Topic: Advice upgrading SME 5.x to 7

[PacketDrop]

Hi,

I'm a long time Unix admin who has just become aware of the SME
server package. I've been asked to assist a small company that
is running an old version of the SME. They have a simple setup
with SME acting as the firewall / smtp gateway and file sharing
device. Their current admin recommend they junk it all and move to
a Microsoft ISA / SQL server config. I was called in as a second
opinion since sticker shock freaked the management.

I've recommended they upgrade their aging gateway hardware to
support more VPN / remote users and at the same time migrate
file shares to a toaster device (SNAP, NAS, whatever). Their concern
is they want to be cheap yet not spend on e-Smith support and
other packages.

They have purchased the following add-ons for the old server from
the original vendor.

ASSP - antispam, Twiggi, Travan Tapeware (needed for file share
backups), Hylafax (not used)

I would like them to pay the original vender to upgrade to a new SME
box, migrate file shares to a simple network store, and replace
the packages they use. I believe all software they need is free and
they can just hire the original vendor to do the upgrade. He keeps
his job and still makes money..but they don't blow a lot of MS ISA
& SQL. They need antispam in the smtp gateway and I think qmail with
SpamAssasin will work. They need webmail and vpn and it
looks like this is builtin. Since they will have more remote users
I've recommended they opt for desktop antiviral. There moat has been
pushed out to three other countries and they need to have all this
secure once people VPN into the network. SME allows backups for the
gateway config to a SMB file share. My real question is all this
builtin into 7.x or available as an add-on at no additional costs.

Thanks for the advice, Packet Dropped

[MSmith]

How about this approach:  keep their existing 5.6 server and use it for the NAS; perhaps replace the existing hard drive(s) with newer ones, replace fans, etc. and install 6.0.1-01, which can be fairly easily set up not to require passwords on the shares, and can be fairly painlessly upgraded to MySQL 4.x if desired.

Then get a beefier machine running 7.0 to act as the gateway/firewall/VPN/email server.  Any Athlon with 512 megs or a gig of RAM should do quite nicely in that role!  I have found ClamAV and SpamAssassin to be highly effective, with ClamAV 100% so far in my experience (three email servers, two sanitizing email before passing to Exchange Server).  As for Twiggi, there have been a couple of groupware contribs posted recently that you might look at, or you could keep the old Twiggi on the rebuilt 6.0.1-01 server.