Virtual machine with Zimbra installed

Due to difficulty setting up DNS to work properly on a local machine along with a few other configurations we've made a Zimbra virtual machine under VMware freely available for download. You can get any of our dedicated servers starting from 99 euros/month and we will install for free your Zimbra Colloboration Suite. Just contact us in case that you are interested in.

UPDATE: The latest Zimbra (6.0.7) Open Source edition has been added to the repository. Read below and download the file. The latest bzip2 file includes Zimbra 6.0.7 along with latest Ubuntu Linux patches (uploaded on 18/07/2010).

Introduction to enterprise Email Services

Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) is an email and calendar server plus much more; think about it like a next-generation Microsoft Exchange server. In addition to email and calendar, it provides document storage and editing, instant messaging, and simplified administrative controls all in an award winning webmail user interface built with the latest AJAX web technology. Zimbra also provides mobility and syncs to desktop client applications; the server is deployed on commodity Linux and Mac server hardware offering high availability.

Architecture

Zimbra architecture includes open-source integrations using industry standard protocols. The third-party software listed below is bundled with Zimbra software and installed as part of the installation process. These components have been tested and configured to work with the software.

• Jetty, the web application server that Zimbra software runs in.
• Postfix, an open source message transfer agent (MTA) that routes mail messages to the appropriate Zimbra server
• OpenLDAP software, an open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) that provides user authentication
• MySQL database software
• Lucene, an open-source full featured text and search engine
• Anti-virus and anti-spam open source components including:
• ClamAV, an anti-virus scanner that protects against malicious files
• SpamAssassin mail filter that attempt to identify spam
• Amavisd-new, which interfaces between the MTA and one or more content checkers
• James/Sieve filtering, used to create filters for email

Pricing and Support

Guru-host offer various packages based on Zimbra. You can however create your own package in case that any of the packages below does not cover your needs. Just contact us and we will create the package for you within the day. All our packages include free of charge a secondary MX record[1] ensuring that you wont loose any email even in case of primary server goes down.

Common questions and answers

How do you define a "mailbox license"? Is that one person?

A mailbox license is an account with a physical email inbox and typically belongs to one person.
It is possible to have an account set up for a virtual "role" within your organization that may not be staffed by an individual. So, to decide how many licenses you want to purchase the next question becomes when do you need a new account versus just using an alias or distribution list (which are not considered new accounts).

First some definitions:

* Account: "Jane@work.com", she has a mailbox, calendar, documents, quota, etc.
* Alias: She can also be "jane.smith@work.com" or even "info@work.com".
o The alias is unique to this account
o Jane could receive email sent to info@work.com and would reply back as "jane@work.com"
o All the mail sent to the alias lives in her mailbox (if she leaves the mail archive for "info" would be lost)
* Distribution List: A group of accounts / aliases

To have a permanent role in your organization for "info@work.com" that doesn't disappear if Jane moves you will want a new account. This way others can log in to check the email, you will have an archive, you can reply back to messages as "info", plus Jane won't all the "info@work.com" counting against quota.

Webmail client

Zimbra Collaboration Suite features a state-of-the-art Ajax web client- it's the ideal productivity tool for today's enterprise, service provider, academic, and government environments. By outpacing traditional desktop application performance and working in the web browser, Zimbra gives you a better messaging and collaboration experience plus zero desktop lock in.