• Zimbra rocks!

    31Jul
    Author: ben Categories: Infrastructure, Ramblings Comments: 0

    Zimbra At Applied Trust we’ve been using the Zimbra Collaboration Suite for a few years now. Ned is our primary admin, and he probably has some criticisms based on his in-depth experience, but from my user perspective it has been great. A few highlights for me:

    • I have a good sized mailbox – about 3GB with tens of thousands of individual messages – and our very simple server is plenty fast. Loading messages out of any folder is quick and painless. Searching is also very fast.
    • The shared calendar features are spectacular. Setting up meetings with Exchange users is a cinch. Words like “August 3rd” or “Thursday” in the email window are highlighted, and holding the mouse over it shows upcoming meetings. My only complaint is that you can’t seem to set the default calendar sharing rules for new users. When we hire new people, we need to both make our calendar viewable by them, and accept their calendar share. High maintenance.
    • Similarly, contacts works great. Very little to say since it works so well.
    • Integration with the iPhone is as good as for Exchange users. I have calendars, email and contacts on my phone with no problem.

    On the infrastructure side, Ned probably has more to say, but we’ve done many upgrades and they all seem to have gone very smoothly.

    As an open source-based collaboration suite, Zimbra is a strong competitor Exchange. I’m happy. Ned, care to comment?

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  • Blackberry Security: Risking the Whole Enterprise

    30Apr
    Author: trent Categories: Security Comments: 0

    I was speaking with a respected colleague today about the security of Blackberries vs. other mobile devices.  The conventional wisdom of the business community, apparently, is that the Blackberry is some form of superhero-grade magical device, impervious to all forms of cybersecurity attack, and hence suitable for handling all levels of sensitive communication (and soon suitable for President Obama).

    It’s true that RIM (Research in Motion), Blackberry’s maker, has an excellent marketing department (and, as excellent marketing departments are hard to come by, I at least give them kudos for that).  They have spun a fantastic tale about how, by simply installing their superduper-secure Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) product, you have created a secure channel between the enterprise network and a user’s eyes/ears.  As far wireless communications channels go, they have an “ok” solution for securing transport to the Blackberry device itself.  The highest security risk of using a Blackberry is NOT that your data is compromised while being transmitted wirelessly.  Instead, there really are two high risk scenarios when using a Blackberry in an enterprise:

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  • Using exmerge with Exchange 2007

    12Nov
    Author: ben Categories: Infrastructure Comments: 0

    I occasionally need to pull mailbox data in PST format from Exchange, sometimes for archival, other times for legal review, or perhaps for some other reason altogether. This process has changed to use Export/Import with Exchange 2007, removing the 2GB file size limit and including a slew of other features, but some of us still need or prefer to use the handy exmerge tool.

    Luckily, it’s still possible to use exmerge if you keep a few considerations in mind.

    First, you must have at least “View-Only Administrator” privileges in the 2007 environment. To do this, open an Exchange command shell, and run:

    Add-ExchangeAdministrator -Identity '<your domain>.local/Users/ExMerge' -Role 'ViewOnlyAdmin'

    You’ll also need SendAs and ReceiveAs permissions on the mailbox store where the user’s mailbox lives. To find which store this is, open the Exchange Management Console and navigate to Recipient Configuration -> Mailbox. Double click the user, and on the General tab note the value of the “Mailbox database” line. Then run:

    Get-MailboxDatabase -identity "<YourServer>\<Value from Mailbox database>" | Add-ADPermission -user "<YourDomain>\<Your AD Account>" -ExtendedRights Receive-As, Send-As

    Finally, and this one got me for a while, you may have problems if the user is hidden from Exchange address lists. You can check this in the user properties on the General tab. Make sure “Hide from Exchange Address lists” is not checked.

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