Maniak
Verified User
Hello,
We are a long-term partner of DirectAdmin and manage about 100 DirectAdmin servers for various customers to date and about 12 of them are internal servers.
Over the time, we have come to a certain level of operational excellence and have scripted and customized these servers, so we can manage most aspects smoothly. Out of all customers, there is however one concern that keeps coming back to the table and it's email messages. We probably have 80 to 90% of the requests related to emails in one way or another, because email remains a complex matter regardless of the system used and the sack/protect game with spammers, harvesters and script kiddies is always ongoing.
The issues we notice are:
1. Incoming spam (about 95% of the email we receive)
2. Outbound spam (most likely hacked CMS and weak passwords sending thousands of messages)
3. Ports 25 being blocked by ISPs
4. Quota of mailbox reached
5. Problematic deliverability due to bad IP reputation (usually because of the above)
6. Forwarders sending messages which contains spams and which was not properly filtered at incoming time
7. Various problems
Basically, we have dealt with most of these problems with various workaround, including:
1. Use advanced spam filter
2. Use advanced spam filter (outbound)
3. Document and help customers switch to 587
4. Resize mailboxes upon complains
5. Configure temporary smarthost with floating IPs and use point 2 of above
6. Use point 1 above
7. Sale our support
So, for most of the above we have designed and successfully found solutions to workaround, however, maintaining email servers is complex and time consuming and hence we would like to request, just like it's possible with MySQL (http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=140) to setup "remote email server" only and connect DirectAdmin together with this "remote email server" only. This way, we could centralize email and it would help operate the following:
- Filter inbound messages more easily
- Backup all messages more easily
- Filter outbound messages more easily
- Sign outbound messages more easily
- Maintain one consolidated DNS with a single SPF, MX and RDNS
- Manage only one main Dovecot/Exim/Roundcube instance
- Keep a "local" Exim on each DA server for PHP, CGI scripts and system alerts
- Allow only certain IP to send inbound message if not authentificated hence forcing inbound filters check for non authentificated users
- Use and focus our energy for more important tasks
- Enventually but not necessarily leverage this to develop a standard API to switch/drop-in a different mail server as the idea of a single server could be use to also replace Exim by any other mail system which can do the same, because Exim with Roundcube or Outlook remains a feature-weak replacement for enterprise messaging which would be a big plus for DirectAdmin customers and Hosters in general
We hope other people out there agree with us and will support this request.
Gregory
We are a long-term partner of DirectAdmin and manage about 100 DirectAdmin servers for various customers to date and about 12 of them are internal servers.
Over the time, we have come to a certain level of operational excellence and have scripted and customized these servers, so we can manage most aspects smoothly. Out of all customers, there is however one concern that keeps coming back to the table and it's email messages. We probably have 80 to 90% of the requests related to emails in one way or another, because email remains a complex matter regardless of the system used and the sack/protect game with spammers, harvesters and script kiddies is always ongoing.
The issues we notice are:
1. Incoming spam (about 95% of the email we receive)
2. Outbound spam (most likely hacked CMS and weak passwords sending thousands of messages)
3. Ports 25 being blocked by ISPs
4. Quota of mailbox reached
5. Problematic deliverability due to bad IP reputation (usually because of the above)
6. Forwarders sending messages which contains spams and which was not properly filtered at incoming time
7. Various problems
Basically, we have dealt with most of these problems with various workaround, including:
1. Use advanced spam filter
2. Use advanced spam filter (outbound)
3. Document and help customers switch to 587
4. Resize mailboxes upon complains
5. Configure temporary smarthost with floating IPs and use point 2 of above
6. Use point 1 above
7. Sale our support
So, for most of the above we have designed and successfully found solutions to workaround, however, maintaining email servers is complex and time consuming and hence we would like to request, just like it's possible with MySQL (http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=140) to setup "remote email server" only and connect DirectAdmin together with this "remote email server" only. This way, we could centralize email and it would help operate the following:
- Filter inbound messages more easily
- Backup all messages more easily
- Filter outbound messages more easily
- Sign outbound messages more easily
- Maintain one consolidated DNS with a single SPF, MX and RDNS
- Manage only one main Dovecot/Exim/Roundcube instance
- Keep a "local" Exim on each DA server for PHP, CGI scripts and system alerts
- Allow only certain IP to send inbound message if not authentificated hence forcing inbound filters check for non authentificated users
- Use and focus our energy for more important tasks
- Enventually but not necessarily leverage this to develop a standard API to switch/drop-in a different mail server as the idea of a single server could be use to also replace Exim by any other mail system which can do the same, because Exim with Roundcube or Outlook remains a feature-weak replacement for enterprise messaging which would be a big plus for DirectAdmin customers and Hosters in general
We hope other people out there agree with us and will support this request.
Gregory
Last edited:
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