[PLUG] question on system

[logical american]

Hello again:

Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do the
following?

1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations

I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google Groups
and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google
drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area
to download files must exist so users can store their files.

What would you suggest?

The users are in the public domain.

Thanks for the input

- Randall

[Johnathan Mantey]

Run away!

Post by logical american
Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do the
following?
1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations
I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google Groups
and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google
drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area
to download files must exist so users can store their files.
What would you suggest?
The users are in the public domain.
Thanks for the input
- Randall
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[logical american]

Post by Johnathan Mantey
Run away!

Is this meant to be in jest?

[Louis Kowolowski]

What kind of budget is allocated for this?

Managing a system for 250-500 users is non-trivial. Scaling a solution for this will have non-trivial hardware/network costs associated unless there are some significant limitations placed on how many people can access at a time, and/or what size files are allowed to be shared.

Somebody asked something somewhat similar recently. Freedom box does all these things, but you would need to test and potentially scale the components independently, making the work much more involved than effectively dealing with a soft-appliance.

Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do the following?
1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations
I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google Groups and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area to download files must exist so users can store their files.
What would you suggest?
The users are in the public domain.
Thanks for the input
- Randall
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

--
Louis Kowolowski ***@cryptomonkeys.org
Cryptomonkeys: http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/

Making life more interesting for people since 1977

[logical american]

Post by Louis Kowolowski
What kind of budget is allocated for this?

Louis:

I don't know yet, but I suspect significant funds will need to be
allocated for this system.

I want to know if it is doable, first, then about how much per month to
do it. I know a good system administrator is needed too.

Thanks for your reply

[Johnathan Mantey]

Yes.... I suppose I should have put a large number of smileys after it.

Post by logical american

Post by Louis Kowolowski
What kind of budget is allocated for this?

I don't know yet, but I suspect significant funds will need to be
allocated for this system.
I want to know if it is doable, first, then about how much per month to
do it. I know a good system administrator is needed too.
Thanks for your reply
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[Tyrell Jentink]

It's been several years since I looked into this... Like others have said,
the administrative overhead is substantial, and I ultimately decided that
it was just easier and more reliable (for my needs) to use Google.

That said... The top product I was looking at at the time was Kolab,
http://kolab.org, and it SEEMS to meet many of your requirements...

I consider it unlikely that a company of this size would be served by any
single application... If I were setting up Kolab for a client, a good
amount of energy would have to be put into questions like "How do we manage
users?" And "How do we manage storage?" And "How do we manage backups?"

Like, maybe you will find that managing lots of users pushes you into
needing an LDAP server, possibly with Single Signon. As you add these
"Supporting" services, your security footprint increases, and you may need
additional firewall and intrusion detection software; Maybe these services
should be on "Bastion Servers," individual servers for each service to
increase both performance and security... Maybe you virtualized some.

Maybe those questions lead to non-Linux answers... Maybe you find managing
the workstations of all those users works best with ActiveDirectory rather
than OpenLDAP; Maybe you find that managing the storage requires something
more robust than LVM on XFS or EXT4... And then is Kolab's file sharing
(WebDAV, if I remember correctly) enough for your users? Adding SMB and NFS
can have unintended complications.

And all of those questions have to be balanced against the inherent feature
creep that comes from wandering down this road.

For many companies, the answer is to simply let Someone Else do it...
Often, that Someone Else is Google.

Post by logical american
Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do the
following?
1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations
I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google Groups
and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google
drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area
to download files must exist so users can store their files.
What would you suggest?
The users are in the public domain.
Thanks for the input
- Randall
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[Tomas Kuchta]

When looking at the requirements 200-500 users - I cannot imagine any
practically useful scenario without single sign on solution al least across
the web services and centralized group/access control.

With 200-500 users there would be fair amount of user and access management
workload. This needs to be distributed to data owners/managers/leaders.

That is beside the already mentioned associated storage, backup, security
and disaster recovery management.

There are other companies beside G-company providing these kind of services
or enterprise level support. Some examples: Kolab, Nextcloud, Collabora,
...

Regardless of solution chosen - someone has to manage it full time. Given
the number of users - it is critical - hence it needs more than one
individual to cover for vacation/sickness/disasters/etc.

Just adding to the list of consideration. Do look up the services mentioned
above though. They work like G-company, but they are OSS, and the platforms
are deployable and manageable by individuals - so the lock-in is not as
strong as with proprietary services.

Tomas

Post by Tyrell Jentink
It's been several years since I looked into this... Like others have said,
the administrative overhead is substantial, and I ultimately decided that
it was just easier and more reliable (for my needs) to use Google.
That said... The top product I was looking at at the time was Kolab,
http://kolab.org, and it SEEMS to meet many of your requirements...
I consider it unlikely that a company of this size would be served by any
single application... If I were setting up Kolab for a client, a good
amount of energy would have to be put into questions like "How do we manage
users?" And "How do we manage storage?" And "How do we manage backups?"
Like, maybe you will find that managing lots of users pushes you into
needing an LDAP server, possibly with Single Signon. As you add these
"Supporting" services, your security footprint increases, and you may need
additional firewall and intrusion detection software; Maybe these services
should be on "Bastion Servers," individual servers for each service to
increase both performance and security... Maybe you virtualized some.
Maybe those questions lead to non-Linux answers... Maybe you find managing
the workstations of all those users works best with ActiveDirectory rather
than OpenLDAP; Maybe you find that managing the storage requires something
more robust than LVM on XFS or EXT4... And then is Kolab's file sharing
(WebDAV, if I remember correctly) enough for your users? Adding SMB and NFS
can have unintended complications.
And all of those questions have to be balanced against the inherent feature
creep that comes from wandering down this road.
For many companies, the answer is to simply let Someone Else do it...
Often, that Someone Else is Google.

Post by logical american
Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do the
following?
1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations
I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google Groups
and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google
drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area
to download files must exist so users can store their files.
What would you suggest?
The users are in the public domain.
Thanks for the input
- Randall
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[Ben Koenig]

Let's assume I'm an aspiring Google IT guy and I'm preparing for an
interview as a Google System Adminstrator.

If I want to build a server that can handle emails from 800 users (500 with
some headroom) what would I need? Assume that my internet connection is
capable.

What kind of CPU do I need to process 800 incoming and outgoing emails in a
given moment?

Post by Tomas Kuchta
When looking at the requirements 200-500 users - I cannot imagine any
practically useful scenario without single sign on solution al least across
the web services and centralized group/access control.
With 200-500 users there would be fair amount of user and access management
workload. This needs to be distributed to data owners/managers/leaders.
That is beside the already mentioned associated storage, backup, security
and disaster recovery management.
There are other companies beside G-company providing these kind of services
or enterprise level support. Some examples: Kolab, Nextcloud, Collabora,
...
Regardless of solution chosen - someone has to manage it full time. Given
the number of users - it is critical - hence it needs more than one
individual to cover for vacation/sickness/disasters/etc.
Just adding to the list of consideration. Do look up the services mentioned
above though. They work like G-company, but they are OSS, and the platforms
are deployable and manageable by individuals - so the lock-in is not as
strong as with proprietary services.
Tomas

Post by Tyrell Jentink
It's been several years since I looked into this... Like others have

said,

Post by Tyrell Jentink
the administrative overhead is substantial, and I ultimately decided that
it was just easier and more reliable (for my needs) to use Google.
That said... The top product I was looking at at the time was Kolab,
http://kolab.org, and it SEEMS to meet many of your requirements...
I consider it unlikely that a company of this size would be served by any
single application... If I were setting up Kolab for a client, a good
amount of energy would have to be put into questions like "How do we

manage

Post by Tyrell Jentink
users?" And "How do we manage storage?" And "How do we manage backups?"
Like, maybe you will find that managing lots of users pushes you into
needing an LDAP server, possibly with Single Signon. As you add these
"Supporting" services, your security footprint increases, and you may

need

Post by Tyrell Jentink
additional firewall and intrusion detection software; Maybe these

services

Post by Tyrell Jentink
should be on "Bastion Servers," individual servers for each service to
increase both performance and security... Maybe you virtualized some.
Maybe those questions lead to non-Linux answers... Maybe you find

managing

Post by Tyrell Jentink
the workstations of all those users works best with ActiveDirectory

rather

Post by Tyrell Jentink
than OpenLDAP; Maybe you find that managing the storage requires

something

Post by Tyrell Jentink
more robust than LVM on XFS or EXT4... And then is Kolab's file sharing
(WebDAV, if I remember correctly) enough for your users? Adding SMB and

NFS

Post by Tyrell Jentink
can have unintended complications.
And all of those questions have to be balanced against the inherent

feature

Post by Tyrell Jentink
creep that comes from wandering down this road.
For many companies, the answer is to simply let Someone Else do it...
Often, that Someone Else is Google.

Post by logical american
Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do the
following?
1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations
I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google

Groups

Post by Tyrell Jentink

Post by logical american
and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google
drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area
to download files must exist so users can store their files.
What would you suggest?
The users are in the public domain.
Thanks for the input
- Randall
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[Ben Koenig]

Nevermind. I just realized that math isn't all that hard.

I got get myself a cabinet over here:
https://www.portlandcolocation.com/colocation/secure-cabinets/

Then I build myself an Epyc server on Newegg (using a fake credit card
number, stay safe)
External wish list link here....
https://secure.newegg.com/Wishlist/SharedWishlistDetail?ID=dV3bM3iF5ddzy4BEsu17Gg%3d%3d&&cm_mmc=snc-email-_-sr-_-wishlist-dV3bM3iF5ddzy4BEsu17Gg%3d%3d-_-09/21/2018

Now I'm in about $4,000 deep. Software is free so I grab a copy of
FreedomBox.
WAIT. Forgot my Hard drives.

One LSI RAID card and 10 WD NAS drives. 6TB x8 but I bought 2 spares up
front to last my first 2 drive failures :)

Now I'm at $6,000 for the machine.
- AMD Epyc processor. 32 Cores.
- 64GB DDR4 ram
- RAID array of some sort. I'm not sure which RAID mode is best for this
use case.

FreedomBox is a free installation. Considering that I'm capable of building
and supporting a Linux-based OS shipped on 3000+ computers in the Portland
area I think I can handle 500 users on a single server.
Montly fee is $249/month.
and a One time setup fee of $149. I can purchase addition network bandwidth
as necessary for a fee.

I probably went WAY overboard on the hardware. It's just a glorified file
server for me and some friends. I plan on maintaining it myself, because
I'm a DIY linux guy.... But if stuff happens my host offers free remote
hands during business hours :-D

Am I missing anything for this 500 user self-hosted email/collab/fileshare
server? Is $6k scary enough to send me running back in Google's open arms?
--Ben

Post by Ben Koenig
Let's assume I'm an aspiring Google IT guy and I'm preparing for an
interview as a Google System Adminstrator.
If I want to build a server that can handle emails from 800 users (500
with some headroom) what would I need? Assume that my internet connection
is capable.
What kind of CPU do I need to process 800 incoming and outgoing emails in
a given moment?

Post by Tomas Kuchta
When looking at the requirements 200-500 users - I cannot imagine any
practically useful scenario without single sign on solution al least across
the web services and centralized group/access control.
With 200-500 users there would be fair amount of user and access management
workload. This needs to be distributed to data owners/managers/leaders.
That is beside the already mentioned associated storage, backup, security
and disaster recovery management.
There are other companies beside G-company providing these kind of services
or enterprise level support. Some examples: Kolab, Nextcloud, Collabora,
...
Regardless of solution chosen - someone has to manage it full time. Given
the number of users - it is critical - hence it needs more than one
individual to cover for vacation/sickness/disasters/etc.
Just adding to the list of consideration. Do look up the services mentioned
above though. They work like G-company, but they are OSS, and the platforms
are deployable and manageable by individuals - so the lock-in is not as
strong as with proprietary services.
Tomas

Post by Tyrell Jentink
It's been several years since I looked into this... Like others have

said,

Post by Tyrell Jentink
the administrative overhead is substantial, and I ultimately decided

that

Post by Tyrell Jentink
it was just easier and more reliable (for my needs) to use Google.
That said... The top product I was looking at at the time was Kolab,
http://kolab.org, and it SEEMS to meet many of your requirements...
I consider it unlikely that a company of this size would be served by

any

Post by Tyrell Jentink
single application... If I were setting up Kolab for a client, a good
amount of energy would have to be put into questions like "How do we

manage

Post by Tyrell Jentink
users?" And "How do we manage storage?" And "How do we manage backups?"
Like, maybe you will find that managing lots of users pushes you into
needing an LDAP server, possibly with Single Signon. As you add these
"Supporting" services, your security footprint increases, and you may

need

Post by Tyrell Jentink
additional firewall and intrusion detection software; Maybe these

services

Post by Tyrell Jentink
should be on "Bastion Servers," individual servers for each service to
increase both performance and security... Maybe you virtualized some.
Maybe those questions lead to non-Linux answers... Maybe you find

managing

Post by Tyrell Jentink
the workstations of all those users works best with ActiveDirectory

rather

Post by Tyrell Jentink
than OpenLDAP; Maybe you find that managing the storage requires

something

Post by Tyrell Jentink
more robust than LVM on XFS or EXT4... And then is Kolab's file sharing
(WebDAV, if I remember correctly) enough for your users? Adding SMB and

NFS

Post by Tyrell Jentink
can have unintended complications.
And all of those questions have to be balanced against the inherent

feature

Post by Tyrell Jentink
creep that comes from wandering down this road.
For many companies, the answer is to simply let Someone Else do it...
Often, that Someone Else is Google.

Post by logical american
Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do

the

Post by Tyrell Jentink

Post by logical american
following?
1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations
I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google

Groups

Post by Tyrell Jentink

Post by logical american
and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google
drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area
to download files must exist so users can store their files.
What would you suggest?
The users are in the public domain.
Thanks for the input
- Randall
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[logical american]

Post by Ben Koenig
Am I missing anything for this 500 user self-hosted email/collab/fileshare
server? Is $6k scary enough to send me running back in Google's open arms?
--Ben

Thank Ben for the input, most of it is in the general ballpark. This is
exactly what I am looking for so I can feedback the essentials to the
powers that be.

- Randall

[Cryptomonkeys.org]

Unless you have a small(er) percentage of those 500 users doing webmail, I suspect that a single box would not be sufficient. This probably applies to any web-based dynamic content. Anything static is trivial to serve in quantity. Also, because its dynamic, you can’t particularly make good use of caching.

If you won’t have very many people accessing web stuff, or web-based stuff (php, for example), then a single box is more than sufficient.

To provide some perspective, using next-cloud (like owncloud, php/web based file sync), a single user is able to eat several cores with php processes doing file manipulations (copy/move/etc). The bigger the files, the longer they eat cpu.

Strongly recommend you do some testing to determine how your use case will behave.

Post by Ben Koenig
Nevermind. I just realized that math isn't all that hard.
https://www.portlandcolocation.com/colocation/secure-cabinets/
Then I build myself an Epyc server on Newegg (using a fake credit card
number, stay safe)
External wish list link here....
https://secure.newegg.com/Wishlist/SharedWishlistDetail?ID=dV3bM3iF5ddzy4BEsu17Gg%3d%3d&&cm_mmc=snc-email-_-sr-_-wishlist-dV3bM3iF5ddzy4BEsu17Gg%3d%3d-_-09/21/2018
Now I'm in about $4,000 deep. Software is free so I grab a copy of
FreedomBox.
WAIT. Forgot my Hard drives.
One LSI RAID card and 10 WD NAS drives. 6TB x8 but I bought 2 spares up
front to last my first 2 drive failures :)
Now I'm at $6,000 for the machine.
- AMD Epyc processor. 32 Cores.
- 64GB DDR4 ram
- RAID array of some sort. I'm not sure which RAID mode is best for this
use case.
FreedomBox is a free installation. Considering that I'm capable of building
and supporting a Linux-based OS shipped on 3000+ computers in the Portland
area I think I can handle 500 users on a single server.
Montly fee is $249/month.
and a One time setup fee of $149. I can purchase addition network bandwidth
as necessary for a fee.
I probably went WAY overboard on the hardware. It's just a glorified file
server for me and some friends. I plan on maintaining it myself, because
I'm a DIY linux guy.... But if stuff happens my host offers free remote
hands during business hours :-D
Am I missing anything for this 500 user self-hosted email/collab/fileshare
server? Is $6k scary enough to send me running back in Google's open arms?
--Ben

Post by Ben Koenig
Let's assume I'm an aspiring Google IT guy and I'm preparing for an
interview as a Google System Adminstrator.
If I want to build a server that can handle emails from 800 users (500
with some headroom) what would I need? Assume that my internet connection
is capable.
What kind of CPU do I need to process 800 incoming and outgoing emails in
a given moment?

Post by Tomas Kuchta
When looking at the requirements 200-500 users - I cannot imagine any
practically useful scenario without single sign on solution al least across
the web services and centralized group/access control.
With 200-500 users there would be fair amount of user and access management
workload. This needs to be distributed to data owners/managers/leaders.
That is beside the already mentioned associated storage, backup, security
and disaster recovery management.
There are other companies beside G-company providing these kind of services
or enterprise level support. Some examples: Kolab, Nextcloud, Collabora,
...
Regardless of solution chosen - someone has to manage it full time. Given
the number of users - it is critical - hence it needs more than one
individual to cover for vacation/sickness/disasters/etc.
Just adding to the list of consideration. Do look up the services mentioned
above though. They work like G-company, but they are OSS, and the platforms
are deployable and manageable by individuals - so the lock-in is not as
strong as with proprietary services.
Tomas

Post by Tyrell Jentink
It's been several years since I looked into this... Like others have

said,

Post by Tyrell Jentink
the administrative overhead is substantial, and I ultimately decided

that

Post by Tyrell Jentink
it was just easier and more reliable (for my needs) to use Google.
That said... The top product I was looking at at the time was Kolab,
http://kolab.org, and it SEEMS to meet many of your requirements...
I consider it unlikely that a company of this size would be served by

any

Post by Tyrell Jentink
single application... If I were setting up Kolab for a client, a good
amount of energy would have to be put into questions like "How do we

manage

Post by Tyrell Jentink
users?" And "How do we manage storage?" And "How do we manage backups?"
Like, maybe you will find that managing lots of users pushes you into
needing an LDAP server, possibly with Single Signon. As you add these
"Supporting" services, your security footprint increases, and you may

need

Post by Tyrell Jentink
additional firewall and intrusion detection software; Maybe these

services

Post by Tyrell Jentink
should be on "Bastion Servers," individual servers for each service to
increase both performance and security... Maybe you virtualized some.
Maybe those questions lead to non-Linux answers... Maybe you find

managing

Post by Tyrell Jentink
the workstations of all those users works best with ActiveDirectory

rather

Post by Tyrell Jentink
than OpenLDAP; Maybe you find that managing the storage requires

something

Post by Tyrell Jentink
more robust than LVM on XFS or EXT4... And then is Kolab's file sharing
(WebDAV, if I remember correctly) enough for your users? Adding SMB and

NFS

Post by Tyrell Jentink
can have unintended complications.
And all of those questions have to be balanced against the inherent

feature

Post by Tyrell Jentink
creep that comes from wandering down this road.
For many companies, the answer is to simply let Someone Else do it...
Often, that Someone Else is Google.

Post by logical american
Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do

the

Post by Tyrell Jentink

Post by logical american
following?
1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations
I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google

Groups

Post by Tyrell Jentink

Post by logical american
and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google
drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area
to download files must exist so users can store their files.
What would you suggest?
The users are in the public domain.
Thanks for the input
- Randall
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

--
Louis Kowolowski ***@cryptomonkeys.org <mailto:***@cryptomonkeys.org>
Cryptomonkeys: http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/ <http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/>

Making life more interesting for people since 1977

[Bill Weiss]

Post by Ben Koenig
Nevermind. I just realized that math isn't all that hard.
https://www.portlandcolocation.com/colocation/secure-cabinets/

(Totally reasonable math snipped)

Post by Ben Koenig
Am I missing anything for this 500 user self-hosted email/collab/fileshare
server? Is $6k scary enough to send me running back in Google's open arms?
--Ben

Speaking as a self-hosting enthusiast, that looks totally reasonable,
except for one problem: what happens when the machine blows up? Something
like losing a RAID card takes you down until you get a replacement
(hopefully a day or two, given the power of the internet), losing a
motherboard maybe a bit longer, but what if (say) the power supply blows
up in just the right way and fries the drives? Suddenly you have to buy
hardware, reconfigure, and set up again, all while your mail (and that of
your 500 friends) is not flowing.

Or, as happened to me once, what happens if the datacenter decides you're
not worth it anymore at the end of your contract? You've got a month or
two to find a new hosting space, build up a second machine (or pair, since
you have a hard backup as above), and pivot everyone over to it. You could
just move the machine and swap IPs, finding out in the process which big
mailers have long DNS TTLs, and you'll be ok but not great. Hope you don't
jar the drives too much in the process...

Or, even better, you get DOSed because of a user and the hosting company
decides you're not worth it _now_ and null routes you.

No matter what you do, I'd put real thought into your DR plan and how
you'll communicate status to your users. For me it's a matter of running
it all in some cloud provider (meaning the hardware blowing up is less my
problem) and not having commercial users, but that's probably not the
easiest plan for you :)

Yes, in case you're wondering, I've made some poor hosting choices over
the years.

[Bill Weiss]

Post by Bill Weiss

Post by Ben Koenig
Nevermind. I just realized that math isn't all that hard.
https://www.portlandcolocation.com/colocation/secure-cabinets/

(Totally reasonable math snipped)

Post by Ben Koenig
Am I missing anything for this 500 user self-hosted email/collab/fileshare
server? Is $6k scary enough to send me running back in Google's open arms?
--Ben

Speaking as a self-hosting enthusiast, that looks totally reasonable,
except for one problem: what happens when the machine blows up? Something
like losing a RAID card takes you down until you get a replacement
(hopefully a day or two, given the power of the internet), losing a
motherboard maybe a bit longer, but what if (say) the power supply blows
up in just the right way and fries the drives? Suddenly you have to buy
hardware, reconfigure, and set up again, all while your mail (and that of
your 500 friends) is not flowing.
Or, as happened to me once, what happens if the datacenter decides you're
not worth it anymore at the end of your contract? You've got a month or
two to find a new hosting space, build up a second machine (or pair, since
you have a hard backup as above), and pivot everyone over to it. You could
just move the machine and swap IPs, finding out in the process which big
mailers have long DNS TTLs, and you'll be ok but not great. Hope you don't
jar the drives too much in the process...
Or, even better, you get DOSed because of a user and the hosting company
decides you're not worth it _now_ and null routes you.

I forgot the always thrilling "upstream ISP gets marked as spam friendly,
taking your IP with it", that's happened a few times. Make sure those IP
ranges are clean :) Insist on a /29 that you can SWIP to have your name on
it to minimize neighbors being able to wreck your deliverability, and
think about having something out on the internet that you can send through
in a pinch.

[Cryptomonkeys.org]

Email is perhaps the easiest one.
A single modern server running postfix/dovecot can easily handle the mail for those users. Assuming you will do some SSO using something like ldap/postgres, there are appropriate connectors and config knobs.

If you want everybody to use webmail, then you’ll probably need another 1 or 2 web frontends (depending on how many people will be online at the same time).

If you want to do testing, postfix comes with a couple of tools called smtp-source and smtp-sink. The former will generate email, the latter will cause it to disappear. You can run them on their own nodes and pass the mail through your postfix server. I suspect that you will find postfix able to handle thousands of messages per second w/o breaking a sweat.

If you really will be doing thousands of messages per second, you will likely need a small farm of boxes to run spam-assassin and your database. Neither will handle the throughput that postfix is capable of. If you do this, make sure you utilize the spamd/spamc functionality, it greatly improves the performance, bringing it almost up to tolerable.

Post by Ben Koenig
Let's assume I'm an aspiring Google IT guy and I'm preparing for an
interview as a Google System Adminstrator.
If I want to build a server that can handle emails from 800 users (500 with
some headroom) what would I need? Assume that my internet connection is
capable.
What kind of CPU do I need to process 800 incoming and outgoing emails in a
given moment?

Post by Tomas Kuchta
When looking at the requirements 200-500 users - I cannot imagine any
practically useful scenario without single sign on solution al least across
the web services and centralized group/access control.
With 200-500 users there would be fair amount of user and access management
workload. This needs to be distributed to data owners/managers/leaders.
That is beside the already mentioned associated storage, backup, security
and disaster recovery management.
There are other companies beside G-company providing these kind of services
or enterprise level support. Some examples: Kolab, Nextcloud, Collabora,
...
Regardless of solution chosen - someone has to manage it full time. Given
the number of users - it is critical - hence it needs more than one
individual to cover for vacation/sickness/disasters/etc.
Just adding to the list of consideration. Do look up the services mentioned
above though. They work like G-company, but they are OSS, and the platforms
are deployable and manageable by individuals - so the lock-in is not as
strong as with proprietary services.
Tomas

Post by Tyrell Jentink
It's been several years since I looked into this... Like others have

said,

Post by Tyrell Jentink
the administrative overhead is substantial, and I ultimately decided that
it was just easier and more reliable (for my needs) to use Google.
That said... The top product I was looking at at the time was Kolab,
http://kolab.org, and it SEEMS to meet many of your requirements...
I consider it unlikely that a company of this size would be served by any
single application... If I were setting up Kolab for a client, a good
amount of energy would have to be put into questions like "How do we

manage

Post by Tyrell Jentink
users?" And "How do we manage storage?" And "How do we manage backups?"
Like, maybe you will find that managing lots of users pushes you into
needing an LDAP server, possibly with Single Signon. As you add these
"Supporting" services, your security footprint increases, and you may

need

Post by Tyrell Jentink
additional firewall and intrusion detection software; Maybe these

services

Post by Tyrell Jentink
should be on "Bastion Servers," individual servers for each service to
increase both performance and security... Maybe you virtualized some.
Maybe those questions lead to non-Linux answers... Maybe you find

managing

Post by Tyrell Jentink
the workstations of all those users works best with ActiveDirectory

rather

Post by Tyrell Jentink
than OpenLDAP; Maybe you find that managing the storage requires

something

Post by Tyrell Jentink
more robust than LVM on XFS or EXT4... And then is Kolab's file sharing
(WebDAV, if I remember correctly) enough for your users? Adding SMB and

NFS

Post by Tyrell Jentink
can have unintended complications.
And all of those questions have to be balanced against the inherent

feature

Post by Tyrell Jentink
creep that comes from wandering down this road.
For many companies, the answer is to simply let Someone Else do it...
Often, that Someone Else is Google.

Post by logical american
Can anyone suggest a linux system server which will successfully do the
following?
1. successfully imitate and replace the Google Groups program
2. successfully imitate and replace the Google gmail server
3. allow Google drive operations or simulate those operations
I am seeking to move a large group of users (200-500) from Google

Groups

Post by Tyrell Jentink

Post by logical american
and gmail over to a stand-alone server and provide some type of Google
drive functionality also for them, but at a bare minimum a common area
to download files must exist so users can store their files.
What would you suggest?
The users are in the public domain.
Thanks for the input
- Randall
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Cryptomonkeys: http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/ <http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/>

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