Migrating self hosted mail server to Oracle Cloud

[JogerJ]

I'm looking to migrate our Zimbra server to the cloud to save costs and better uptime.

 

Our current setup is a Dell PowerEdge T30 in our office running Zimbra 8. We are based somewhere in Java, Indonesia. We only need around 50 email accounts, up to 100 in the future, each are very low volume (within 3 years we only used up like 30GB worth of storage in total). The problem with being in a third world country, power outages are common (which happens every couple weeks on average) and setting up a UPS that can go hours to keep the server running isn't cost effective at all. It also costs like $200 monthly for a 10Mbps internet connection with dedicated bandwidth + static IP. Switching to a home business plan for basic internet services will increase our bandwidth by a lot while saving us over $100 monthly (however we'll lose static IP). 

 

We're considering options of hosting with AWS (Jakarta) or Oracle Cloud (Singapore). I will try to setup a test server soon with both services some time soon. One concern I had was I encountered too many posts on reddit and elsewhere telling people to avoid Oracle at all costs, but the pricing they're offering is too tempting and honestly very competitive compared to AWS. Compared to free, AWS calculator estimates $80 for EBS and EC2 alone. Azure D2 v3 estimates to $40 monthly. Both Azure and AWS pricing also requires a 3 year commitment. Oracle meanwhile offers 200GB of storage always free and plenty of performance with their ARM A1 Flex instance and then asks $4.25/100GB block storage (we don't even currently need).

 

Before you mention other cloud/VPS hosting services, I've looked up local options and most are unattractive in pricing and does not offer same uptime guarantees as Azure/AWS/Oracle. Also some services such as AWS WorkMail are not available outside US and EU.

 

I still think Oracle only screws you over if you're a large enough company with high enough usagr. Will I be fine using Oracle Cloud? Any thoughts are welcome

[Bombastinator]

That headline cause visions left over from the 90’s of the flying toaster cat wining out over the ocean in search of warmer climes.

 

my personal inclination would be a PaaS “machine” because you keep more control and don’t have to change anything.  Maybe metered till you know how much bandwidth it will cost.  Might not be the cheapest way to go though.  I don’t know much about Asher though I’m afraid.

[jde3]

Well you'll need a static IP. Oracle has a terrible reputation in the industry. (for good reason) - I'd still recommend shopping around.. but, if the price is right from Oracle.. : shrug : Just watch for loopholes and vendor lockin.

[wseaton]

Yeah...what he said. Once in the cloud you can always move....just avoid getting locked in so you have the option of moving. 

 

Cloud hosting is only getting cheaper. Too much capacity and too many competitors. Why MS is luring people in with 750free hours. Of course it also attracts the bad guys, but they need hosting to

[Bombastinator]

On 5/3/2022 at 12:03 PM, jde3 said:

Well you'll need a static IP. Oracle has a terrible reputation in the industry. (for good reason) - I'd still recommend shopping around.. but, if the price is right from Oracle.. : shrug : Just watch for loopholes and vendor lockin.

Wasn’t oracle the original patent troll company?  The company that made Linux a thing by holding BSD up in court for a good long while? If that hadn’t happened BSD would be where Linux is, and Linux would be this weird thing a Finnish kid did once.

[jde3]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Wasn’t oracle the original patent troll company?  The company that made Linux a thing by holding BSD up in court for a good long while? If that hadn’t happened BSD would be where Linux is, and Linux would be this weird thing a Finnish kid did once.

No, that was AT&T Bell Labs. - Yes, Linux was a response to that and.. It's a long story but you can get a first hand account here.

 

Oracle though is prob the most sue happy company on earth. They are also the only company that I know of that "un-open sourced" an Operating system (Solaris),

[Sir Asvald]

Laying this question.. Why not move to O365? Everything is managed by Microsoft, you do not need to manage any servers yourself.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, Sir Asvald said:

Laying this question.. Why not move to O365? Everything is managed by Microsoft, you do not need to manage any servers yourself.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products

I did that with gmail a long time ago.  Wow, do I regret it.

[jde3]

6 hours ago, Sir Asvald said:

Laying this question.. Why not move to O365? Everything is managed by Microsoft, you do not need to manage any servers yourself.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products

Traitor. lol

No, you don't need to use MS because it's "easy". This is how you get Azure AD, and everything else MS makes you get growing your IT budget to stupid levels. Zimbra can do 50 ppl email off a VPS for less than $5 a month.

 

[JogerJ]

On 5/6/2022 at 4:03 PM, Sir Asvald said:

Laying this question.. Why not move to O365? Everything is managed by Microsoft, you do not need to manage any servers yourself.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products

We've looked into all-in-one solutions such as G Suite and O365 and determined that even though they're rich in features, we won't be utilizing even half of them. We're a small business that most emails are in/outgoing and not internal between employees. We'd rather have a basic functioning mail server that supports POP3/IMAP and retrieve our mails in Outlook, but still have webmail as an option and easy to use interface, also cheap which is why we (more like, the previous IT guy who worked on it) decided on Zimbra. What we didn't see coming was Zimbra going partially closed-source but that's a different topic.

For now we'd rather have the transition be as smooth as possible, so we're sticking with Zimbra. I'd much like to avoid having to explain how the email works again to 50 employees and end up assisting them one by one anyways.

 

I've set up an instance on Oracle Cloud for testing right now, but don't have any migration plans yet. Might keep this thread updated on how it goes.