My Zentyal overall evaluation

[martago]

I have been struggling, first with Zentyal 2.3 which I installed 3 times, now with version 2.2 that I had installed twice.  This product is ambitious as it tries to cover many different services in the web interface and configuration, however I found a product that is not reliable at all.  My first installation of v2.2 after some experimentation did crash to a point that I could not boot the system back again, and the log files contained no explanation for what was happening.  Then I reinstalled the system, but the installation failed twice, because I had deleted all existing partitions in the hard disk, so I had to leave a broken installation to then achieve a full installation (a problem with the partition manager of Zentyal I assume).
I had then several problems with VPN configuration that it worked in the first installation of v2.2, but now I could not access a shared directory in the Zentyal server (with guest access authorization) from a Windows XP workstation, as Windows kept asking my userid and password and nothing was accepted as valid.
Uninstalling the samba and ldap modules and reinstalling them, gave me an error that I could not overcome.  Overall I felt frustrated by the time I have spent, by the poor documentation and short community support.
I already tested ISPConfig, a product with less ambitions than Zentyal but that it worked flawlessly, it runs fast, and with adequate documentation.
I will now proceed to other browser administrated server software like ClearOS and Univentation.

[christian]

Thank you for your feedback. Interesting one.

Obviously, the more components are integrated in Zentyal and the more Zentyal is exposed to potential problems.
However, your feedback doesn't permit to really understand if problems are due to installation, configuration, technical understanding...
What is strange is that plenty of users are using it without any single problem or at least nothing preventing Zentyal to run flawlessly in production environments.

What you have experienced could be useful to improve Zentyal if you could explain a bit more what kind of installation you tried to achieve:
Zentyal ISO with standard or advanced install or Ubuntu server then Zentyal packages?

One can hardly compare Zentyal with either Webmin or ISPconfig and if you want to do this, then compare apple to apple 
AFAIK, there is no VPN service with ISPconfig, neither Samba and one of the reason why you are not happy with Zentyal is because of Samba problem while accessing over VPN 

Again, these products are different, with different target even if there is some overlap.

[martago]

Thank you for your comments.  I have downloaded both versions 2.2 and 2.3 from the Zentyal website, standard 32-bit package installations.  I have been using an internal desktop computer behind a NAT router with a single network interface card.  It is my home network where I test and evaluate software, but this network clones what usually happens in a real office network, with the exception of the single network card.
For me it is secondary if Zentyal offers everything and the rival software offers much less.  Any software must be reliable, well documented, with good support if required, and painless to install and use.  That is not what I found with Zentyal, frustration is the word that best describes my multiple experiments with several installations of Zentyal.  I have not given up earlier because any IT professional has to possess a good dose of stubbornness and patience as you know.  All the installations followed the minimal and default configurations, with the exceptions created by the fact of using a single interface card that forced me to create a more complicate VPN setup.

[Sam Graf]

As a development version not due for final release until September, 2.3 can be considered unreliable. It would not surprise me if there are significant problems with it, especially since it moves Zentyal from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I suspect the changes to the product are very non-trivial.

Zentyal 2.2, on the other hand, is a stable release. As christian noted, 2.2 has not seen widespread problems in production. Hence his probe for more details about the installation process, etc. If you have time to provide more detail, that might prove helpful in identifying resolvable 2.2 shortcomings.

[ichat]

i have just one question,

im view the tone set in the topic start seams a bit rude and the conclusion seams that the topic starter want so go to other software...  my question is:    is he really intending to go to other products, or is this just a threat (for example to get help more quickly).

in either case the lack of details like: examples,  log entries,  recreatable steps to achieve these errors, and obviously the assumption that the topic starter knows all (without proof of it to be true),  makes me very reluctant to even ever start helping this guy forward, and instead forward him to the paid support services. 
as paying customers are allways king,  freeloading  people are most certainly  not..

next time be a bit more polite, thank you   

[Escorpiom]

I can understand the frustration; you're not the only one, believe me.
My server has been officially borked two times now, but to blame only the software is just not fair
There may have been other factors that got you into that situation. 
To say it is unstable is, in my opinion, not correct.

At the moment my server runs Zentyal 2.2. There have been some issues, but as stated nothing shocking.
For the last months Zentyal has been running superb and I'm quite pleased with it.
Before Zentyal I also tried other products - But for me it was actually the other way around.
After looking at Astaro, PFSense, ClearOS and ZeroShell I came to the conclusion that none of the products had what I needed.
Of all server distributions, I only found ClearOS to come real close to what I was looking for.
After that I found Zentyal, and true it did cost me a night or two without sleep, but in the end it was well worth it.
   
Over time I got familiar with Zentyal and at the moment I prefer to share my ups and downs on the forum to help those who are new to Zentyal.
I'm sure we will be able to improve on both community and documentation, but it won't be overnight and it isn't a one man job.

Cheers.

[nontrivial]

I feel the original poster's pain. I started out my Zentyal experience with the (beta) version 2.3, and after fighting it for two days I gave up and tried 2.2. I am much happier for it.

[christian]

Frustration because beta is.... beta is just no fair 
If you want to give a try to beta, you're very welcome as this will help debuging but beta being beta, be sure you will face errors, even perhaps not working or missing components. What is your expectation ? to get advanced stable and reliable features with beta 

Again, 2.2 is pretty stable 

You may explain that 2.3 relies on Ubuntu 12.04, and newer is better and... whatever else you may add to explain why you need 2.3 Unfortunately, this is beta thus not suitable at all for prod, meaning most likely not your unique installation to access internet.