Kerio Mail Server 6.7 West Warwick RI

by John C. Welch , Macworld.com

Often, reviewing server software can be frustrating, especially for new releases. You rarely have the kind of time needed to do proper testing, to see how it works in the real world. For Kerio Mail Server, that doesn’t hold true this time. I’ve been running Kerio Mail Server for over six months in a real world scenario: it’s my company’s groupware server.

While the product is called a “Mail Server” the truth is, it does far more than just serve e-mail. Kerio Mail Server (KMS) 6.7.2 is an e-mail, calendaring, contact, and to-do server that runs on three versions of the Mac OS, three Linux distros, six versions of Windows, as a VMWare virtual appliance, or a Parallels virtual appliance. KMS is nothing if not flexible.

For Mac OS X, you can install it on either Mac OS X client or Mac OS X Server. I currently have it installed on a quad-core Mac Pro with 5GB of RAM, running Mac OS X 10.5.8 client. KMS as installed is talking to Apple’s Open Directory for user authentication, and serving around 200 users via IMAP/SMTP for Apple Mail and Thunderbird, HTTP-DAV for Entourage, CalDAV for iCal and some braver Thunderbird users, (via plug-in), and Exchange ActiveSync for iPhone and Windows Mobile users.

Setup

Installation is straightforward; download the server installer, and run it. This installs KMS and the KMS administration console on the mail server. There’s a short, well-done wizard to help with your basic settings. You can download the administrator console separately so that you don’t have to log into the mail server directly to manage KMS. While there is a Web Admin UI, you’ll want to use the administration console application to fully manage KMS.

One thing I greatly appreciate about KMS over other e-mail servers is that the administration tools are both powerful and easy to use. Dealing with them is so much better than either the “We have all the power, but prove you’re worthy” design of some servers or the “Yes, we have a GUI, but really, most of the lower-level stuff is going to require you to work around the GUI tools” of others. (Apple, I look at you fixedly here.) The KMS GUI gives you all the tools you need to run your server in a well thought-out, easy to use application. It’s not perfect; some of the options, like adding port 587 to SMTP services is a little counterintuitive, but in my case, that was more because we wanted it to be more complicated than it was.

Getting KMS to talk to our Open Directory service was fairly simple. KMS has a set of Open Directory extensions that you install on your Open Directory Master and any Replicas, and you tell KMS about that directory and tell it to use Kerberos to communicate with the directory server for authenticating users. The advantage here is that you don’t have to maintain user passwords in KMS. The disadvantage here is that if something happens to your directory server, your e-mail doesn’t work either. This also highlights a longstanding ...

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