Topic: Number of SME installs

[smeusr]

I'm curious about the number of SME installs that people have made either for private use or professionally.  This is a great product and I was wondering if the forum members would share the experience they've had with this product.  

- Where have you deployed it?
- How do you convince adoption/acceptance of a non-microsoft product where most small businesses tend to be microsoft centric?

Thanks.

[dsemuk]

- How do you convince adoption/acceptance of a non-microsoft product where most small businesses tend to be microsoft centric?

Tell the small businesses how much Microsoft CALs and server licenses are going to cost them.

[smeusr]

Tell the small businesses how much Microsoft CALs and server licenses are going to cost them.

I might be looking at this from the wrong angle.  Please correct me.  The MS Small Business Server only costs $500 for five user licenses.  Which is roughly $100 per seat.  Of course the SME server has much more capabilities then what's in the SBS.  Microsoft has great commerical support.  

I'm just trying to see what is the approach to bringing this to the market.  Does anyone have any strategies that have been proven to be successful?

[Janm]

Hej:
I Just implemented sme 7.0
In a small Auto-Company
They have just got hit by Hackers on there
Microsoft server and workstations.
I change everything with SME and reinstalled workstations
took about 3 hours and all work fine now great product
Jan

[raem]

smeusr

>  The MS Small Business Server only costs $500 for five user licenses.  
> Which is roughly $100 per seat.  

Last time I looked you had to buy the server with the required number of user access licences and seperately buy the licences for users to use at workstations in order to access the server. Check your sums. Double dipping by MS I call it.


> Does anyone have any strategies that have been proven to be successful?

Last time I read about it, Linux Apache has more web servers in the world than MS IIS, why ? Stability, reliability & security.

[smeusr]

Hej:
I Just implemented sme 7.0
In a small Auto-Company
They have just got hit by Hackers on there
Microsoft server and workstations.
I change everything with SME and reinstalled workstations
took about 3 hours and all work fine now great product
Jan

Jan,

I'm just curious if this is an existing client or a new client.  I guess the fact that they were hit with the virus made it easy to convince them to try a new platform.

May I ask how you charged them?

Thanks very much for sharing your information.

[Janm]

Hej
I have this client for about 6 years now
they have used windoze all the time.

We swap and they take care of my 2 autos for me  
you know every second year they have to get through
some goverment inspection and they dont take anything for that
very nice arengement for both part and if something happend
anything at all i fix it for them and they do the same for me
 we have 36 degrees celsius here at the moment

Ps:forgot to tell they have this router Efficient se5880 in front and
Smeserver as server-gateway after that so i think they is farely secure now for the time being.
Jan

[raem]

Janm

>...so i think they is farely secure now for the time being.

Not necessarily so.
It depends how the hackers got access to the Windows server.
If your friend ran buggy web apps (or web apps that you don't even realise are buggy), and you have simply reinstalled these on the sme server, then you have the same security risk exposure.
I would try to determine how the hackers got in, review all web apps installed, check if any of them have known security bugs, and also upgrade them all to latest versions, and keep them updated on a regular basis too. Put yourself on annoncement mail lists for those apps.

The only way to stay secure (even with Linux) is to make sure any potential weak spots are regularly updated with security fixes as they become available.

I would also say that if you copied code & data directly from the old hacked server to the new server, you may well have copied some trojans or similar code across as well, and the hackers are just waiting to get in  again. Check all code and data copied from the old server or use only "known good" backups.

[Janm]

Hej Ray
I did nothing of that
I installed the new Sme 7.0 clean ran updates and nothing else
only local no mail or anything speciel so secure as possibul
then i installed windows server 2003 only as working station on the computers and ran all updates after that
i dont like xp at all
and only installed some few prgs they needed and used strong password
i did not install many of the old prog only what was neded fo the company
They got in from some p2p prog sombody inside the company have used
thats forbidden now ofcourse  
By the way thats the same i do here at home also and it works

Jan

[jonroberts]

I think smeuser's costs re: MS are about right.  If we take Small Business Server 2003, a 5 user licence (standard, OEM) is around £240 (GBP) and Premium is around £540 - less than for SBS2000, but still a per-head cost.  This price covers the client access license (with SBS) & so there's no second fee.  So £50 - £100 per seat (depending on SBS version) - it may not sound much, but still a lot more than SME (especially as number of users increases).

We supply both SBS and SME servers to clients.  We push the SME option to try & beat the competition mostly on price (no per-user license fee, installation is much quicker and Linux can match SBS performance on lesser hardware).  We may well be aware of the technical advantages of SME over SBS ourselved, but most of our potential clients only want something to 'do the job' at the best price.

So why do we still supply SBS?  Well, some clients have software that requires it.  e.g. some server based Accounts package than needs Windows (or MSSQL) to run.  Sometimes a two server approach is an option (especially if upgrading from a slow SBS server - the addition of an SME to 'bear the load' & take all but the Windows App off the struggling server so its once again fast enough).

The other factor is Outlook.  All our clients use Windows PCs & all use office (& so Outlook).  If they want folder sharing, there are ways to do this with SME (using our contrib & a commercial connector) but its not standard SME.  So occassionally (in the clients opinion) Exchange is the 'killer app', which again means SBS.

[smeusr]

Thanks Jon for your post.  Great to hear that you're successfully deploying sme servers.

[beakersloco]

I have been using it since it was called Esmith. I learned of this from a teacher in a networking class. The teacher broke us up into groups and gave each group a mission.  As this was about 4 years ago I can only remember what my groups goal was and another group.


Group 1
Had to set up the  internet. A machine running multiple websites.

Group2
Set up a simulated office with one client pc and a firewall to keep it safe from the internet.

Group 3
I cant remember

Group 4

I cant remember


Well my group was group2 and we were to run windows 95 on one pc and something on the 2nd pc to setup a firewall and allow internet access. to groups 1s internet.  The teacher gave us smoothwall esmith and  something else I dont recall to use. Well we ended up using verson 4 something of esmith.  Then fast forward to about 6- 8 months later and I got dsl and  needed something to share my connection between 3 machines that would not need to be maintained as I was going to be away from home for for 2 months coming home for the weekend on friday afternoons and then leaving out again Sunday evening or early Monday morning.

 I remembered that I had gotten a copy of it and I was up and running on a p133 with a 6 gig hd back in I think 2002 . It worked fine for the wife while I was away.  I eventually learned how to set up the webmail and ftp.
previous systems

133 mzh - version 4 something  sometime in 02
266 mzh - version 4 something sometime in late 02 -actually
400 mzh - version  5.5  sometime in early  04 and started learning how to install contrilbs
600 mzh - version 5.6 summer 05
1 gig - just upgraded in January 06  to version 6.01

I have used various versions of it and always seem to stay about 1 version behind current.  I actually upgrade machines and version about every 8- 16 months.  My previous machine was a 600 mzh system with 80 gig hd .. My current machine is a 1 gig  160 gig  hd. I figure sometime between now and feb 07  I will be upgrading again as I want to get rid of my windows file server and put 3 ide drives in the next sme server (2 - 120 gig drive and a 160 gig)

 Which reminds me its almost time for me to start looking towards my next upgrade.

In my opinion this software is perfect for the small bussiness. needs  I do small side work and I would recommend this to anyone.

I have turned 2 or 3 friends onto this and they like it .  One is using his as a file server to share out music  and another is actually using his sme server to host a php website for his family and friends to communicate and see pictured of his baby.

[nate]

....see my sig.

[ltc6netspec]

2 installs of SME 7 email server- 950 & 1400 users
1 install of SME 6.01 email server- 1500 users

The standard config of SME 7 w/qpsmtpd & spamassisin runs very slow.
The standard config of SME 6.01 w/messagewall runs very fast and stops more spam and viruses

Alot of complaints about SME 7

Not a happy camper

I thought with the CENTOS rebuild there would be improved effiency and speed.

[2tunes]

smeusr,

This is my first install but so far things have gone as planned. I was lead to SME Server via a link in another linux forum. Once I started looking into SME Server and once I saw QMail I was convinced this is right for me.  I'm sure over the next few months I'll get my share of forum post asking question and learning the finer point about SME Server. I have been useing a similar Linux OS to host my Internet Radio Station, 440MUSIC.COM and as much as I like it I'm out growing it. I will keep NetMax in the system because it does offer some very useful tools, such as Cert creation.

Newby, fisrt install, and  very, I found SME Server 7.0 based on the Linux OS.

Tom
Owner
440MUSIC.COM IM Radio
Beyond The Reach Of Satellite

PS Reprint of this post is acceptable by my, Tom Cramer