| Anyone running Connect Server on a hosted server? [message #120153] |
Thu, 19 March 2015 23:22  |
travisdcc
Messages: 9
Registered: November 2008
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We currently have a Connect server in LA which is constantly cloned to a server in NY, in case we have a disaster in LA. The setup has worked well, but the hardware needs to be replaced and I'm considering setting Connect up on a hosted server at Rackspace, rather than doing the primary/clone setup again. Is anyone here running Connect on a hosted server? Does it work well?
If Kerio is monitoring this forum, do you have any recommendations for this type of setup?
Thanks.
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| Re: Anyone running Connect Server on a hosted server? [message #126655 is a reply to message #120154] |
Wed, 23 December 2015 01:23  |
travisdcc
Messages: 9
Registered: November 2008
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Thanks, Ken. This project is back on the front burner.
The client has a lot going on and they want their mail moved offsite with minimal interruption. They don't want to deal with migrating to a mail host and setting up all the computers and phones again. For that reason, I think setting up a cloud server and running Kerio on it is probably the way to go. The Connect data can be moved, the IP address for their server changed in DNS, and they should be back in business. Have I missed anything? (I'm thinking of it just like a local server to server move.)
Their current server is Server 2003 R2 with an 8 core Xeon E5420 2.5Ghz with about 4GB. The processors get almost no usage, so I'm considering dropping to 4 on the cloud server. Are there any specific recommendations on cloud servers?
Now that Kerio has announced hosting, is there a way to move to Kerio hosting without having to change the setups on the computers and phones?
Thanks.
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| Re: Anyone running Connect Server on a hosted server? [message #126725 is a reply to message #126656] |
Tue, 29 December 2015 07:56 |
jimsky7
Messages: 21
Registered: April 2006
Location: San Francisco CA
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I run Kerio 9.0.1 on a Rackspace VPS (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS). The 1GB RAM flavor with a single CPU works fine for me and I have 85 users. The Kerio folks predicted 1GB would be too small, but I have been using this size for about 4 years now with no difficulty at all. I'm not sure why it would be more difficult to run in a VPS environment (I assume this is what you mean by "hosted") rather than on a physical server of your own. These VPS's are pretty good.
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| Re: Anyone running Connect Server on a hosted server? [message #126736 is a reply to message #120153] |
Tue, 29 December 2015 14:06 |
Maerad
Messages: 275
Registered: August 2013
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You won't need much - a simple vHost with Linux or Windows is more then enough - kerio is extremely low on resources. 4 GB RAM and 2-4 vCores are more then enough, SATA HDD too, if possible maybe some SSD space instead of SATA (kerio is file based, so it would/could greatly improve the performance).
Example:
https://www.hosteurope.de/Server/Virtual-Server/
Had Kerio running on the advanced vServer as test. I loved it.
What you should think about:
How does the client access the server? If the server runs locally, it's way faster then a internet solution, because the mail gets delivered in the local network to the clients instead needs to be downloaded. Also depending on the connection speed of the WAN you might get too much traffic, slowing everything down. But I guess Outlook + KOFF might work nicely (after the first sync), but local mails will be slower, depending on the size.
A good idea would be to use a local server at the company (nothing fancy, a small one with a cheap cpu (AMD works too!), 8 GB ECC RAM and a raid with like 2-4 SAS in a raid 1 or 10 scenario. IF you can harvest something from the old servers, you should be around 2k € at most.
That + Vserver + http://kb.kerio.com/product/kerio-connect/kerio-connect-mult i-server/kerio-connect-multi-server-1667.html
Might be an interesting approach or?
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| Re: Anyone running Connect Server on a hosted server? [message #126774 is a reply to message #120153] |
Wed, 30 December 2015 23:59 |
travisdcc
Messages: 9
Registered: November 2008
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Thanks for all the input.
They have a decent server now, but it is out of warranty. The main reason for moving Connect to the cloud is that the local Internet where the server could be can be dicey during storms and they don't want staff around the country unable to get their mail because of an outage at one office.
jimsky7, I'm leaning towards a hosted Windows server at Backspace (Windows because I'm not very proficient in Unix/Linix and Rackspace because I'm already a partner there). Do you use the internal backup in Connect and if so, do you just place it on the same VPS? Do you take advantage of Backspace's VPS backup capability?
Maerad, most of the staff have been getting their mail in NY from the server in LA, so I don't they will notice any speed issues. The Multiserver looks interesting, but I think maybe overkill for 10-15 users. If the user data is still on a local server and the Internet dies, does having some part of the multi server the cloud help at all?
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| Re: Anyone running Connect Server on a hosted server? [message #126781 is a reply to message #126774] |
Thu, 31 December 2015 04:40 |
jimsky7
Messages: 21
Registered: April 2006
Location: San Francisco CA
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Yes, I use internal Kerio Connect backup. The files are pretty large, but periodically I copy them to external storage. Once a week maximum. You could put them on another volume too, but I don't. We used to image the server once a week using Rackspace's capabilities, but stopped doing that. (You said Backspace, but I think you mean Rackspace since that's what you first inquired about.)
So since I use Ubuntu and you want to use Windows, you'd maybe have to use a different VPS size. I can't advise on that. But actually using Ubuntu (or other Linux's that KC supports) is pretty simple - you instantiate the Ubuntu VPS from Rackspace's control panel, you log in using SSH, you use SFTP to upload the KC installer, you run the installer from the SSH command line. It's not much to learn. I have never had to "tune" the server - it's just Ubuntu 14.04 right from a standard Rackspace install and Kerio Connect runs like a champ. It fills up 95% of RAM (1GB) but it hardly ever swaps. The LOADAVG is around .20 (single CPU) and occasionally it spikes a little over 1.00 -- I have absolutely never experienced any "slowness" on the user side at all. The Kerio guys didn't think it would run, but it's been running on a similar VPS for several years.
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| Re: Anyone running Connect Server on a hosted server? [message #126786 is a reply to message #120153] |
Thu, 31 December 2015 10:51 |
skeates
Messages: 38
Registered: July 2008
Location: London
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We've run Kerio on various types of hosted services all work fine. Either just install into onto a VPS with enough storage (I find Ubuntu is the best OS) or find a host that gives you a dedicated server and you can install Proxmox or VMware on it.
Currently we are with OVH in a French Data centre running Proxmox and a couple of Connect VM's as well as various others. All work fine since Kerio is not that resource intensive. OVH are quite good since they don't have bandwidth quota's but i'm sure you can find others out there with the same. Our long term goal is to get a dedicated server in each of their their data centres and build a cluster with proxmox allowing for fail over.
One thing to remember about is your backup. You can't just go plug an external drive into your VPS or dedicated server in the data centre so you will need to get some external storage for your system. Our host provides a free 500gb backup storage which is enough for us at the moment. We connect to it with NFS via proxmox and then present it to the machine as a drive we also can snapshot machines nightly to that NFS store.
Good luck
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