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Zimbra Collaboration Suite
Overview
Prepared by Zimbra, Inc
June, 2010
ZCS Overview
May, 2010
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Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Introduction ..........................................................................................................................3
Why Zimbra .........................................................................................................................3
The future with VMware .....................................................................................................7
3.1 The combination of VMware and Zimbra Simplifies IT ..............................................7
3.2 An evolution to the cloud ..............................................................................................8
Zimbra Technical Description .............................................................................................9
4.1 Architecture Overview ..................................................................................................9
4.2 Supported Operating Systems .....................................................................................16
4.3 High availability..........................................................................................................17
4.3.1 LDAP Master .......................................................................................................17
4.3.2 Mailstores .............................................................................................................17
4.4 Scalability ...................................................................................................................18
Zimbra Collaboration Suite Feature Summary ..................................................................19
5.1 Mail .............................................................................................................................21
5.2 Address Book ..............................................................................................................23
5.3 Calendar ......................................................................................................................24
5.4 Tasks ...........................................................................................................................24
5.5 Briefcase .....................................................................................................................25
5.6 Sharing ........................................................................................................................25
5.7 Powerful Search ..........................................................................................................27
5.8 PC Clients ...................................................................................................................28
5.9 Mobile Access .............................................................................................................30
Administration ...................................................................................................................31
6.1 Overview .....................................................................................................................31
6.2 Log Files and Reporting..............................................................................................33
Integration & Customisation ..............................................................................................35
7.1 Open Interfaces ...........................................................................................................35
7.2 User Interface Re-Branding ........................................................................................38
7.3 RSS feeds and Advertising .........................................................................................42
Migration............................................................................................................................43
Zimbra Support Program ...................................................................................................45
9.1 Support Packages ........................................................................................................45
9.2 Web Support ...............................................................................................................45
9.3 Telephone Support ......................................................................................................45
9.4 Support Incident Process.............................................................................................46
ZCS Overview
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1
Introduction
This is a very exciting time for Zimbra with over 50 million users of its commercial and
licensed Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) solution and is the world leader in Open Source
based, next-generation messaging and collaboration software. Due to its functionality,
richness, extensibility and future proof architecture, ZCS has been received extremely
enthusiastically by the market and commentators alike.
"With the SmartZone communications center, we continue to provide superior value to Triple
Play customers by putting a suite of communications tools right at their fingertips. From one
central dashboard, they will now be able to manage all of their communications needs as
well as customize their experience," said Greg Butz, Senior Vice President, Product
Development for Comcast.
2
Why Zimbra
Zimbra Collaboration Suite offers unparalleled messaging and collaboration with the lowest
total cost of ownership (TCO):

End-user flexibility and functionality:
o Rich Web 2.0/Ajax user interface with search, sharing, RSS, VoIP, tagging,
etc. that is ahead of the leading web portals today.
o Easy "skinning" and rebranding of the Zimbra UI to enhance the service
provider's brand.
o Simple extensible mash-up/portlet architecture (Zimlets) for added servicebased functionality
o Support for a broad range of email clients (Microsoft, Apple, Linux) and
mobile devices via "over the air" sync.

Lowest total cost of ownership (TCO):
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o Modern distributed architecture for very high scalability. Zimbra has
demonstrated that it can handle 100,000s of provisioned users per dual CPU
server.
o Native volume and hierarchical storage management (HSM) to accommodate
large quotas on commodity storage.
o Multi-tenancy for hosting large numbers of domains.
o Class of service provisioning for all major features.
o Strong internet-based security (SSL/TLS for all protocols), with support for
single sign-on via the service provider's portal.
At the same time, Zimbra also uniquely protects your IT investment:
 ZCS’ core is open source.
 ZCS leverages mature open source server infrastructure - Linux/Unix file system for
the message store, MySQL for meta-data storage, Apache for web container, Lucene
for search, etc.
 ZCS supports standard protocols for interoperability - POP3, IMAP4, iCalendar,
CalDAV, HTTP/S, REST, RSS, WebDAV, MAPI, iSync, and so on.
 All ZCS operations and network protocols use open XML/SOAP for easy integration.
 Zimbra uses standard MIME format for storing messages on disk (one message/file),
which means the formats are open to operating system utilities and scripts.
 Zimbra co-founded the Open Ajax Alliance with IBM to ensure that Web 2.0/Ajax
solutions like Zimbra remain viable across clients, operating systems, browsers, and
languages, just as is the case for the World-wide Web.
 ZCS for Service Providers comes in both consumer and business editions, and Service
Providers are free to mix and match consumer and/or business end-users in multiple
domains within a single ZCS deployment.
Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) is a truly modern, innovative messaging and collaboration
application. Zimbra is the leading open source solution for enterprise, service provider,
education, and government environments; offering administrators and their end-users
unmatched benefits. Additionally, Zimbra offers a hosted or on-premise solution that allows
the maximum flexibility for the customer moving forward.
Ajax based web collaboration is at the heart of ZCS. The powerful web client integrates
email, contacts, shared calendar, tasks, instant messaging, online document authoring and
sharing, and personal briefcase into a rich browser-based interface. Also, our unique open
source Zimlet technology which is constantly evolving and extended with new Zimlets
through our global developer community makes it easy for you to include custom 'mash-ups'
in the ZCS web client.
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Intuitive Message Management
 Conversation View hides redundant messages that
clutter up your inbox
 Tagging automatically highlights email from
important people
 View attachments (like Word or Acrobat files)
immediately as HTML instead of downloading and
opening them in another applications
The Ultimate Address Book
 Supports multiple Address Books (personal and
server-side Global Address List)
 Easily share Address Books and contacts with
peers
 Auto complete from personal and/or Global
Address List (GAL)
 Create personal distribution lists
Robust Personal and Shared Calendaring
 View multiple schedules as 'overlays' on your
calendar, one click to toggle them on and off
 Complete resource and group scheduling, with
delegated access
 Share and publish calendars with peers
 Subscribe to remote calendars as iCal feeds
Keep Track of Your To Do List
 Create multiple Tasks Lists
 Create to-do tasks
 Add attachments to your task
 Manage a task, set the priority and track the
progress
 Delegate permissions to view or manage your Task
Lists
Access Your Important Documents from Anywhere
 Upload any type of file to your briefcase so that
you can access the file whenever you log on
 Create folders to organize files that you upload
 Delegate permissions to view or manage your
Briefcase folders
 Online Office Applications
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Powerful Search
 Search Builder is a simple "WYSIWYG" tool to
make advanced queries
 Save favourite searches as "virtual" message
folders
 Build dynamic searches for attachments, message
text, domains, even phone numbers
Make it Personal
 Manage how your mailbox features work for Mail,
Address Book and Calendar
 Create mail filters
 Assign shortcut keys to quickly access email
folders, saved searches, and tags
 Choose your own colour themes
 Select your preferred language
Mash It Up
 Zimlets are a mechanism for integrating the
Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) with third
party information systems and content as
well as creating "mash-up" user interfaces
within ZCS itself
 Zimlets save end users time by condensing
common tasks, which typically force them to
open multiple applications, into simple
contextual ones within ZCS – such as
mashing up calendar information to appear
within your email
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Go Mobile
Zimbra Mobile enables two-way, over-the-air
synchronization of mail, contacts, and calendar
data between mobile devices and the Zimbra
server.
 Push email - your email is sent in real
time to your device when it arrives on
the ZCS server
 Native synchronization - sync to
devices 'out-of-the-box' with no need to
install a second mobile email client
 xHTML interface to access ZCS from
the mobile browser.
 Zimbra Mobile works with popular
devices such as Nokia E-Series, Apple
iPhone 3G and all Windows Mobile 5+
devices.
 Native BES connector for
synchronization with BlackBerry
devices.
Freedom of Access
 Browsers - Microsoft Internet
Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple
Safari fully supported
 Connector for Outlook to lets users
access their account and synchronize
data to and from Microsoft Outlook
 Connector for Apple® iSync so that
Mac users can access their address
books and calendar information and
synchronize data to and from the Mac
 Other desktop email clients - Mozilla
Thunderbird etc as well as Zimbra
Desktop for “off-line” same look and
feel browser experience
3
The future with VMware
3.1
The combination of VMware and Zimbra Simplifies IT
The VMware platform integrates virtualization, middleware and applications – and enables
the decoupling of applications from traditional concepts of linear hardware scaling. Private
and/or public cloud computing networks can work together and applications can be deployed
and managed seamlessly across those clouds. Zimbra products were designed from the
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ground up with virtualization and the cloud in mind, with a modular architecture and APIs to
allow distributed access to data and storage. Email and collaboration services have always
been ubiquitous to organizations, but now the barriers to transitioning them to efficient
virtualized environments will be much more seamless.
VMware’s mission is to simplify IT, and every VMware product focuses on attacking the
complexity and rigidity that has crept into this world. The combination of Zimbra and
VMware extends this focus into email and collaboration, one of the core services (along with
areas such as file and print services and identity management) that IT departments
universally provide to their users. Email and collaboration are critical areas that are taking
growing amounts of IT attention, time, and money without furthering the ultimate goals of
the company.
For this reason, Zimbra is one of the more popular downloads on the VMware virtual
appliance marketplace. You can think of the virtual appliance marketplace as a version of
iTunes, but for business applications. Virtual appliances are just virtual machines prepopulated with an operating system and applications that can be downloaded and easily
started without installation and with minimal configuration. The Zimbra virtual appliance is
deployed onto VMware vSphere, where it automatically benefits from the built-in VMware
vSphere scalability, availability, and security services. We see this on-premise virtual
appliance distribution and deployment model as a very simple yet effective approach for
providing employees with collaboration capabilities, especially for small- and medium-sized
businesses (SMBs).
3.2
An evolution to the cloud
The second reason the combination of Zimbra and VMware simplifies IT is because enables
cloud-based email and collaboration services. As mentioned above, companies who wish to
provide these services from an on-premise datacenter obtain a simple way to deploy and
manage their offering. Other companies may choose to rent this service from a trusted cloud
provider. Either way, Zimbra has already proven to be a popular and effective solution for
many companies and individuals, and we plan to invest further in advancing its capabilities
for this use case.
VMware launched the vCloud™ initiative just over a year ago to develop an ecosystem of
telecom, hosting, and service providers that offer cloud solutions based on VMware
technologies. This ecosystem has grown by leaps and bounds, quickly surpassing 1,000
members. With Zimbra, VMware’s partners can offer an even higher level of cloud
capability; one where customers can simply use an application without worrying about the
details of how and where it runs – a “software-as-a-service” (SaaS) for email and
collaboration.
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4
Zimbra Technical Description
4.1
Architecture Overview
The Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) architecture consists of components integrated using
industry standard protocols. An overview of the components is listed below:

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Jetty - the web application server that Zimbra software runs on.
Postfix - an open source message transfer agent (MTA) that routes mail messages to
the appropriate Zimbra mail-server.
OpenLDAP - an open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (LDAP) that provides user authentication.
MySQL - database software licensed within ZCS for storing end-user meta-data,
including message indices.
Lucene - an open-source full featured text index and search engine.
Anti-virus and anti-spam open source components including:
ClamAV - anti-virus scanner that protects against malicious files.
SpamAssassin and DSPAM - mail filters that identify spam.
Amavisd-new - interfaces between the MTA and one or more content checkers.
James/Sieve filtering -used to create filters for email.
Zimbra Ajax client - ZCS supports existing email/messaging client applications,
such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, Novell Evolution, Mozilla Thunderbird, and
so on. At the same time, there are advanced features of the Zimbra Server (e.g., mashups, search, conversations, tagging, Ajax Linking & Embedding/ALE, etc.) that
cannot be surfaced through existing user interfaces.
The ZCS Core package includes the libraries, utilities, monitoring tools, and basic
configuration files.
The high-level internal architecture is shown in the following 3 diagrams:
Figure 1: ZCS Front-End Architecture
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Figure 2: Back-End Architecture
Figure 3: Network Architecture
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Message flow
The diagram below shows the different tiers of ZCS components and the protocols used for
intra-communication.
Figure 4: ZCS Communication Flows
Message Transfer Agent
The Zimbra MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) receives mail via SMTP and routes each message,
using Local Mail Transfer Protocol (LMTP), to the appropriate Zimbra mailbox server. The
Zimbra MTA server includes the following programs:
- Postfix MTA, for mail routing, mail relay, and attachment blocking
- ClamAV Anti-Virus engine
- SpamAssassin and DSPAM, Spam filters.
- Amavisd-New, interface between Postfix and ClamAV / SpamAssassin
In the Zimbra Collaboration Suite configuration, mail transfer and delivery are distinct
functions. Postfix primarily acts as a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) and the Zimbra mail server
acts as a Mail Delivery agent (MDA)
Zimbra Proxy Server
The Zimbra Proxy is a high performance POP/IMAP proxy server that allows end users to
access their Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) account using end clients such as Microsoft
Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or other POP/IMAP end client software. End users can
connect using POP3, IMAP, POP3/S, or IMAPS. For example, proxying allows users to enter
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imap.example.com as their IMAP server. The proxy running on imap.example.com inspects
their IMAP traffic, does a lookup to determine which backend mailbox server a user’s
mailbox lives on and transparently proxies the connection from user’s IMAP client to the
correct mailbox server.
In addition to IMAP/POP3 proxying, the Zimbra proxy package based on Nginx is also able
to reverse proxy HTTP requests to the right backend server. Using an Nginx-based reverse
proxy for HTTP helps to hide names of backend mailbox servers from end users. For
example, users can always use their web browser to visit the proxy server at
http://mail.example.com. The connection from users’ whose mailboxes live on mbs1.
example.com is proxied to mbs1.example.com by the proxy running on the
mail.example.com server. In addition to the ZCS web interface, clients such as REST and
CalDAV clients, Zimbra Connector for Outlook, and Zimbra Mobile Sync devices are also
supported by the proxy.
Mailstore
The Zimbra mailstore (shown as ZCS-MBS in the diagram) package installs the components
for the mailbox server, including Jetty, which is the servlet container the Zimbra software
runs within. Each account is configured on one mailbox server, and this account is associated
with a mailbox that contains all the mail messages and file attachments for that mail account.
Each Zimbra server has its own standalone data store, message store and index store for the
mailboxes on that server. As each mail arrives, the Zimbra server schedules a thread to have
the message indexed (index store). Since each mailstore is stateful Zimbra recommend that it
is protected by clustering technology (see later section on High Availability)
The Mailstore is where all email messages and file attachments reside. Messages are stored in
MIME format as regular files on the message file system (MFS). A message that is sent to
multiple recipients who have accounts on one mailbox server is stored only once in the file
system (thereby reducing storage overhead). The data store is a MySQL database where
internal mailbox IDs are linked with user accounts. The data store maps the mailbox IDs to
users’ OpenLDAP accounts. This database contains each user’s set of tag definitions, folders,
calendar schedules and contacts, as well as the status of each mail message - read, unread,
tags associated to message, and folder the message resides in. Index and search technology is
provided through Lucene and index files are maintained for each individual mailbox.
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Figure 5: ZCS Mail Storage
The Zimbra message (or blob) store is built on the underlying Unix/Linux file system. The
mapping is one file per message, we actually write the RFC822 MIME message
representation directly to a file. This has a number of benefits:
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Once written, messages are immutable in Zimbra, and file systems are very efficient
at storing and retrieving immutable unstructured/semi-structured blocks of data.
Garbage collection is provided natively by the operating system, which offers both
greater efficiency and lower administrative overhead.
Independent utilities, tools, and scripts can easily recognize and process the Zimbra
message representation on disk.
Native operating system capabilities such as indexing/search (e.g., Mac Spotlight),
compression, and security.
Multi-level caching. Zimbra caches data itself, but Zimbra also benefits from the
underlying operating system caching. Since enterprise messaging systems are
generally gated on read and write performance, effective caching is one of the critical
foundations of a scalable messaging implementation.
For each instance of the Zimbra mailbox server (one instance per machine), we store one
copy of each message including all its attachments, even if that message is destined for
multiple mailboxes. This obviously can lead to substantial savings in disk if large
attachments are often sent to multiple recipients on a server (some messaging servers only
provide single copy per mailbox or single copy per storage group, which can lead to
significant redundancy in more expensive managed storage with no improvement in
availability/fault tolerance). For operating systems that support them, we utilize hard links to
the single copy to efficiently ensure that a file is garbage collected after all users have deleted
it from their mailbox metadata.
Metadata SQL Store
While messages themselves are immutable, the meta-data associated with a message goes
through frequent state changes as it is used. Message meta-data includes such items as
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What folder is the message in?
What tags does the message have?
Is the message read or unread?
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What conversation is the message part of?
The Zimbra Collaboration Suite includes an embedded relational database for managing
mailbox meta-data, and it is reshipped within each Zimbra distribution. We choose to use a
relational database for Zimbra meta-data because:
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We sought to leverage the hardening and performance investment of smart engineers
before us. For efficient searching and reliably updating highly structured meta-data, it
is hard to beat relational databases.
Caching - Unlike immutable messages, Zimbra’s meta-data is both frequently read
and written. Relational databases provide very efficient caching for both reads and
writes. Update caching efficiency comes out of combining multiple updates, even
those spanning transactions, into a single disk write (this optimization, of course,
leverages the database’s sequentially-written transaction log to ensure that no changes
are lost in the event of an outage).
The SQL interface provides the Zimbra Community with investment protection in
that the ZCS mailbox server could be very easily ported to other relational databases
from the MySQL implementation that is currently included in ZCS.
Search
Search is fundamental to the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Zimbra users do need to rely on
complicated folder hierarchies to organize their emails because Zimbra users can search
almost anything instantaneously across any folders. This enables usability advantages as
users can archive emails into a single folder. All the meta-data associated with a message
(folder, read/unread, tags, etc.) is available as search criteria, as are indexes into the content
of the messages and the content of any attachments to the messages. Zimbra provides a
simple, yet rich grammar for specifying searches, and then offers a graphical search builder
for constructing advanced searches without having to learn that grammar.
Zimbra search is conducted on the server side. The advantages of server-side search are
access to full mailboxes (including archived content), reliance on faster disk/CPU for
increased performance (even factoring in the network latency), and the elimination of a
substantial amount of redundant computation associated with indexing attachments sent to
multiple recipients.
Zimbra leverages Apache Lucene to manage the index that enables fast searching, and
Zimbra uses third-party software from Verity to extract text from attachments for indexing
within Lucene.
Lucene Index
Lucene is a high-performance, full-text search engine from Apache. Lucene works by
generating a full “segment” index for all words/tokens in a particular message, and
optionally, its attachments. This segment is then merged into the receiving users’ existing
index (one index per user). The index itself is represented in flat files. Search simply
traverses these optimized file structures, often in parallel.
Search is very fast—users perceive it to be nearly instantaneous. The pre-processing required
to construct an index, on the other hand, grows linearly with the size of the text. Attachments
tend to be the overriding factor in this overhead. Attachment indexing is a function of user’s
class of service, and so can be turned on or off based on server scaling requirements.
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Message text indexing is more essential to the user experience (as well as significantly loweroverhead due to the smaller datasets)—it is a big part of the reason why many Zimbra users
become comfortable with dropping their complex, time-intensive folder hierarchies in favour
of a single “Stash” folder, because powerful search frees them from the worry that they will
not be able to find what they are looking for.
We have found this Lucene index to typically be about 20% of the size of the text being
indexed. Simply by compressing messages and their attachments prior to storage, we can
make up the space required to store the Lucene index. As a user’s index grows larger, the
savings increase, since there is greater reuse of tokens. Garbage collection is done on the
indices only after expunging messages (emptying the trash), so that trashed messages can still
be found (many Zimbra users choose to use their trash as a secondary archive folder, since no
message data need be expunged from the trash until the user’s quota is reached). Should a
more catastrophic failure lead to an index corruption, there is also an administrative interface
for regenerating Lucene indices (which are, of course, idempotent).
OpenLDAP Account Database
ZCS has its own OpenLDAP integrated solution as part of our architecture at point of install.
ZCS can also integrate for wider network requirements or external lookups to other
directories.
The Zimbra LDAP directory service is used to look up email delivery addresses both from
internal and external LDAP servers as well. ZCS supports the proxying of user login and
access to the Global Address List (GAL) to an existing enterprise directory such as Microsoft
Active Directory or other LDAP-compliant directories. While ZCS configurations are
supported in which non-ZCS configuration data is stored within ZCS’s embedded
OpenLDAP, and ZCS configuration data is stored within an independent enterprise directory,
the ideal configuration seems to be store ZCS-specific configuration data within the ZCSmanaged, embedded OpenLDAP and store ZCS-independent enterprise configuration data
within the existing enterprise directory. To provide scalability and redundancy the Master
LDAP server can be horizontally scaled by deploying multiple LDAP replica servers.
Client Access
Zimbra features compatibility with Microsoft Outlook, Apple Desktop applications, Novell
Evolution, and all other standards-based POP/IMAP/iCal clients. Our broad desktop
compatibility gives end-users freedom of choice and administrators the ability to protect their
desktop investments because mixed PC, Mac, and Linux desktop deployments can all run on
the same ZCS Server. Figure 3 shows some of the more common methods of access and
indicates the protocols used to interact with the Zimbra Mailstore.
The Zimbra Connector for Outlook provides real time two-way synchronization of mail,
contacts, tasks, and calendar between Outlook and the ZCS server. Similarly, the Zimbra
Apple Desktop Connector also provides real time two-way synchronization of mail, contacts,
and calendar between the Apple Desktop and the ZCS server using a native iSync
interface. Standards-Based clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Sunbird, and Eudora can be
used with Zimbra to access email and even calendar data because the Zimbra Server uses an
all standards-based approach and supports POP, IMAP, iCal, CalDAV, RSS, etc.
Mobile Access
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Zimbra Mobile for Smartphones enables two-way, over-the-air synchronization of mail,
contacts, calendar and tasks data between the mobile device and the Zimbra Server. It
features push email, which sends messages in real time to your device when it arrives on the
Zimbra Server. Supported devices are ActiveSync compatible, for example Symbian Nokia
E-Series, Apple iPhone 3G and all Windows Mobile 5+ devices.
Blackberry connectivity is provided via a connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).
The connector essentially communicates with the BES via the MAPI protocol which then
translates these commands into the corresponding SOAP call which is communicated via
HTTP/S to the Zimbra Mailstore. With this component, the Zimbra Server is able to integrate
directly with BES and synchronize with all BlackBerry devices. To use the Zimbra Mobile
Connector for BlackBerry you must be running BlackBerry Professional or BES for
Exchange which must be licensed accordingly with Blackberry.
The Zimbra BES connector enables the following Blackberry features:
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Over-the-air synchronization of mail, address book, calendar in the native BlackBerry
UI
Sync to all BlackBerry devices
Full access to Zimbra GAL
Search messages
Open / view attachments
Manage calendar events; accept / decline meetings
Administrators add / provision users directly in the BlackBerry Administration
Console
Zimbra’s mobile access is further enhanced via its Mobile Web Client and downloadable
J2ME application.
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Mobile Web Browsers - All devices with HTML capable browsers, including the
Apple iPhone, have real time access to the Zimbra Server using our Mobile Web
Client. Zimbra’s Mobile Web Client allows users access to their email, contacts, and
calendar. This provides on-the-go access to the Zimbra experience to virtually all endusers.
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Java Enabled Devices - Zimbra Mobile Edition (beta) is ideal for users of Java /
J2ME capable devices who want a "native" experience similar to what is possible on
Smartphones with push email. Zimbra Mobile Edition also integrates many of
Zimbra's innovative features, such as conversation views, which you will not find on
most Smartphone’s native UI
4.2
Supported Operating Systems
Zimbra Collaboration Suite Network Edition v6.0.x supports the following Operating
Systems:
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 x86 (32 &64 bit)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 x86 (32 &64 bit)
MacOS 10.4 Tiger (32 bit x86)
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4.3
MacOS 10.5 Leopard (32 bit x86 Beta)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (32 &64 bit)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (64 bit)
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS x86 (32 &64 bit)
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS x86 (32 &64 bit)
High availability
Single points of failure should be avoided wherever possible, at all levels: network, server,
power supply, cabling, disk drives and software elements. This should apply to ancillary
systems (e.g. DNS and External Authentication Servers) as well as to the email servers
themselves.
4.3.1
LDAP Master
The LDAP Master will have its database stored on the servers’ local disks. Redundancy is
provided via the deployment of LDAP Replica servers. The replicas contain a full copy the
master database and in the event of failure of the master server the replica can be promoted to
master status and the service can continue. Adding replicas also facilitates the distribution of
load on the LDAP services; balancing the load across the master and replicas is configured
internally within the ZCS configuration
4.3.2
Mailstores
Zimbra Collaboration Suite can be deployed on one of the following cluster management
tools:
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux Cluster Suite. Red Hat Cluster Suite consists of Red Hat
Cluster Manager and Linux Virtual Server Cluster. For ZCS, only Red Hat Cluster
Manager is required.

VERITAS Cluster Server by Symantec (VCS).
The MBS cluster is deployed in an N+1 topology, as shown in the following diagram (N=4).
An N+1 configuration is based on the concept that multiple, simultaneous server failures are
unlikely; therefore, a single backup server can protect multiple active servers.
Should a server fail, the cluster would operate in classic failover mode, with the standby
server appropriating the virtual IP address and disk volume group belonging to the failed
host.
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Standby
MBS
Virtual
Array
MBS
1
MBS
2
Virtual
Array
MBS
3
Virtual
Array
MBS
4
Virtual
Array
Storage Array
Figure 6: Mailstore Cluster
4.4
Scalability
Zimbra was designed from the ground up to scale to meet the needs of businesses with
100,000s of users and Service Providers with millions and even tens of millions of users. The
Zimbra architecture inherits from distributed systems expertise that was gleaned building
messaging systems that today host more than 100 million mailboxes world-wide and
Java/Web systems that have thousands of production server CPUs within single large-scale
deployments.
All medium and large Zimbra deployments are horizontally partitioned across servers (and
the attached storage) by end-user mailboxes. An end-user's mailbox includes his or her
messages, calendar(s), address book(s), documents, and so on, which are all collocated for
very efficient context switching and search across applications. So ZCS servers are inherently
stateful - each serves as the primary home for a subset of the aggregate mailboxes. This
requires that each ZCS server have the smarts to reroute a protocol request (via
XML/SOAP/HTTP/S, IMAP/S, POP/S, RSS, iCal, etc.) to the appropriate primary server in
the event that an in-bound load balancer makes the wrong decision.
Automated replication and failover is also essential for large-scale deployments. For
example, LDAP configuration data (which includes end-user mailbox home locations) can be
fully replicated/partitioned across as many replica servers as are required to meet
performance and availability requirements. LDAP replicas may be collocated with ZCS
mailbox servers, MTAs, or “vertically partitioned” to dedicated servers.
Mailbox data, on the other hand, can be transparently replicated within the underlying storage
system (such as by using RAID or mirroring) for availability only. (It simply does not make
sense to replicate mailboxes for scalability, given how frequently state data is updated, and
the overhead of ensuring transactional consistency between multiple mailbox copies.)
Clustering technology is used to automatically failover from the primary server to a
preconfigured secondary (or tertiary) server, which then assumes the role of primary for that
mailbox. (I/O fencing and associated technologies ensure that the former primary no longer
has “write” access to the mailbox in order to avoid “split-brained syndrome”).
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ZCS Meta-data optimization & partitioning; Meta-data for a mailbox is generally all of the
data required for navigating to the appropriate message or meeting. Zimbra meta-data
includes ZCS's very efficient, Lucene based index into all the text contained in every
message, meeting, contact, document, attachment, and so on. Zimbra meta-data also includes
the structured meta-data that captures folders, tags, dates, read/unread status, etc. Zimbra uses
an off-the-shelf SQL database for optimizing structured meta-data queries and updates.
Meta-data is horizontally partitioned by user into the appropriate ZCS mailbox server, but the
key additional insight is that this meta-data can also be partitioned from the target data
(message body, meeting, document) to ensure very efficient search, UI painting, and so on.
Separating the meta-data and target-data makes it far more cost-effective to keep the metadata on fast disk, allowing sophisticated search and navigation to be nearly instantaneous
even across multi-gigabyte mailboxes. Latency in access to the message body itself (which
could, for example, reside in an HSM system) is not nearly as problematic to the user
experience as latency or inefficiency in accessing the meta-data. Partitioned meta-data also
allows potentially expensive operations such as compliance-related cross-mailbox discovery
to be handled efficiently (via simply composing the appropriate horizontally partitioned
search results).
5
Zimbra Collaboration Suite Feature Summary
Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) is a truly modern, innovative messaging and collaboration
application. Zimbra is the leading open source solution for enterprise, service provider,
education, and government environments; offering administrators and their end-users
unmatched benefits.
Ajax based web collaboration is at the heart of ZCS. The powerful web client integrates
email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document authoring into a rich browserbased interface. Also, our unique open source Zimlet technology makes it easy for you to
include custom 'mash-ups' in the ZCS web client.
In summary Zimbra Collaboration Suite offers the following features:










Mail
Address book
Calendaring
Tasks & Scheduling
Document Collaboration
File Repository
Zimlets Framework
Mobile Access
Multi-Domain
Sharing
Zimbra’s broad desktop compatibility gives end-users freedom of choice and administrators
the ability to protect their desktop investments because mixed PC, Mac, and Linux desktop
deployments can all interoperate with the same ZCS Server.
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Figure 7 No Client Platform Left Behind
Figure 8 End User Freedom of Choice
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5.1
Mail
The Zimbra mailbox offers two options for viewing the messages in your mailbox.

Message View - Messages can be displayed in the Inbox by date. This is the
traditional message view, where messages received today display the hour received,
messages received in previous days show the date received.

Conversation View - The Conversation view displays your messages grouped by the
conversation subject, as shown below. Because all messages in a conversation have
the same subject, the subject displays only once in the conversation view pane. All
messages related to the conversation are displayed, even if they are stored in different
folders.
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Each message, in message or conversation view, has a separate line that displays the
following columns of information.

Check box. Use the checkbox to select one or more messages to perform the same
action on, such as delete, move, and mark as read. Check the box in the header will
automatically check all the messages on the page.

Conversation indicator. Is this email part of a conversation? If is displayed, the
message is part of a conversation.

Flag indicator. Did you flag this message to indicate an action-needed item or to
otherwise distinguish the message or conversation from a larger number of other
items of lesser importance?

Priority indicator. Did the sender mark this message as high priority?

Tags. Did the message get marked by a Tag you defined?

Status. Open or closed envelopes indicate whether a message has been read. Bold
text also indicates that a message has not been read.

From. Name or email address of the sender.

Attachment indicator. A paper clip indicates that a message has an attachment.

Subject. Brief description of the email message. If Snippets is enabled in your
account, the first line of an email message is displayed.

Folder. Shows the name of the folder where the message is located. For
conversations, no folder name is displayed because messages can span multiple
folders. When you open the conversation, this column displays where the message is
located.
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
Size. Size of the message or number of messages in the conversation.

Received. Date or time the message was received.

Read receipts. Support for read receipt request and acknowledgement.
5.2
Address Book
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5.3
Calendar
5.4
Tasks
You can use your task lists to create and track the progress of a task. In addition, you can
write notes within your task and attach files for easy access from within the task. Having all
the relevant information with your task is useful when you share your task list with others.
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5.5
Briefcase
The Briefcase application lets you copy files from your computer to your ZCS account. You
can access these files whenever you log in to your ZWC account from any computer and you
can share these files with other. New with ZCS 6.0 Documents, Presentations and
Spreadsheets can be created and edited directly from the Zimbra Web Client. All these 3
applications looks and feel like desktop Office applications and open in full-screen giving
that familiar look. They all save as custom files within Briefcase and you can share them like
any other files.
5.6
Sharing
You can share your mail folders, address books, calendars, task lists, Documents notebooks,
and Briefcase folders. Sharing your ZWC items lets you collaborate with others, letting them
make changes to or just view the folder details.
From within the appropriate application, you select the folder and specify the type of access
privileges to give the grantee. You can share with internal users, who can be given complete
manager access to the folder or only the ability to view the folder.
You can set permissions per user or group, so everyone does not have to have the same
permissions to your shared folder. You can share with the following:

Internal users or groups. You select the type of privileges (role) to grant to internal
users. The user or group must have a valid address in your company’s mail server.

Viewer. The grantee can read the contents of the shared folder, but cannot make
changes to the content.
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
Manager. The grantee has full permission to view and edit the content of a shared
folder, create new sub folders, edit and delete files in the shared folder.

Admin. The grantee has full permission to view and edit the content of a shared
folder, create new sub folders, edit and delete files in the shared folder. Additionally
the user has the ability to re-share the folder to other users.

None. An option to temporarily disable access to a shared folder without revoking the
share privileges. The grantee still has the shared folder in his mailbox but cannot view
or manage activities on the grantor’s folder.
Note: You can share your Mail folders only with internal users or groups.

External guests. You create a password for the shared folder that guests must enter to
view the content. They cannot make any changes to the information they view.

Public. Anyone that knows the URL to the folder can view the content. They cannot
make any changes to the information.
Sharing Mail Folders
You can share any of your mail folders, including the Inbox folder and sub-folders, with
valid users within your organization. You cannot share your mail folders with external users
or with the public. A copy of the shared folder is put in the grantee’s Folder list on the
Overview pane. When the folder is selected, the content displays in the Content pane. The
grantee does not need to log into the grantor’s mailbox.
Grantees that have the manager role have full permission to view and edit the contents of the
shared mail folder, create new sub-folders, send email on the grantor’s behalf, and delete
email messages.
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5.7
Powerful Search
ZCS provides the following methods for organize email messages. You can use these along
with the Search feature to quickly locate and retrieve messages.

Folders. You can create folders to organize your messages, and you can move
email between folders. Use of folders is covered in this chapter. The mail
system folders are Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Junk, and Trash.

Filters. In the Preferences > Mail Filters tab, you can create rules for
classifying inbound email according to items in the subject line, sender,
recipient, or other characteristics.

Tags. You can use tags as labels on email messages and then use the Search
feature to show all email with a certain tag (a form of virtual folders – please
see more below).
There are two mailbox search tools:

Search. This is a quick search that executes the search query displayed in the
Search text box. The drop-down arrow at the left of the Search box enables
you to select the type of item for which to search.

Advanced. This search opens a new pane and makes it easier to execute more
complex searches. You can save your advanced search queries and re-execute
them at a later date.
Search is fundamental to the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Typical Zimbra users tend to rely
on a small number of (or even a single) folders and then use search to almost instantaneously
lay their fingers on whatever information they are looking for. All the meta-data associated
with a message (folder, read/unread, tags, and so on) is available as search criteria, as are
indexes into the content of the messages and the content of any attachments to the messages.
Zimbra provides a simple, yet rich grammar for specifying searches, and furthermore offers a
graphical search builder for constructing advanced searches without having to learn that
grammar. Searches once constructed can be saved within the normal folder hierarchy. A
saved search acts like a virtual folder in that new messages that meet that search criteria will
be displayed when you click on the saved search. The typical use scenario for saved searches
is to provide “views” or “virtual folders” of your inbox or full mailbox, such as for new
“external” messages (those coming from customer/partners outside of your domain), new
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“management” messages (those coming from your boss or your direct reports), mailing list
messages, and so on.
All of the comprehensive Zimbra search capabilities are also available to administrators
(subject to configurable authorization) for use across a specific set of mailboxes, such as for
use in a compliance or human resources-related discovery. ZCS uses Lucene for mailbox
indexing. Lucene is a high-performance, full-text search engine from Apache. Lucene works
by generating a full “segment” index for all words/tokens in a particular message, and
optionally, its attachments. This segment is then merged into the receiving users’ existing
index (one index per user). The index itself is represented in flat files. Search simply
traverses these optimized file structures, often in parallel.
Search is very fast whether executed from within Zimbra’s online (webmail) or offline client
(Zimbra Desktop); users perceive it to be nearly instantaneous. The pre-processing required
to construct an index, on the other hand, grows linearly with the size of the text. Attachments
tend to be the overriding factor in this overhead. Attachment indexing is a function of a users'
class of service, and so can be turned on or off based on server scaling requirements.
Message text indexing is more essential to the user experience (as well as significantly loweroverhead due to the smaller datasets) - it is a big part of the reason why many Zimbra users
become comfortable with dropping their complex, time-intensive folder hierarchies in favour
of a single “Stash” folder, because powerful search frees them from the worry that they will
not be able to find what they are looking for.
5.8
PC Clients
Zimbra Connector for Microsoft Outlook
The Zimbra Connector for Outlook provides real time two-way synchronization of mail,
contacts, tasks, and calendar between Outlook and the ZCS server. Features include:








Email, contacts, calendar, and task natively sync via MAPI
Native integration, uses all Outlook UI
Delegate access to others (folders, email, contacts, schedule)
Supports both Online and Offline mode, including access to shared content Offline
Full support for GAL
Sync optimized for fastest performance
Seamless auto-install, tools provided to pre-configure installer with your server
settings
Supports Outlook 2003 / 2007
Zimbra Apple Desktop Connector
The Zimbra Apple Desktop Connector also provides real time two-way synchronization of
mail, contacts, and calendar between the Apple Desktop and the ZCS server using a native
iSync interface. Features include:



Sync Apple Mail, iCal, Address Book, and Microsoft Entourage via iSync
Totally uses native application UI
Fast native installation
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

Integration directly into Apple System Preferences
Configurable sync frequency
Standards-Based Clients
Clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird + Lightning, Sunbird, and Eudora can be used with
Zimbra to access email and even calendar data because the open source Zimbra Server uses
an all standards-based approach and supports POP, IMAP, iCal, CalDAV, RSS, etc. Features
include:



Access email via POP or IMAP (available on virtually all email clients)
Access calendar on clients that support iCal or CalDAV
Sync contacts with import / export (.csv file) from Zimbra Web client
Zimbra Desktop
Zimbra Desktop is a next generation offline/online email and calendar application you can
install on your computer. It is like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird but it also
incorporates the latest features and experiences popular on the web to create a totally new
and more powerful tool. When used as a client to ZCS, Zimbra Desktop maintains a full
synchronisation of Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Documents, Briefcase and Global
Address List allowing offline & productivity access when not connected the server.
Integrated Mail, Address Book, Calendar
Manage your email, contacts, and calendar events together in Zimbra Desktop. By email, we
mean all your accounts- Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail Plus, Gmail, AOL, Outlook or any other email
account is easy to set up with the Account Wizard. Now you don’t have to worry about
forgetting to check other accounts and missing important email.
For each mail account you set up and aggregate in Desktop you can set up its own individual
profile, for example work email and private email profiles.
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Conversation View
It is difficult to manage thousands of messages with traditional webmail or applications like
Microsoft Outlook. Zimbra Desktop uses Conversation Views and Message Tags to
automatically highlight important emails. The visual Search Builder makes it easy to quickly
find important pictures, documents or messages from people you care about.
Yahoo! Map mash-up
Zimbra Desktop brings the web to you as “mash-ups” - when a message arrives with an
address you can instantly see a Yahoo! Map or even points of interest and traffic with Yahoo!
Local. You can even see your schedule when you read a message without even opening the
calendar. Yahoo! Search is also integrated directly into Zimbra Desktop for convenient web
searching.
5.9
Mobile Access
Zimbra Collaboration Suite can be accessed from a wide range of devices, from mass market
handsets to smartphones. The features offered in ZCS are ideal for integrating the diverse
mix of devices end-users are choosing and maximizes mobility throughout your organization.
In addition to supporting mobile POP and IMAP access, Zimbra supports access to your
email, contacts, and calendar via:




Mobile Web Browsers - All devices with HTML capable browsers, including the
Apple iPhone, have real time access to the Zimbra Server using our Mobile Web
Client
Java Enabled Devices - Popular devices, such as the Motorola RAZR, support Zimbra
Mobile Edition; an elegant client experience with over-the-air (OTA) Zimbra Server
sync
Smartphones - Native OTA synchronization and push email on iPhone, Windows
Mobile, Palm, and Symbian OS devices with Zimbra Mobile
BlackBerry - Completely native OTA synchronization between the Zimbra Server and
BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) to all BlackBerry devices with Zimbra Mobile
Connector for BES.
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Screen shots of the Zimbra xHTML mobile web client are shown below. There are variations
of the mobile web client and these can be customised to have your required logos and
colours:
6
Administration
6.1
Overview
Zimbra Collaboration Suite has unparalleled flexibility and ease of maintenance. The webbased Administration UI makes provisioning and server management simple from any
location. Plus, a full complement of migration tools makes the transition from legacy systems
to ZCS seamless
Ajax Web Client Administration UI
The Zimbra Admin UI is just as easy to use as our end-user Ajax web client and equally
powerful. Administrators can manage any aspect of the Zimbra server including:
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Furthermore a comprehensive set of Admin command line and Scripting Tools are also
available for large scale / batch operations.
New for ZCS 6.0 the Delegated Administration feature lets you create multiple levels of
delegated administrator roles to manage your ZCS environment. These administrator
accounts / distribution lists are granted rights to perform administrator tasks on a specific
target. ZCS delegated administration is flexible; delegated administrator roles can be as
simple as having the rights to manage one or more distribution lists or reset forgotten
passwords for one or more users, to having domain administration rights on one or more
domains.
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6.2
Log Files and Reporting
Zimbra Log Files
The Zimbra server uses log4j, a Java logging package as the log manager. By default, the
Zimbra server has log4j configured to log to the local file system. You can configure log4j to
direct output to another location. The logging level is set by default to include logs that are
generated for INFO, WARNING, ERROR and FATAL. When problems start to occur, you
can turn on the DEBUG log level.
The Zimbra raw log files can be used for report generation by parsing the files with suitably
developed scripts and routines. (The development of reporting scripts would be part of a
Professional Services engagement at additional cost).
The Zimbra Logger Database
Zimbra-Logger includes tools for syslog aggregation, reporting, and message tracing. The
Zimbra logger package is installed on a Zimbra mailbox server and log files from all nodes in
the service are aggregated onto the logger server and the log file meta-data is uploaded to a
SQLite database. The logger SQLite DB can then be used to perform queries against to
generate custom reports. Also the logger generates server statistics displayed as bar graphs of
the message count, message volume, anti-spam, and anti-virus activity in the Administration
web console. The information is displayed for the last 48 hours, and 30, 60, and 365 days.






Message Count
Message Volume
Anti-Spam/Virus Activity
Disk Space
Session
Mailbox Quota
When the Logger package is installed, a daily mail report is automatically scheduled in the
crontab. The Zimbra daily mail report includes the following information:







Errors generated from the Zimbra MTA Postfix logs
Total number of messages that moved through the Zimbra MTA
Message size information (totals and average bytes per message)
Average delay in seconds for message delivery
Total number of bounced deliveries
Most active sender accounts and number of messages
Most active recipient accounts and number of messages
The report runs every morning at 4 a.m. and is sent to the administrator’s email address.
Zmstat Framework
The Zmstat tool generates csv files that take frequent snap shots of the overall server
performance. The following system stats are created:




cpu.csv: CPU utilization
fd.csv: file descriptor count
mailboxd.csv: ZCS server and JVM statistics
mtaqueue.csv: Postfix queue
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



proc.csv: disk utilization
soap.csv: SOAP request processing time
threads.csv: JVM thread counts
vm.csv: Linux VM statistics (from the vmstat command)
These CSV files can then be graphed directly in the Admin Console or using the supplied
command line tool. Below are some examples of the graphs generated:
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7
Integration & Customisation
7.1
Open Interfaces
Zimbra SOAP API
Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) uses SOAP over https for its operations. For routine
System Administration operations the ZCS platform provides you with an extensive suite of
zmprov commands. These commands are simply wrappers for SOAP requests against the
Zimbra “web service” server. These operations can be user creation, user deletion, account
renaming, the modification of attributes on the account, a calendar entry creation, sharing,
etc. In fact any single click on the Administration Console and/or the Zimbra Web interface
can be translated into a SOAP request.
Some customers may need to use the SOAP interface instead of the zmprov wrapper for
various reasons. An example could be integrating with existing SOAP services (i.e. integrate
user registration in their web portal followed by billing processes). Some customers may
need to use SOAP to write custom Zimlets to extend the Administration Console Web UI or
the Zimbra end-user Web UI. The programmer can select a number of programming
languages to generate and submit SOAP requests to the Zimbra web service server (i.e. Perl,
Java, jsp, etc.)
Zimbra provides a comprehensive set of SOAP APIs for user administration, provisioning,
customisation and portal integration. With the network infrastructure in place, you can make
SOAP calls. The general flow of provisioning using the SOAP web service is:

Authentication, which provides an auth token.

One or more calls to the web service re-using that auth token.

Authentication expires or client destroys the auth token.
Zimbra supports either SOAP 1.1 or 1.2. Furthermore there are some additional APIs that are
specifically targeted at handling synchronisation between Zimbra and external systems:


Sync API – This API provides a mechanism for external applications to work out the
sync state between the two systems and identify items that have changed.
SOAP Waitset - This is a scalable mechanism for listening for changes to one or
more accounts
Zimlets
Zimlets are a mechanism for integrating the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) with third
party information systems and content as well as creating "mash-up" user interfaces within
the Zimbra suite itself. Zimlets save end users time by condensing common tasks, which
typically force them to open multiple applications, into simple contextual ones within ZCSsuch as mashing up calendar information to appear within your email.
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Zimlets leverage AJAX and XML to enable this blending of “push” and “pull” within a
single unified model. Zimlets essentially encapsulate three things:
 Richly-interactive user interface in the browser – With technologies like AJAX, web
user interfaces can be every bit as rich as that of traditional client/server applications,
but at the same time still have the look, feel, behaviour, and zero client administration
of the World-Wide Web
 XML-based web services – Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on XML/web
service end-points allows Internet data and services (maps, stock quotes, weather,
flight status, etc.) and intranet data and services (enterprise applications such as CRM,
ERP, etc.) to be securely accessed from other applications and systems.
 Mash-ups – Mash-ups are the aggregation and customization of multiple web user
interfaces and web services to eliminate context switching between existing systems,
deliver wholly new experiences, or almost the range of everything in between.
Zimlets also provide unique ZCS differentiation for Service Providers in providing multiple
monetisation possibilities by offering up-sell/cross-sell possibilities based upon user
behaviour and email content. Please see below for a few simple examples:
Social Networking – Using the Zimlet technology it is possible to allow users to interact with
their favourite social networking sites directly from within the Zimbra Web Client. The
example below shows a zimlet application developed by Zimbra that interfaces with
Facebook and Twitter. This takes advantage of the ZCS 6.0 enhancement that allows zimlets
to take over the entire interface and operate in their own application tab.
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VOIP Services – Telephony services can be integrated with Zimbra via the Zimlet
framework allowing service providers to up sell additional services from their Zimbra
messaging application. The screenshots below show a Zimlet integration with Broadsoft and
similar Zimlets have been developed to work with Asterisk PBX systems.
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Further Examples of Zimlets:
REST Interface
Within Zimbra there is a number of different server-side URLs that the client accesses to download
attachments, export contacts as CSV, export a calendar as an ICS, file etc. This is not only within a
particular Zimbra community, but between Zimbra communities and the public at large. The
following table describes the REST formats available within Zimbra:
Format
Description
atom
For generating an ATOM feed of mail messages and calendar
appointments.
csv
For exporting contacts.
ics
For exporting calendar appointments. See RFC 2445.
ifb
Calendar free/busy data. See RFC 2445.
native
Default formatter used to output messages and attachments in their
"native" format. Used by the web client to reference attachments
for downloading.
rss
For generating an RSS feed of mail messages and calendar appts.
sync
Similar to the native formatter, used by sync clients to retrieve raw
message data, along with some extra meta-data in the HTTP header
(tags, flags, received date).
vcf
For exporting vcard files (vcard 3.0)
zip
For exporting a set of messages (folder or search result) as a ZIP
file.
7.2
User Interface Re-Branding
The Zimbra Web Mail interface can be customised to conform to your corporate style,
branding and online advertising requirements. For detailed information on how the ZWC
interface can be customised please refer to the following wiki page:
http://files.zimbra.com/docs/skins/Themes.html. Here is a selection of standard delivered
Zimbra skins and some examples of skins developed for Zimbra customers.
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7.3
RSS feeds and Advertising
Advertisement possibilities



Sky/Banner adverts (as below)
Mini-cal replaced by text adverts or RSS feeds
Zimlet framework provides the capability for additional intelligence for advert
selection
The Zimbra Web Client supports displaying Ads in five locations:
 At the very top of the window (Top Ad)
 On the right side of the window (Sidebar Ad)
 Above the tree (Tree Top Ad)
 Below the tree and mini-calendar (Tree Bottom Ad)
 At the very bottom of the window (Bottom Ad)
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8
Migration
Zimbra provides a complete set of services to plan and execute customer migrations from ISP
Platforms, Exchange, Domino, GroupWise, or other legacy email systems onto ZCS. The
Zimbra Team will work directly with you to determine the best strategy for your migration.
Our tools and team can help with scenarios ranging from a small business up to a large
service provider for full enterprise migration strategy.
For general migration scenarios:



Consulting, best practices, sample scripts, and documentation provided
Supported migration formats include IMAP (email), CSV (contacts), iCal (calendar)
For more information on migration visit our Migration Wiki
(http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=User_Migration)
For Exchange / Domino / GroupWise migration scenarios:
 Consulting, best practices, sample scripts, and documentation provided
 Wizard applications that perform direct server-to-server migration at the individual or
batch level
 For Outlook / Exchange a PST importer application is also available
Among the key ZCS migration tools for Service Providers include IMAP synchronization for
migration of messages and REST bindings for migration of address book, calendars, and other
user data that has an analogy within Zimbra.
Email
"imapsync” is used to copy the email messages from the legacy mailboxes to ZCS. Once this
operation is successfully completed, the mailbox of record is moved to ZCS and all future
Web mail and POP requests are redirected to ZCS. Careful attention must be paid to
optimizing imapsync settings: The syncinternaldates switch is essential for preserving the
original delivery/sending dates of the messages; and because Zimbra’s IMAP implementation
does not include access control lists (ACLs), setting the nosyncacls switch improves
efficiency of the migration.
imapsync is an idempotent operation in that if there is any question that it has not been
completed successfully (e.g., sanity check of the number of messages in each mailbox), then
it can simply be repeated (without recopying any data that has been successfully migrated),
although there is clearly a computational cost for doing so. Special consideration must be
paid to ensure that messages that arrive during a imapsync, but before the “mailbox of
record” has been moved, will be reflected in the new mailbox.
REST
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Zimbra’s web application server includes support for Representational State Transfer, or
REST. This means that the Zimbra server supports URLs which translate data to and from
non-html data types. The following Blog posting includes an explanation and examples of
how Zimbra’s REST interface works:
http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2006/05/updating_via_re_1.html
Because REST is flexible and very easy to script, it offers a method of automating migration
of a wide variety of legacy data. Another advantage is that the Zimbra REST interface allows
user data updates by authenticating as an administrator. This means that data can be injected
into Zimbra via REST without having to know user passwords.
Address book
To migrate user contacts into Zimbra using REST, the contact data must first be exported
from the legacy server in, for example, vCard (*.vcf) or Comma Separated Value (*.csv)
format. Please note that for a CSV based export/import to work properly, the individual field
names must match. If the legacy system’s CSV formats are different, then the fields will be
renamed via scripts or code before injecting into ZCS.
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9
Zimbra Support Program
9.1
Support Packages
Support Packages are determined by your Network Edition contract type. Please note that
Telkom Media would qualify for Premium Support.
Forums, Wiki,
Documents,
Product Portal
Updates,
Upgrades
Support Portal
Phone Support
(business hours)
24 x 7 crisis
phone support*
Support Incidents
Standard
Advantage
Premium
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
2 per year
10 per year
Unlimited
* Available for U1 system-down incidents only
9.2
Web Support
We provide robust web-based access to self-help facilities. Among the on-line resources are:





9.3
Zimbra Forums - Learn from others experiences in the Zimbra Community; Zimbra
employees also share technical information of a general nature here.
Product Documentation - Current product release notes, manuals, and general
documentation can be found in the Documents section of the Zimbra website.
Zimbra Wiki - Documents developed by Zimbra Support and the Community; these
documents usually cover common problems and procedures.
Product Management Portal - Provides a real-time view into features and bug fixes in
Zimbra's past releases as well as the next major release.
Support Portal - All Zimbra customers with active support contracts have access to
the Zimbra Support Portal, where you can submit, view, and check status of support
cases at any time. This is the preferred method for submitting support cases because
you can document your question in detail and have questions immediately directed to
the most appropriate engineer. The Portal also features a powerful unified search to
quickly find answers to common questions.
Telephone Support
Telkom Media would enjoy Premium Support and hence shall be entitled to non-emergency
telephone support from Monday 2AM Pacific - Friday 6PM Pacific and emergency support
24*7.
Full public bug and enhancement tracking facility can be seen at http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/
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9.4
Support Incident Process
(This process is about to change shortly and will comply with the global VMware standards)

U1 – Production System down

U2 - Major Functionality not working on Production System – no workaround
available

U3 - Major Functionality not working – workaround available

U4 - Minor Functionality not working – no workaround available

U5 - Minor Functionality not working – workaround available

U6 - Unable to install

U7 - Cosmetic

U8 - Enhancement request
Initial Response Goals Zimbra Support Team Meets or Exceeds:
Outages (U1)
Major functionality (U2)
Baseline initial response time
(U3 - U9)
Standard and Advantage
Support, 60 Day Trial
60 minutes
(during business hours)
120 minutes
(during business hours)
Within 2 days
Premium Support
60 min
(24/7)
120 min
(24/7)
Within 2 days
We at Zimbra are committed to resolving customer problems quickly and professionally.
Therefore, the Technical Support Team is staffed with highly skilled support engineers. This
allows you to have quick access to someone who has the technical ability to solve any
problem you might have.
Every service request is logged into the system and is accessible to all Support Engineers.
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Technical Support Case
When you contact the Zimbra Technical Support Team by the Web, e-mail, or phone, a
Technical Support Engineer (TSE) will address your request. The TSE will confirm that you
are currently covered under a support agreement and open a new case or add information to
an existing one. A unique ID # is assigned to each support case and we provide that
information to you. The TSE will then perform whatever analysis is required, asking you for
additional information as necessary.
Escalation
If, after a reasonable amount of troubleshooting, a support case is still unresolved, it will be
escalated to Engineering. In most instances, developers will still communicate through a
Technical Support Engineer (who is ultimately responsible for driving the resolution of a
problem and documenting the issue) but there will be occasions when developers may wish
to talk directly to you if it will expedite a solution.
Resolution
Support cases may be resolved by Zimbra’s Technical Support Team recommending a
workaround, providing patches, recommending a future release, or submitting an
enhancement request to our Product Marketing and Management team.
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