EIU Deployment

[David Emmerich <dpemmerich@eiu.edu>]

Hi Everyone,

I'm just joining the list and I noticed in the archives people asking about different deployments.  So, I thought I would chime in with ours.

Running ZCS 4.5.6 NE
2 LDAP
3 MTA
6 Mailbox Stores
~41,000 Accounts

We are running on Apple PPC XServers.
CPU's: 2 - 2.3GHz G5
Memory: 4 GB
Storage:LDAP and MTA's use local drives in the servers.  Mailbox stores are connected to 1/2 of a direct attached XRAID Chassis.
Backup:Currently backs up to local disk and then we sync them to a different location.  Local backups are finished in about 8 hours.  Syncs take significantly longer.

However, we are going to be moving away from PPC since 5.x does not support it.  Our planned setup is:
Sun Blade Enclosure Running VMWare on.
CPU: We will allocate 4 - 2.3 GHz cores(64-bit)
Memory: 8 GB
Storage: StorageTek(sp?) SAN
OS - Red Hat 5

I do have a question, if anyone is interested.  We will need to migrate all of our users from the Mac server to the Red Hat servers.  Anyone have any suggestions?  I am thinking of building the Red Hat system in parallel running the ZCS 4.5.6 NE.  Backup the Mac servers using zmbackup, then restore it to the Red Hat servers.  Make some DNS changes to point all new mail, web pages, etc... to the new servers and use imapsync and some curl scripts to sync the remaining mail/contact/calendar data that may have gotten changed while doing the restore.  Any thoughts?

Thanks,

David Emmerich
Network Specialist II
Eastern Illinois University