Need a mail server

Offy

The company I work for is bout to buy a new mail server, looking at the Dell Power Edge 2500. Does anyone know of a better server in the same price range i.e. €3500 which includes a 15 user licence for w2000k. It will only be used to store e-mails and as an internet gateway. All advice is welcomed

air

Is the server only going to be a mail server for 15 people?
If so then the above is serious overkill?
Is it going to run exchange or is it just going to be a POP3 server?
If its just a pop 3 server then a very low spec machine would do the job very efficiently.

Offy

Its going to be a mail server for 15 users and an an internet gateway. We have to upgrade cos our present mail server has no anti virus and we cant get anti virus for it as its an old team internet box. Which means we are cursed with viruses at the moment. Budget for this is €3500 and I want the best I can get for the budget I have.

Offy

I havent decided if its going to be POP3 or exchange yet.

Typedef

Oh god.

For 3500 yo yos, go get thine self a machine with scsi disks and install Linux. You can have 'unlimited connections', you can use it as a firewall, router, motion sensor (with webcam) you name it.

FFS don't waste the money on an insecure, Micro$oftopian box, you may as well burn your money as do that.

Meh

Originally posted by Typedef
For 3500 yo yos, go get thine self a machine with scsi disks and install Linux. You can have 'unlimited connections', you can use it as a firewall, router, motion sensor (with webcam) you name it.

Agreed. In work, i have qmail set up as a mail server for about 15 users, with this for virus scanning. The machine (a dual P3-733MHz, with 256MB memory) also runs Squid as a web/ftp proxy. It all works great, and there are no per-seat licensing charges or anything. It's also much more secure than a comparable Win2K solution. And it doesn't need to be rebooted whenever you install a security patch.

Typedef

Originally posted by Meh
And it doesn't need to be rebooted whenever you install a security patch.

Not to mention text editors, web browsers.... etc.

Edit:
I use postfix as the mailserver and reject any and all executable windows attachments. We run a firewall based on iptables on that same box, and yes a web proxy for windows machines which refuse to reference the linux box as their default gateway... (instead blinkeredly sending dns lookups to the Microsoftopian internal dns controller).

This box replaced having to buy 2000 quids worth of firewall and router from eircom for the 1mb dsl package.
So if we take 2000 for a mail relay, 2000 for dsl accoutraments and even 1500 for a dmz to filter out executable mail attachments and factor in the fact the box doing this is damn old (a pentium 1) you can see that in terms of cost for the business this box is a gem.

Offy

Linux did I hear you say???
Ok get to Dell's web site, you have the budget, spend it as you see fit and send me the specs.

Meh

Originally posted by Offy
Linux did I hear you say???
Ok get to Dell's web site, you have the budget, spend it as you see fit and send me the specs.

Well, from the dell site:

Microsoft SBS 2000 CD (5 CAL) (+EUR 1,205.00)
Additional 10 CALs for Microsoft Windows 2000 (+EUR 440.00)

So take the price of whatever Windows machine you were looking at and subtract €1,645 to get the price with Linux. Dell offer a no-OS option., so you can just download a distribution and install it yourself.

Typedef

This is more then you need but, broadly in budget.

Edit: & What Meh said. You can just buy a bog standard workstation and setup Linux on it, for roughly half the price of a dedicated poweredge server.

Typedef.

Gerry

Buy a low spec machine for maybe 1000 euro, then pay someone 1000 to set it up and put linux on it, and all the gear, and save yourself some money. The lads here are forgetting that not everyone knows how to setup a unix based gateway + mail server.

leeroybrown

If I were buying the server I'd definitely go down the Linux/Unix route.

You could set up a decent box to handle mail for a pretty big company on a piece of crap machine.

The only problem/catch is that if you are using a Linux/Unix platform you need to have someone with a bit of knowledge handy for those few occasions a year when a proper/stable MTA falls over.

Offy

Fair point Gerry, I havent worked with Linux in about 3 years.

The only problem/catch is that if you are using a Linux/Unix platform you need to have someone with a bit of knowledge handy for those few occasions a year when a proper/stable MTA falls over.

K? Excuse my igeorance but what do you mean?

leeroybrown

Unix based mail servers are very stable but when they break it tends to be strange stuff that you might need someone with a decent bit of knowledge to fix.