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Lloyds Steel Debates Between Linux & Microsoft

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By Amit Tripathi, Jul 26, 2004 0000 hrs IST
Tags : Mail server
The menace of spam has pushed Lloyds Steel Industries to upgrade its mail server, for which the company has initiated a complete evaluation of both Microsoft and Linux based mailing solutions.

Detailing the proposed IT initiative to CXOtoday, Tanveer Ahmed, EDP officer, Lloyds Steel Industries Ltd., said, "Approximately 70 to 80% of our daily mails are spam that lead to considerable downtime. Thus the productive time of an employee is wasted in validating and deleting these mails. We therefore plan to get a comprehensive mailing solution for our enterprise."

The company is evaluating both MS Exchange as well as different mailing solutions based on Linux for the same. Says Ahmed, "While Linux is cost effective and stable, MS too stands good for us since the top brass of IT department is comfortable with MS Exchange." Since the enterprise uses Win NT as the local server, chances are that they might go for MS Exchange.

The mailing technology landscape at Lloyds has already gone through several stages over a period of time. Says Ahmed, "Around five year back we went for IBMs Lotus Router software for mailing. We had then upgraded to Lotus CC mailing solution around two years back. This solution besides all its merits cannot stop the menace of spam." The company does not use any specific antispam solution as of now. While Internet connectivity is provided by Hathway, the mailing connectivity is provided by Puretec. Informs Ahmed, "We use a software called Popagist to download mails onto our local server (Win NT) which is then distributed to the clients."

But would any other technology give an assurance to end the menace of spam? Sounding perplexed, Ahmed said, "We are not very sure of the efficiency of any other technology. We just hope that any new technology would bring with it new specifications to counter spam."

The business processes of the company were automated on SAP almost five years ago. Today the ERP is rolled out to all the five branches, three factories, and the head office, using 128 kbps and VSAT leased lines connectivity.

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	Novell has excellent Linux based solutions for enterprise class deployments like GroupWise 6.5, Net Mail and SuSe Open Exchange Server. Both GroupWise and Netmail also offers an excellent spam controlling feature out of the box. And as always, Novell products are proven, secure, reliable, stable and scalable. - urangan Onward Novell I Bangalore	29/07/04 11:55 AM Reply

	If you want to keep spending on a new solution every year or so; you want to keep paying for virus & creash related aspects you know what to do. If you want to make the main investment only once and have a headache free system that will give you uptime of months and years, a system that will not crash, a system that will make your headaches resolved for ever, LINUX is the answer. If you post me your exact requirements, we can give you broad advice on possible solutions free of cost. And then you can make your decisions. We at Openlx.com are resolving such issues with success, thanks to LINUX and its strengths. Message edited by moderator - Sudhir Gandotra Kalculate.com Delhi	28/07/04 04:00 PM Reply

	Sendmail based on Linux is the ideal choice.The top brass of the company can be given one day training on how to use linux based solutions.This will remove there fears. - Godfrey J Lawre GMS Software so Bangalore	28/07/04 03:34 PM Reply

	The corporate CTOs have to be innovative, bold and highly enterprising to be able to emphasize Linux emphatically. We need guts that are almost thrown away through the Windows by almost all of us ! - chanakya ChAnAkYa Chnakyapuri	28/07/04 01:29 PM Reply

	The company should outsource its email service to a serious messaging company such as the one at zipmail.com -- and then not worry about it anymore. Let the external company deal with updates, rules, and other maintenance. In addition, the only way to stop spam is to stop accepting email from known senders. Use a whitelist. If you don't have one, use zipmail.com, because they have a whitelist feature. Message edited by moderator - Jonathan Buhaco SELF EMPLOYED Napa, CA	28/07/04 05:38 AM Reply

	qmail/vpopmail with spamassassin and clamav is the best way to go. All administration can be done with web interfaces qmailadmin and vqadmin. Very stable and very reliable. Message edited by moderator - Ken Jones inter7.com Chicago	27/07/04 11:21 PM Reply

	As the others have said, to effectively limit the amount of SPAM if this is the main issue here you need an enterprise SPAM filter. One that I am looking at to filter my NetMail 3.5.2 and GroupWise 6.5 messaging systems is Barracuda Networks an appliance that runs on a Linux kernel. However GroupWise and NetMail from Novell which both run on Linux help reduce viruses and limit SPAM to an extent. GroupWise is definitely a fully functional messaging and collaboration system for the enterprise. If you're looking for reliability, stability and uptime as well as a reduction in SPAM and viruses, I would definitely recommend looking at GroupWise 6.5 running on Linux over Exchange. Message edited by moderator - William Gay Advanced Logix Newport	27/07/04 09:48 PM Reply

	There is a wide selection of enterprise mail solutions outside of Exchange. Their current system seems archaic and cryptic, they would be better off with a couple of inhouse SMTP servers , and spam-assassin (or any of several similar products) running on Linux or BSD. There are packaged, supported Linux Mail Server systems you can buy from major vendors, or you can buy sendmail with professional services. Failing that they could outsource to a decent provider of mail services like MessageLabs in the UK who provide virus and spam handling -- any of which are powered by Linux and Perl -- no serious enterprise mail solution uses Exchange, or Windows. In between total inhouse and toal outsourcing there are products and services like those outlined by rob lewis. - Aaron Trevena freeadvice London	27/07/04 09:43 PM Reply

	I can't believe how often you run stories on companies that seemingly have little to no understanding of how the technologies they use actually work. You list their comments as though they actually know the difference between one system and the other. Those of us that actually roll out hundreds of Linux, Windows, and Novell server, read these and wonder how these people were hired? The fact is you can solve this issue with either system, you simply need to know what you're doing. Which doesn't come from experience, it comes from good, or educated experience. We see lots of people with lots of experience that didn't help, they still suck, which means their solutions still suck. - Jon Kelly Kel-tek Compute Newport Beach	27/07/04 08:53 PM Reply

	Use Postini (www.postini.com) to get rid of spam. :-) No upgrades to the infrastructure is necessary. Message edited by moderator - Ernesto Anonymous ..	27/07/04 08:35 PM Reply

	Why even consider Exchange? The "top brass" probably don't administer the servers. With a properly configured Linux server you stop spam AND the potential of e-mail viruses that come with all stuff Microsoft. Sendmail on Linux is the standard, go with it. - Daman Savant Around the Ecuator	27/07/04 07:12 PM Reply

	Coming from Ottawa, Canada, 2 local solutions come to mind. Can-it by Roaring Penguin is very good. Our own email server offers hands off filter upgrades every 10 minutes. These are enterprise solutions that feature Spam Assasin. Can-It requires some Linux expertise, while the Googgun mail server does not, and it will integrate easily with all other platforms. - Rob Lewis Googgun Technol Ottawa, Canada	27/07/04 06:36 PM Reply

	We used Linux for our mail messaging and firewall. Our advise based on experience was Linux looked cheap but maintainence and user training was not cheap. We switched to Exchange after using it for 1 year. Linux based systems are good for low ends users and hobbyists. Corporate messaging is not a playschool and we learnt this lesson after some time unfortunately - Khansi CDSL Bangalore	27/07/04 11:27 AM Reply

	Dear Mr Khansi, It would be a good idea if you can also mention which linux distribution you are talking about and whether it a paid linux or free linux. Linux has got more than 100 flavours with every one offering some thing different from others and in many cases the desktop user will know no difference as to whether it is a Linux, Unix or Windows Server. However I have seen many Indian companies have tried free downloaded Linux and have failed miserably, I only hope that you are not talking of a similar experience. In cases of free linux it is the end user to be blamed and no one else as free linux is , as rightly you mentioned, meant for hobbist or education purpose, commercial linux is meant for serious users. - Manojit Majumda Everyone´s Lin New Delhi	27/07/04 05:28 PM

	Questions: A bit thin case, needs more information, the users clients going to run Outlook (NO Outlook express)? Mail repository (Exchange Notes or a Linux solution) not really the question here. They need a spam protection setup. My recommendation go for MS Exchange for now (can always change later. E.g. when intern IT-skills are avaible) but put a Linux based spam filter in from of it. Good knowledge of this can be gained in approx. 1-2 month with testing etc. is my experience. Running a big 100-500 GB+ mail repositary with backup etc. takes longer time to set up and manage correct, sounds simple but is not so !! - Lars Hesdorf MAN B&W Diesel Copenhagen	27/07/04 05:27 PM Reply

	I have had some of the same problems only with a smaller business. NT 4 machine running Exchange 5. The main problem here was that it was an open relay. I solved this issue by adding a properly configured sendmail linux box between the Exchange server and the Internet. Worked great! A similar solution could help. - Joe Sixpack none anonymous	27/07/04 05:26 PM Reply

	The company is considering the migration of its mail servers - a core but backend component of the IT architecture. While considering GNU/Linux one must keep in mind that there already exist stable and scalable mail solutions and architectures which can take on the load projected. Putting the entire system on an LVM or a similar thing (eg GFS from Sistina) would lead to a more secure and manageable product. A badly configured mail server setup irrespective of MSFT or GNU/Linux would introduce cost centres. Since organisations like Indian Railways use GNU/Linux for mail server, they could always evaluate technical proposals. Solutions are available from NeoLinux, Mithi etc - Rajib Debnath Simple Solution Kolkata	27/07/04 03:49 PM Reply

	I would recoment them going for clustered fault tolerant exim server on top of Debian Linux, or Use Postfix on Suse Linux, anycase Spamassasin would be the spam controller. I works wonder for me.. am a Linux Administrator for 5 years - Ganesh Harihara Mpower Technolo Chennai	27/07/04 10:37 AM Reply

	Linux is the best choice. You can even get linux that will run on your old hard ware! - Anonymous Anonymous @	27/07/04 03:39 AM Reply

	If the server is indeed winNT remember that the support for it is going to stop soon. The company has every reason to either upgrade now (to win2k3), or even better go to a linux solution and never think about it again ... With linux you can use Mailscanner, an excellent anti-spam/anti-virus solution - difos difos athens	27/07/04 12:48 AM Reply

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