After building a custom 1U server with redundancy (via software and/or hardware RAID1), my FOSS (entry-level) enterprise mail solution is nearly complete. It combines server virtualization (VMWare Server for Linux), a proven, all-in-one collaborative suite of applications (Zimbra 5.04 OSE), and a enterprise-ready mail archiving solution (MailArchiva OSE). Most of the server applications are fully integrated with Active Directory for Global Account Listings (GALs) and authentication, though the same applications fit OpenLDAP implementations even better. This set of virtual servers will be managing multiple domains and approximately 185+ users with e-mail + calendaring services. I decided to go virtual for the sake of administration and growth, as it should be significantly easier for me to upgrade hard-disk space, processor(s), and entire server host platforms when the need arises.

If you'd like to hear all the boring "how-to," information, you can read the entire article and examine the code snippets, which were taken from a wide array of helpful sites. I usually create these write-ups for personal reference, but hopefully it might help someone else as well . Some of the information, such as MailArchiva and Zimbra integration, isn't platform-, server-, or OS-specific, and can be used on any flavor of Linux.