Jaruzel writes:
"I have an on-premises Microsoft Exchange system that hosts my families personal email, which has gone through several upgrades over the years. However Exchange 2013 is now too bloated for my needs, and I find myself wanting to migrate my email services to a cloud provider.
The kicker is that although I only have about 5 live accounts, I have over 200 email aliases attached to those accounts. Most of the cloud providers out there do not support this configuration, or charge per 'address' which makes the cost prohibitive for personal email.
Do any SoylentNewsers know of, or can advise the best way to migrate this lot out of my garage without losing all my aliases or having to pay through the nose?"
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Migrating Local Email into the Cloud?
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(Score: 5, Informative) by neagix on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:19PM
Build your own IMAP/SMTP server. Dovecot+Postfix+spamd
(Score: 4, Informative) by mechanicjay on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:10PM
While this setup is rock-solid and reliable, its kind of a PITA to setup (I've done it a few times). Especially if you're used to the pointy/clicky interface of Exchange. I might recommend something like Zimbra if you're looking for a whole enterprise setup for your home.
If you go the OSS route, don't forget postfixadmin, which really takes the pain of managing postfix aliases and squirrelmail for your webmail needs.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Friday March 21 2014, @02:53AM
Am I the only one that read "migrate to the cloud" as "I don't want to maintain a server anymore"...?
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 3) by neagix on Friday March 21 2014, @08:05AM
Until Dark Mail Alliance [linuxbsdos.com] is ready with their services, no other option sir.
(Score: 1) by Tork on Friday March 21 2014, @03:59PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 21 2014, @08:46AM
I set up my own mail server two years ago and it was unbelievably painful. Days and days of scouring logs and tweaking settings trying to figure out why the step by step guide I followed to the letter did not work. Falco, the guy who wrote the guide, was incredibly helpful, but in the end it still all came down to black magic. Here we are 35 years after I sent my first email and setting up a mail server remains ridiculously overcomplicated.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by tomtomtom on Friday March 21 2014, @10:18AM
It's not all that hard - if you go with the prepackaged versions in your favourite Linux/BSD then most of the defaults should be sane. Setting up things like DKIM is about the trickiest part. If you really are struggling though then you could look at something like iRedMail [iredmail.org] which makes it pretty much trivial to do.
What is non-trivial is getting groupware-type features ie calendars etc working. For that you could try Kolab [kolab.org] although last time I looked at that it looked difficult to deploy it in a component-by-component fashion which made things more difficult.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Jaruzel on Friday March 21 2014, @10:32AM
I'm not scared of command line, or Linux. I'm just a veteran of MS Tech due to my job. However, my reason for looking at Cloud/SaaS type solution is that I don't want to be faffing with my own server any more.
People suggesting Dovecot/Postfix et al. - although your responses are 100% valid and appreciated, for me you are basically just saying 'Swap Server Technology X in your garage for Server Technology Y in your garage'.
Grinding away in your basement with custom personal installs of services is all well and good, especially when it's only your own data at stake, but as I get older, and am less inclined to waste the remaining years of my live on software installs, I find myself looking at other providers who can do it much better than I, and with much less hassle. Less than a few months ago, I was the biggest anti-Cloud person you'd find. Things change.
Whether we like it or not, 'Cloud' type solutions are here to stay, and as a community we should at least let them over the threshold and consider what they bring to the party. Surely, the best solution is the right solution, regardless of how it's provided?
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Friday March 21 2014, @11:13AM
Yes, they are here to stay and it's a damn travesty. The Personal Computing revolution created a distributed power base in the computing world. We're rapidly ceding all our power to fewer and fewer large corporations who are controlling the horizontal and the vertical of our computing. And all it costs you is your privacy, but hey, that's not worth anything anyway,right? If you're going to use a hosted solution, at least pay for it. Then you have the illusion of not being the product.
I completely agree with the first part of your statement, the problem is getting people to agree on what "best" means. For me, running my own postfix/dovecot etc is the best solution because I have complete control and am 100% responsible for it.
Regardless of how it's provided? Sounds like a deal with the devil to me.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Friday March 21 2014, @12:15PM
The real problem i have with cloud, is once you put the information into it, the legal language the provider runs under is pretty grey. Yes, you own your information (legally), but they have access to it 24/7 and for all intensive purposes the provider "owns" it (controls access).
I'm sure the email you have in store isn't "all that important" or "not a security concern" but I cringe every time more of us give up the later form of Ownership.
(Score: 4, Informative) by rufty on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:01PM
Well, I did dovecot/exim4/spamd/greylistd/clam but yeah, that's the way to go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:35PM
To running postfix.
Not bloated.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nikker on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:25PM
Apparently you have a running server, as long as you have security updates why the push for 2013?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Jaruzel on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:09PM
Well I'm not really pushing for Exchange 2013, but the currently installed Exchange 2010 is just a complete bloated dog also - I just want my email to 'work', without me having to tinker with it everything the VM reboots :(
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:38PM
Postfix - set and forget.
Just works, no hassle.
Automatically starts at boot (when you connect it to do so) and just does its job without complaint.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:34PM
I hope that everyone on "SN" knows that "cloud" is just bullshitese for "hosted".
If you want, deploy your own remotely hosted mail server (IMAP, POP3, SMTP, etc.) -- something like Webmin/Virtualmin or a webhosting control panel like CPanel makes this a bit easier, particularly if you are used to the Exchange GUI. This can work just fine on a $10 VPS.
There's a current article series on ArsTechnica that addresses doing this the hard way.
That said, I don't think Google Apps has any problem with that many aliases, and does not charge for them as long as there's only one mailbox. You won't find anything much cheaper or with better uptime.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:46PM
...knows that "cloud" is just bullshitese for "hosted"
Oh Anon, if only you weren't anon, I would be your best-est friend ever. That little snippet just made my entire day! Utter gold!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:56PM
Thanks Fluffeh. Some day I will get a real account and our forbidden love will... I'm making myself sick here. But we have already interacted positively here before, I think. Have a great week/weekend.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:24PM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:50PM
lol
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:11PM
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:13PM
The top fields for bullshitese clouding up information has always been politics and religion. When they take money for their promises the lists of promises generally goes to /dev/null and the delivery dates are some undetermined points in the future.
Don't forget, the buck stops at 127.0.0.1, whether you have the information and cash securely there or not.
If you have your head up in the clouds, your vision is going to be foggy.
One spin or another..
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:14PM
It's not just hosted. It implies redundancy in many use cases as well.
A simple hosted solution does not always have that. Is that VPS redundant? Is it with a provider that has live migration of running instances?
Amazon EC2 could be a place to start for something like that.
In this case though, I would be looking for a SAAS company that will provide some redundancy and data backups and just provide the service itself.
I myself would look into Zimbra. It's very extensible and relatively cheap. If you demand MS compatible technologies look into Appriver or equivalent to provide it. Both should allow you unlimited aliases, and a couple thousand is not huge. It's just an alias and represents no substantive impact on the infrastructure other than an initial lookup from the SMTP server.
The best part is that your costs of maintaining that Server 2013 should be large enough to get a very nice SAAS service someplace and not have to worry about it again.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:38PM
It's so hard to know what people mean when they talk about moving something "to the cloud."
In practice, what I find they're usually really talking about is using a SAAS (Software As A Service) provider, who will handle all the uptime, maintenance, hosting, and just let you configure the thing.
If all you're looking for is a "cloud" hosted solution, then (as someone previously suggested), something like an EC2 instance running dovecot/postfix would give you all the flexibility you could ever dream of, with the advantage of a virtual distributed server that you don't have to worry about going down (and can back up and restore at the push of a button).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:02PM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by neagix on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:20PM
This reminds me of that time when I told the "expert" that NoSQL databases usually are not ACID compliant...that face, that stupor, and too bad my two-handed claymore [wikipedia.org] was at home!
(Score: 3, Funny) by GeminiDomino on Friday March 21 2014, @03:19AM
There's a one-handed claymore?
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by neagix on Friday March 21 2014, @07:57AM
It was just to add emphasis and colour ;)
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday March 21 2014, @08:56AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:12PM
In practice, what I find they're usually really talking about is using a SAAS (Software As A Service) provider, who will handle all the uptime, maintenance, hosting, and just let you configure the thing.
Exactly this. I used the term 'Cloud' to make it clear I don't want to just move my config from my garage to a remote location and STILL be the one having to tinker with it.
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:42PM
Postfix - once setup no tinkering required.
(Score: 4, Informative) by dotdotdot on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:58PM
Microsoft has Exchange Online [microsoft.com] for as low as $4 per user per month with free aliases. So that would be just $20 per month for your 5 accounts.
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:14PM
Surprisingly, I wasn't aware that Exchange Online was that cheap for 'small' accounts - I spend most of my time working with large corporate Office 365 offerings. Cheers, I'll look into that.
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Open4D on Friday March 21 2014, @10:36AM
You might be interested in: Microsoft admits reading Hotmail inbox of blogger [bbc.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by JeffPaetkau on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:16PM
Google Apps is $5/user/month. It also has free aliases.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Jaruzel on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:23PM
Which are limited to only 30 aliases per inbox - so no good. :(
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 1) by Tork on Friday March 21 2014, @07:53AM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by choose another one on Saturday March 22 2014, @12:31AM
Catchall is great... but these days, IME, leads to spam problems.
I have been running catchall for years, and in last year or so the problem of spam sent to random_user@domain (and the problem of spam addressed from random_user@domain generating bounce messages from systems that can't be bothered to check SPF properly) has become much much worse. A few filters will handle most of it, but those bounce messages can get quite creative...
Problem I have now is that I have no list of the hundreds of aliases I have used, so no way to create a whitelist.
(Score: 1) by Tork on Saturday March 22 2014, @02:24AM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by Tork on Saturday March 22 2014, @02:26AM
Have a good weekend!
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pe1rxq on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:00PM
Do any SoylentNewsers know of, or can advise the best way to migrate this lot out of my garage without losing all my aliases or having to pay through the nose?"
Since you are using terms like 'cloud' I would advise to stop listening to the marketing guys. Right now you sound like the perfect sucker and very likely will end up paying through the nose
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:03PM
Too late. He's using exchange rather than a more normal solution. I remember when soylentnews was full of people who couldn't decide between exim and postfix. Exchange? Windows?!
He also seems to have multiple families.
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:18PM
Guilty. :) It all started as 'I'll install Exchange 2000 as I need to understand how it works for my job' ... and then 12 years later, I'm stuck with an Exchange 2010 monster that needs feeding on a regular basis just to keep it flowing my mail and calendars.
I'm 1000% sure that MS have screwed up the last two versions of Exchange so badly as a backdoor way to make people migrate to Office 365.
"My family's ... " - Happy now ? :)
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:44PM
Postfix - configure once - then it gets out of your way.
(Score: 1) by sce7mjm on Friday March 21 2014, @08:46AM
I would agree here. Outlook 2013 has had problems with IMAP for over a year and people are still reporting it. 2010 worked fine. 2013 seems to work well with Exchange but the IMAP syncing issues should just not be happening.
This has reared it's ugly head when a client of mine dragged a bunch of folders from a pop3 account and dropped them under the IMAP account. Outlook 2013 complained it couldn't do that. "Fine nothings moved then" she thought, how wrong can you be, the folder tree is still there, but every folder is empty. I'm hoping the stored mails are still lodged in the pst file (scanpst.exe might help).
Microsoft seem to be in denial about this issue and seemed to have pushed some updates in november but some people still seem to be effected. The response seems to be use Office 365. But that doesn't get the e-mails back does it.
I use claws mail and can copy e-mails between pop and imap, willy nilly without issue. The e-mails are stored in a directory tree and can search them and look in them with a text editor.
Hopefully I can help my client out here but I'm not looking forward to the backup conversation.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Subsentient on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:50PM
You will be assimilated. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 5, Funny) by tdk on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:57PM
resistance is voltage over current.
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by BananaPhone on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:59PM
It's an Exchange clone that OLK will connect to.
They MUST have a migration procedure.
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:21PM
Thanks, I will.
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tdk on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:22PM
1 Use http://offlineimap.org/ [offlineimap.org] to backup your data to a local PC (you have to enable IMAP in exchange)
2a sign up for gmail, or if you want to keep your domain, google apps for business [google.com].
Or
2b I have heard good reviews about https://www.fastmail.fm/ [fastmail.fm] but haven't tried it myself
3 Use offlineimap to upload to the new IMAP account
4 keep it running in a cron job, so you always have a backup.
This assumes you want to get access to your email from outside your LAN. Otherwise, dovecot is a good solution.
google apps has unlimited users and aliases. fastmail charges per user account.
P.S. I wrote a blog post [squte.com] about connecting thunderbird directly to offlineimap's database on a network folder to avoid needing a local email server - but this is a hack, don't do it.
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by tdk on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:47PM
Sorry, some of that is wrong. Google has a limit of 30 aliases per user, and up to 200 users per domain. fastmail has up to 100 aliases per user depending on your plan
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Friday March 21 2014, @10:29AM
Jaruzel, I'm assuming you use your own domain.
With Fastmail I have a "Full" "personal [fastmail.fm]" account. At that level, using my own domain isn't an option. Instead I have a few aliases in Fastmail's own domains.
But it seems that with their "family [fastmail.fm]" account, you can always use your own domain, even if all family members are at the "Lite" service level. And "you can add or remove accounts or change service levels for a user at any time."
But it's confusing. They have no links from those pages to any further information. However, it so happens that I know about their help pages, which do have quite a lot of useful information, such as family/business migration strategies [fastmail.fm].
And there's this pricing table [fastmail.fm]. I think it only officially applies to "personal" account service levels, but I bet a lot of the details apply to the corresponding "family" account service levels too. But not the bit about aliases. So maybe tdk (in the parent comment) has succeeded where I have failed and dug up that figure of 100 from somewhere.
If the "Own subdomain" bit does apply to family accounts, that might imply that even "Lite" users could have unlimited aliases within their own personal subdomain [fastmail.fm] of your domain [fastmail.fm]. But that doesn't help you with your 200 existing aliases (unless they happen to be using the correct subdomains).
At least they provide a contact address to clarify all the above stuff: sales@fastmail.fm
Their privacy policy [fastmail.fm] seems fairly strong. It's an Australian company, but I believe all quoted dollar prices are US$.
One of the forums at http://www.emaildiscussions.com/ [emaildiscussions.com] is about Fastmail (although I'm not convinced that it really has 1/4 million posts!)
(Score: 2) by tdk on Friday March 21 2014, @04:09PM
I got the 100 figure from this page https://www.fastmail.fm/help/features_aliases.html [fastmail.fm], but this contradicts what it says elsewhere on their site. Confusingly they seem to have 'service levels' and 'plans' that are not the same thing.
Back On-Topic a little. I second what someone else has said. Most email service providers let you have a catch-all address (*@domain.com), that is an alias for one account.
In addition good email clients will let you set up rules to move emails (even between accounts) based on 'to' addresses, and gmail also lets you do this.
Combine these two and you can easily direct any email address to any account.
This is the system I use in fact, and I can easily make up ad-hoc addresses like thisisfromsoylent@squte.com, confident that I will get anything sent to them.
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by voyager529 on Friday March 21 2014, @12:32AM
The question and implied answer don't necessarily line up...
1.) Why leave Exchange 2010? It's supported for the next ten years, all your mail will happily scurry about the internet, and clearly the server is in place. Unless there's some sort of explicit feature you're looking for in Exchange 2013, I'd tell you to stick with what's clearly working.
2.) If that's not practical, why not check out Icewarp? It's an excellent Exchange alternative that does all the Exchange stuff, including Active Directory and ActiveSync stuff. If you can set up Exchange, you can set up Icewarp...and yes, there's a direct migration tool available for you.
3.) If you MUST go to a hosted provider, why not do some sort of 'forwarding' method using contacts and sub-accounts? If a hosted provider allows for, say, five aliases per object, can you assign aliases to contacts, and then point the contacts to the actual mailbox? For those providers that charge by the alias you're still screwed, but if there are any that charge by the object, it may be 'less expensive'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @12:35AM
I'd recommend the open source Zimbra Collaboration Server. it has webmail, IMAP, calendar, tasks, briefcase (think personal drop box), no limit on aliases/accounts and simple setup/configure. The only real difference between the open source and paid Network Edition is that the open source doesn't allow for 'hot' backups. A simple cronjob at 3am to halt services, snapshot the filesystem, start services and rsync the snapshot will accomplish the same thing with only minutes of downtime in the middle of the night.
(Score: 2, Informative) by aclarke on Friday March 21 2014, @01:29AM
I host a lot of email servers using Google Apps, where I am grandfathered into their free plan. I know this doesn't really answer your question, but Google Apps lets you use a catch-all address. All un-addressed mail goes there. If the provider you're considering does this, then you don't have to pay for 200 aliases. I create new alieases all the time on my domain, and they just go to the one real account I designated as my catch-all. Then I create rules to route the email from there if I feel like it.
(Score: 1) by Tork on Friday March 21 2014, @02:57AM
I know this doesn't really answer your question, but Google Apps lets you use a catch-all address.
You should give yourself a little more credit. The rest of the replies were answering the question: "Why shouldn't I use the cloud, does that make me dumb?" Which... wasn't actually asked.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Friday March 21 2014, @10:51AM
That's a brilliant point. As most of the aliases are attached to only one of the inboxes I could probably do that... Next question is, do I trust Google enough [soylentnews.org] ?
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 1) by bigjimslade on Friday March 21 2014, @05:03AM
http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.h tml [clearfoundation.com]
Been using them for client installs for a long time. Started back when they were known as Clark Connect.
Remember, Tuesday is Soylent Green Day
(Score: 1) by Jtmach on Friday March 21 2014, @02:15PM
When I decided to go hosted a while back. I ended up going with domain.com.
I have one "e-mail" account of which they give me 25, and about 25 aliases for that account.
For that I pay them $2 a month. It was the cheapest bang for my buck I was able to find (could probably run a VM e-mail server for less, but my time is worth a very little bit).
Edit, just double checked. They allow 75 aliases per addresses, so it may not work for your specific needs, but it's close. Also I've been very happy with their service / cost, so I'm just gonna leave this here.
(Score: 1) by MSC_Buff on Friday March 21 2014, @04:50PM
You can now use GMail to reply as an alias address when corresponding with a specific entity or just receive emails to whatever address you hand out (like notices from SN). Done.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Friday March 21 2014, @06:49PM
Also try the mr+SNSPAM@gmail.com mangle. [blogspot.com] It's readily supported.
If going this way for forwarding, you might go with forwards like:
This may allow for better recipient address filtering.
(Score: 1) by MSC_Buff on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:41PM
I will check that out...Thanks.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Friday March 21 2014, @06:40PM
I have seen a lot of people helpfully suggesting simple solutions. Many of the suggestions miss a few critical points.
Exchange is not just email. Exchange is a fairly full groupware system - in addition to email, there are also contacts, address lists (shared among multiple users, magically updated for everyone...), calendars (individual and shared), and there used to be some shared document capabilities as well. Anyone who installed it at home to get an understanding of it for work probably uses (or used) several of these features.
IMAP misses a lot of the features. IMAP can handle some client-server mailbox synchronization, if your client and server agree on the Right Way to Do Things. IMAP doesn't do diddly for contacts or calendars.
Google doesn't do ActiveSync anymore*. ActiveSync is extremely useful for mobile devices. ActiveSync does handle contacts and calendars.
I learned these things back when I was the new guy saying "Why are we paying for Exchange if we're trying to save money? Why not just run (postfix/qmail/dovecot etc) instead?" The quick answers from the people who kept paying the bills were "Shared contacts" and "Calendars that work". (The other part of the answer - "we can hire a consultant to fix it if in-house staff can't make it work" - probably doesn't apply for a family mailserver.)
As for me, I am running Google Apps. I only set up aliases when I need a new name to be forwarded to a mailbox (bar@.net also goes to foo@.net - for pseudonymity). For most mail filtering, foo+soylent@.net style mangles [blogspot.com] work just fine. I fully understand that they're reading everything, and try to keep my goat porn mundane enough so that it doesn't pique extra interest.
*Google maybe does ActiveSync if you're a paying customer for Google Apps. Maybe. (This may be a thing that they kept on for existing users that isn't available for new customers.)