I've been using SME for 3 years now, and I love it's power. I have always kept an eye, however, on its main competitors - ClarkConnect, YES and even Kuadra. But SME has always been the winner.
Recently, however, I've been playing with the Ebox from
http://ebox-platform.com, an opensource project from Warp Networks in Spain:
Developed by Warp Networks in collaboration with DBS Servicios Informáticos, eBox Platform offers a layer of abstraction and management for all the services of network offered on a machine using Linux operating system. Initially accessible by a simple web interface, eBox integrates all the necessary functionalities for the management of corporate networks, and offers a simplified development for the addition of new features or adaptations. The features of eBox framework are:
* Continuous monitorization of services availability and autocorrection of failutes
* Centralized configuration storage system, exporting and importing to XML format
* Automatic backup
* Transactional configuration changes
* Installation and components update management
* Help, alert and error report systems, equipped with intelligence and context control
* Registry of logs incorporated
* Internationalization and multilanguage support (initially in Spanish, English and French)
* Hardware independence: support for wireless connectivity devices, RDSI or ADSL and for Serial storage ATA and SCSI
* Unlimited network interfaces and storage units
The modular system on which it is based guarantees the complete integration of the different services and components, which are distributed using Debian packaging system. Among them there are the following ones:
* Firewall with high level objects
* Email server
* Instant messaging
* Printers
* Shared storage
* Network autoconfiguration and time synchronization
* Proxy-cache with contents control
* Users and groups, with LDAP and Samba support, completely integrated with the rest of services
eBox uses robust and tested Open Source components:
* Linux Kernel 2.6.13
* Debian GNU/Linux Sarge operating system
* Apache 1.3 Web server
* Mason template system
* Object oriented Perl language
Its design incorporates modern techniques of programming like the use of direction to objects, patterns of design, tolerance to failures thanks to the use of exceptions and separation between the presentation and the logic of execution. It also offers debugging facilities, integrating the layout of the execution stack of the Perl 5 interpreter.
eBox is offered with a dual licensing:
* Framework and modules under license GPL for the development of free software
* Framework under commercial license for the closed product development
The evolution of eBox future development is directed to three main axes:
* Framework improvements to accelerate the development of functionalities: IDLs compiler for code autogeneration, error integration and management within the web interface
* New modules and incremental improvements of current ones. Some of new functionalities to develop are: support for Samba 4, wireless access point management, traffic shaping, voice over IP, OpenVPN, logical volumes management, SMS gateway integrated with the system of instantaneous mail...
* API access through XML-RPC or SOAP web services and authentication by SSL certificates, enabling the remote and secure control of equipments or installation groups
So it basically works like a Samba/LDAP PDC with a pretty easy web interface. It handles files and authentication and email pretty much like SME, but using LDAP.
It doesn't do web hosting, so it's not the all in one solution that SME is, but there are solutions like XAMPP that can make LAMP stuff easy.
I hope some of you take a look at this server and decide to make SME 8 based on LDAP - then we can really make authentication for mixed networks - Linux, Mac and Windows - that's trivial to manage.
Take a look - there's even a live cd version to play with.
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