up a fully-configured mail-server like that in about 15 minutes, bootable on bare-metal or on a cheap VPS. And I also recommend Exim4 (or postfix) as the front-end just as you said ...

On 2013-12-11 11:36, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

On 12/10/2013 8:15 AM, Charles Marcus wrote:

There has been some whispers about considering migrating our mail systems to Exchange Server. I want to try to nip this in the bud.

I would like to ask for some help with providing some kind of comparison of large(r) commercial companies use of email systems... specifically, those using Microsoft Exchange Server, vs those using open source Linux/Unix based systems, including even commercial *nix groupware based systems like Zimbra, as well as plain mail systems like dovecot, or cyrus or courier.

I know that many (if they are smart) Admins that do use Exchange internally will use postfix (or something else linux/unix based) in front of it as their relayhost (for both inbound and outbound), so just counting the number of publicly accessible smtp servers won't be a good gauge.

Does anyone know of any decent non-biased studies that have been done, hopefully relatively recently (last few years) that provide such a comparison?

Microsoft Exchange is a mature, very robust mail/groupware platform, and when combined with Outlook provides a very rich feature set and user experience. The level of client integration is superb out of the box. MS Windows Server and Exchange server run just fine virtualized on ESX and are both certified by Microsoft and VMware in this configuration. If one looks at Exchange without wearing glasses colored by FLOSS, it is a really great piece of software. Lotus Notes was/is a piece of junk. Novell's Groupwise was/is pretty close to Exchange but never achieved wide adoption due to the MS Juggernaut.

There are multiple FLOSS groupware alternatives with similar features. None offer the same level of seamless client integration or as rich a feature set, though these solutions are getting closer.

The decision whether to stick with FLOSS or move to Exchange boils down to a few things, assuming management is making the decision, not the IT department.

1. Capital outlay for the license fees
2. Administrative talent pool

Regarding #2, in any given city in the US there are at least 100 Windows/Exchange administrators per *nix/floss_groupware_product admin. If a company ever needs to sack key members of its IT staff for any reason, or if it decides to sack them all and outsource IT administration to a consulting firm, having an all or mostly MS infrastructure makes this a no brainer. I'm not suggesting this is a possibility in your case, but that it's simply something that management considers. If they don't they're not doing their job. Management should never allow the company to be held hostage, have no options, due to being reliant on a single systems administrator and his/er unique knowledge of the infrastructure.

Seamless client integration *with windows clients*. This is something you didn't mention but is vital for some organisations (like mine, where a tiny minority of administrative workers use windows). Allowing one microsoft service into your organisation is like inviting in a Trojan horse. It won't be long before somone else says "why don't we try sharepoint now that we get a bundled license" or something, not to mention the licensing nightmare "wait I think we need a CAL for every end user!"

Consider it if you are already a microsoft shop, otherwise avoid it as you would a plague rat.

On 11 Dec 2013, at 12:36 PM, Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:

The decision whether to stick with FLOSS or move to Exchange boils down to a few things, assuming management is making the decision, not the IT department.

Why would you hire an IT department but then not allow the IT department to be making the IT decisions?

Regards, Graham