1 Topic by Albux (edited by Albux 2011-09-07 15:03:57)

  • Albux
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Topic: Thinking about a new way for deployment

Hello all,

today I was just thinking about a new idea...
In our company we use pretty often VMware ESXi to deploy new virtual servers for some of our customers. And I was thinking how fast it would be to convert to a VMware template a fresh installation of iRedmail, plus some customizations of our own.
For example, when we install a new VM for a customer with iRedmail we always have to make the same modifications to the configuration, i.e:
increase message size to 100MB
lower the SPAM threshold to 5.0
enable pyzor, razor and DCC
change some config in roundcubemail (columns order, sorting, etc.)
change some spam rules weight
remove www account
disable greylist
etc.

and in addition we add some other customizations outside iRedmail as installing some PHP libraries, activate modules in apache, installing pure-ftpd-mysql, memcached, php-apc, and so on...

In fact it would be wonderful to install everything as ... "example.com", an unused IP, and make a snapshot.
When we need to install a new VM, just load the template, and fire it up.
I understand that actually it is not possible due to passwords generated during iredmail installation, main domain, hostname, DKIM keys... In fact such an operation would almost require the same amount of time than making a fresh install.

It would be wonderful to have a script that asks again for the IP, hostname and main domain and makes all the changes needed in every config file.
Maybe something similar is already existing and I am missing something?
Does anyone ever thought about implementing such a time saver?
Zhang, what do you think about it?

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Spider Email Archiver: On-Premises, lightweight email archiving software developed by iRedMail team. Supports Amazon S3 compatible storage and custom branding.

2 Reply by ZhangHuangbin

  • ZhangHuangbin
  • ZhangHuangbin
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  • Registered: 2009-05-06
  • Posts: 31,088

Re: Thinking about a new way for deployment

Albux wrote:

It would be wonderful to have a script that asks again for the IP, hostname and main domain and makes all the changes needed in every config file.
Maybe something similar is already existing and I am missing something?
Does anyone ever thought about implementing such a time saver?
Zhang, what do you think about it?

Are you talking about some kind of command line based admin tool for iRedMail? maybe something looks like attached screenshot? (It's a just a screenshot, i didn't develop tool like this.)

You have normal admin tasks like you said, maybe we can implement some of them in iRedMail for all iRedMail users.
iRedMail cannot match all users' need, so i'm afraid that you still need to do some more work.

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3 Reply by Albux

  • Albux
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Re: Thinking about a new way for deployment

ZhangHuangbin wrote:
Albux wrote:

It would be wonderful to have a script that asks again for the IP, hostname and main domain and makes all the changes needed in every config file.
Maybe something similar is already existing and I am missing something?
Does anyone ever thought about implementing such a time saver?
Zhang, what do you think about it?

Are you talking about some kind of command line based admin tool for iRedMail? maybe something looks like attached screenshot? (It's a just a screenshot, i didn't develop tool like this.)

You have normal admin tasks like you said, maybe we can implement some of them in iRedMail for all iRedMail users.
iRedMail cannot match all users' need, so i'm afraid that you still need to do some more work.

Exactly what we would need! A tool that modifes:
1) all the needed iRedmail config files for the changes for the hostname, IP, main domain
2) regenerates all the passwords and DKIM
3) modifies some mysql tables if needed

The message size is not important as it would be already modified in the VMware template (but indeed it would be nice to have such a fast tool to modify it) smile))

In fact, if we could have exactly the list of the config files and mysql tables that would need the changes we could see if one of our developers could make the script...
This could bring to iRedmail a "30 seconds installation" feature for VMware!