Friday, September 14, 2012

Zimbra 8 GA on CentOS 6.3

Much to the pleasure of many SysAdmins, Zimba 8 General Availability has been announced by VMware.  I have been planning on migrating to the Zimbra Open Source for my commercial email platform.  (I will migrate clients over using imapsync.)  Due to my upcoming Space Walk deployment, I decided early this year to standardize my department on CentOS.  Naturally, I figure it is time to update my CentOS VM template to 6.3, and give Zimbra 8 a test.  

When I setup my CentOS Linux Virtual Machines, I prefer to attach multiple SCSI vmdk files as my guest storage; usually 25 GB thin-provisioned disks.  Then, when building my template, I tend to place /boot and /swap on one disk, and use the rest of the space for LVM.  This allows me to quickly add more space to my Virtual Machine down the line without having to power down or restart my guest OS; a feature that is very important for capacity planning and meeting  my SLAs.  I also like to forgo setting resource reservations, and opt instead for resource limits.  My standard VM template has 4 GB RAM, 4x vCPUs, 4000 MHz CPU limit, and a 4096 MB (4 GB) RAM limit.  Also, installing VMware tools, while sometimes a pain (and outside scope of this blog), is beneficial for tighter management from vCenter.

After choosing the "basic server" packages from my 64 bit net install, I ran the following commands:

# yum install wget sudo sysstat libidn gmp libtool-ltdl compat-glib vixie-cron nc perl

Then, after using WinSCP to upload my zcs folder to /root, I modified the following permissions:

# chmod +x install.sh && chmod +x ./bin/get_plat_tag.sh 

I also discovered that Zimbra 8 expects libstdc++.so.6 in /usr/lib.  So, I made a symbolic link:

# ln -s /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6

Then, I modified /etc/hosts with my public IP and FQDN of my new Zimbra host.  Also, be sure to setup a DNS MX record in your zone file (it is better to have DNS up to date before installing ZCS).

Now, since this edition of Zimbra is built for RHEL, we need to run the following command to install Zimbra on our host:

# ./install.sh --platform-override

That's it.  From here, it is up to the SysAdmin to configure iptables according to their internal policy, and to make any other changes to the system as needed (while following change control and management best practices; naturally).  The easiest Zimbra build to start with is the "all in one" server, and I refer the reader to the Zimbra Documentation, Wiki, and community forums for installation and configuration instructions.  You may also want to consider adding a commercial SSL certificate from your favorite vendor (if/when putting this host into production).  

One of the features of Zimbra that I love so much is the modular design - this makes building a Zimbra cluster(s) much simpler than products from some unnamed competitors.  =)  For more advanced deployments, I recommend the reader consult the resources listed above.

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