Hi all,
I'm looking for a (preferably free) alternative to SME / Clark Connect.
I basically need the following: - firewall - nat - VPN - bandwidth limiting / monitoring - email (SMTP / POP3 / IMAP) & groupware - file & printer sharing - RAID support - if possible fail-over / high availability support.
I need to support about 15 - 30 (some part time) students, so I would like to keep the costs low. If it's free, so much better. SME works for most of the stuff, but it still runs on CentOS 4, and I'd prefer to use 5.
Any recommendations?
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Rudi Ahlers rudiahlers@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I'm looking for a (preferably free) alternative to SME / Clark Connect.
I basically need the following:
- firewall
- nat
- VPN
- bandwidth limiting / monitoring
- email (SMTP / POP3 / IMAP) & groupware
- file & printer sharing
- RAID support
- if possible fail-over / high availability support.
I need to support about 15 - 30 (some part time) students, so I would like to keep the costs low. If it's free, so much better. SME works for most of the stuff, but it still runs on CentOS 4, and I'd prefer to use 5.
Any recommendations?
--
Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Pfsense(FreeBSD based) can be an alternative, although it doesn't support email/groupware out of the box...but it doesn't mean that it can't be done. http://www.pfsense.org
I've been running it on a Dell Optiplex PIII for almost 2 years without any issue using NAT, Port Fowarding, Dual WAN(Cable and ADSL), Captive portal, DNS Server, Snort, etc.
hope it helps.
Rudi Ahlers schrieb:
Hi all,
I'm looking for a (preferably free) alternative to SME / Clark Connect.
I basically need the following:
- firewall
- nat
- VPN
- bandwidth limiting / monitoring
I'd split these functions to a separate device, using pfSense on embedded hardware (ALIX or comparable). They have no point on a server. pfSense does this on 200 $-size hardware with 5 Watt energy consumption.
- email (SMTP / POP3 / IMAP) & groupware
- file & printer sharing
- RAID support
I don't think there's a free version for everything ;-) Zimbra is OK, but the commercial edition costs - same with OX and most other stuff. Given the complexity of the stuff involved, I'd say anything like this needs a commercial backer. Unless you only use mail.
- if possible fail-over / high availability support.
For free? ;-)
I need to support about 15 - 30 (some part time) students, so I would like to keep the costs low. If it's free, so much better. SME works for most of the stuff, but it still runs on CentOS 4, and I'd prefer to use 5.
I have a sense of deja-vu. Didn't we have all these questions and specs a couple of weeks ago?
Rainer
Rainer Duffner wrote:
- if possible fail-over / high availability support.
For free? ;-)
I need to support about 15 - 30 (some part time) students, so I would like to keep the costs low. If it's free, so much better. SME works for most of the stuff, but it still runs on CentOS 4, and I'd prefer to use 5.
I have a sense of deja-vu. Didn't we have all these questions and specs a couple of weeks ago?
That was more about something that scaled up. For 15 people I'd probably run SME server in a VMware guest on a machine doing something else. And handle the high availablity by having the host use RAID1 on swappable disks that could be moved to a spare chassis.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.comwrote:
Rainer Duffner wrote:
- if possible fail-over / high availability support.
For free? ;-)
I need to support about 15 - 30 (some part time) students, so I would like to keep the costs low. If it's free, so much better. SME works for most of the stuff, but it still runs on CentOS 4, and I'd prefer to use 5.
I have a sense of deja-vu. Didn't we have all these questions and specs a couple of weeks ago?
That was more about something that scaled up. For 15 people I'd probably run SME server in a VMware guest on a machine doing something else. And handle the high availablity by having the host use RAID1 on swappable disks that could be moved to a spare chassis.
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Pfsense supports CARP which can be used for failover. FreeNAS/Openfiler(CentOS) can be used for file sharing and it supports RAID also. and you can use KVM on CentOS to run all of them(VMs) including a VM which can use Zimbra or any other groupware software you want.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Victor Padro vpadro@gmail.com wrote:
FreeNAS/Openfiler(CentOS) can be used for file sharing and it supports RAID also.
Openfiler uses rPath Linux http://www.openfiler.com/community
They have not used CentOS for some time I think. AsteriskNOW recently switched from using rPath to CentOS when they released version 1.5.
Paul
I'm looking for a (preferably free) alternative to SME / Clark Connect.
I basically need the following:
- firewall
- nat
- VPN
- bandwidth limiting / monitoring
- email (SMTP / POP3 / IMAP) & groupware
- file & printer sharing
- RAID support
- if possible fail-over / high availability support.
Here is a free mail server solution for RHEL/CentOS 5.x: http://code.google.com/p/iredmail/
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
Hi all,
I'm looking for a (preferably free) alternative to SME / Clark Connect.
I basically need the following:
- firewall
- nat
- VPN
- bandwidth limiting / monitoring
- email (SMTP / POP3 / IMAP) & groupware
- file & printer sharing
- RAID support
- if possible fail-over / high availability support.
I need to support about 15 - 30 (some part time) students, so I would like to keep the costs low. If it's free, so much better. SME works for most of the stuff, but it still runs on CentOS 4, and I'd prefer to use 5.
What's the problem with clarkconnect? It's not particularly difficult to set these functions up yourself starting with a stock Centos if you intend to maintain them yourself (SME's main attraction is that the configuration interface is easy enough for anyone to use). With other appliance-type distributions you might find it easier to split the firewall and application services onto different boxes.
ipcop and ebox look somewhat promising.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 9:37 PM, Rudi Ahlers rudiahlers@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I'm looking for a (preferably free) alternative to SME / Clark Connect.
I basically need the following:
- firewall
- nat
- VPN
- bandwidth limiting / monitoring
- email (SMTP / POP3 / IMAP) & groupware
- file & printer sharing
- RAID support
- if possible fail-over / high availability support.
I need to support about 15 - 30 (some part time) students, so I would like to keep the costs low. If it's free, so much better. SME works for most of the stuff, but it still runs on CentOS 4, and I'd prefer to use 5.
clarkconnect 5 is on beta 2 http://distrowatch.com/5407
just wait a little while :)
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:05 AM, muhammad panji sumodirjo@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 9:37 PM, Rudi Ahlers rudiahlers@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I'm looking for a (preferably free) alternative to SME / Clark Connect.
I basically need the following:
- firewall
- nat
- VPN
- bandwidth limiting / monitoring
- email (SMTP / POP3 / IMAP) & groupware
- file & printer sharing
- RAID support
- if possible fail-over / high availability support.
I need to support about 15 - 30 (some part time) students, so I would like to keep the costs low. If it's free, so much better. SME works for most of the stuff, but it still runs on CentOS 4, and I'd prefer to use 5.
clarkconnect 5 is on beta 2 http://distrowatch.com/5407
just wait a little while :)
-- Muhammad Panji http://sumodirjo.wordpress.com _______________________________________________
Thanx guys, I see what I'm looking for doesn't really exist. SME does what I need, but still runs on CentOS 4.7, and it doesn't offer groupware email out of the box.
The project will be for a bunch of students, so costs need to be kept low. In fact, the PC that will be used was donated by someone, and where I live PC components are much more expensive than in the USA (yes, there are people with internet & computers outside the borders of the USA). I only have 1 PIV with 1GB RAM to my disposal. The ADSL router that will be used had a stateful packet filter, NAT & intrusion detection, so I'm not really looking for a dedicated firewall, but rather an inhouse server, which will mainly serve as PDC with file & print server, email server, possible VPN, and bandwidth monitoring.
I basically want the students to each have a domain login, with his own files storage on the server, and some will connect via wifi, so I would prefer to keep them on a VPN for security reasons. If possible, I'd like to limit & monitor how much bandwidth each user is using, for billing purposes. SME has an option for roaming profiles on Samba, which is nice if a user moves to another PC. The groupware email is also desirable, for this same reason, to allow a user to still get his email on any PC in the lab. so, I would like to keep all documents & email on the server, to make backing up easier.
I won't really manage the network, there is someone with basic Linux knowledge to manage it all, hence my need for something simple & out of the box deployment. With SME & ClarkConnect I can tell the user over the phone (or email) how to re-install the server, restore the backups, and be up & running again in no time. ClarkConnect is much nicer than SME, but only offers 10 email accounts. And, since it's an NGO lab, there is no spare cache for a license, just to get 5 more email addresses.
I hope this makes my needs clearer. I also use SME home, and at various clients, cause I can tell them over the phone how to fix it when it breaks. Even my mom can "fix the server" if need be.
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:18:40 +0200 Rudi Ahlers rudiahlers@gmail.com wrote:
Thanx guys, I see what I'm looking for doesn't really exist. SME does what I need, but still runs on CentOS 4.7, and it doesn't offer groupware email out of the box.
What you are looking for doesn't exist in the a fully packaged form. But if you go to: http://howtoforge.com You will have the instructions for doing it yourself. Search for Zimbra for the groupware, samba...
The bandwidth monitoring shouldn't be done on the server but on the router, always at the edge of the network.
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 3:30 PM, centos@911networks.com wrote:
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:18:40 +0200 Rudi Ahlers rudiahlers@gmail.com wrote:
Thanx guys, I see what I'm looking for doesn't really exist. SME does what I need, but still runs on CentOS 4.7, and it doesn't offer groupware email out of the box.
What you are looking for doesn't exist in the a fully packaged form. But if you go to: http://howtoforge.com You will have the instructions for doing it yourself. Search for Zimbra for the groupware, samba...
The bandwidth monitoring shouldn't be done on the server but on the router, always at the edge of the network.
--
SME Server 7.4 (http://www.contribs.org) does 90% of what I want, except for the bandwidth monitoring (per IP basis, aka. bandwidth accounting - which PFsense can do), and it acts as a router as well. ClarckConnect can also do this, but it's a commercial product for more than 10 mailboxes.
Surely, someone, somewhere would know of something similar?
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centos＠911networks.com -
Les Mikesell -
muhammad panji -
Paul Berger -
Rainer Duffner -
Rudi Ahlers -
Victor Padro -
Zhang Huangbin