[lug] Linux email server recommendations

David Anselmi anselmi at anselmi.us
Sat Apr 10 15:23:15 MDT 2004


Nate Duehr wrote:
> On Apr 9, 2004, at 5:03 PM, Michael Belanger wrote:
> 
>> Agreed.. But here are the reasons this wont fly...
>>
>> 1.  We are a grant-based project. We just don't have the resources to 
>> farm out services like this.
> 
> 
> Fair enough.  I still think it might be cheaper than you think to have 
> someone else deal with it completely, long-term.
> 
>> 2.  Due to the sensitivity of the data being stored on the server,
>> we just don't feel comfortable having them on a system on which we
>> cannot guarantee privacy.
> 
> And this leads back to #1.  As a professional sysadmin for many years, I 
> have a hard time taking this statement very seriously.  If there's one 
> thing SMTP can never ever = it's Privacy.

Possibly there's good reason to separate your externally accessible 
server from an internal, more sensitive server.  For a mail gateway and 
DNS (and perhaps even firewall), your Alpha may be up to the job and 
Debian runs well on an Alpha.

Probably separating servers makes the admin job harder.  But security is 
one of those "pay me now or pay me later" things.  Take a look at the 
replies to the "my system was rooted, what should I do?" posts on 
various Linux lists.

Dave




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