Is it really possible to manage an office with Zentyal?

[webmarketingteam]

Hi,

zentyal looks very great. congratulations to all the developers and supporters.
we're study it and we would like to use it, but we have some little questions.

we would like to build a network like the following one:

router
-> Zentyal Gateway + Zentyal Office with PDC (Master?)
--> File Server 1 with PDC (Slave?) or Zentyal Office 1 with PDC (always as a slave)?
--> File Server 2 (Slave?) or Zentyal Office 2 (always as a slave)?
--> Web Server
--> Backup Server

... and obviously --> Desktops for us All need to mount the file server folders to work on it.

It is possible to have two file servers / Zentyal Office as slave connected to a Zentyal Offce Master?
It means that users and groups need to be configured only in the master server or in the First File Server?
From Zentyal Gateway we can "direct" certain traffic and or IP Public Addresses to a specific server (in this case the Web Server)?
How to manage the Backup Server (external from the File / Zentyal Office Servers?

Reading the forum, some how-to and the documentation, all seems easy and possible, do I'm right? do I have to install multiple Zentyal as slaves, except for the first one, to manage all of it?

Thanks!

Niccolò

[christian]

Do not take my hereafter comment the wrong way. Zentyal is a really nice and interesting solution.

However, if I had to achieve what you describe, I would not go for "100%" Zentyal implementation.

Zentyal as "internet gateway" is 100% OK (at least running 2.2 until 3.0 stabilize (it should be quite close now  )
master/slave implementation is more questionable at least from my own standpoint 

master/slave in 2.2 works but has some drawbacks.
I can't comment 3.0 master/slave design but given what Samba team wrote, and because of the extra complexity due to Zentyal slave in one hand and requirement to handle Microsoft DC on the other hand, I'm not sure current design is the final target. Is it worth to implement this now ?

Back to your initial question, I would rather deploy Zentyal gateway with account management. This will bring Zentyal LDAP server. Then you can still deploy standalone Samba servers (I mean here non-Zentyal Samba server) that can be configured to rely on Zentyal LDAP server as authentication backend.

There is however one drawback with such design: you can't have different quota for one given account on different Samba servers. If this is a must, then give a try to Zentyal master/slave...

[half_life]

I would mostly go with Christian on this. If and only IF you are just now establishing centralized control,  you could go with the 3.0 release and use Freenas for the file server.  It understands both ldap and AD very well. 

There are benefits in using separate servers for functions.  Zentyal works nicely on the gateway and mail end. Freenas works nicely in the file server end.

I use larger servers and run a virtualization environment at work. Everything is on a virtual machine including Zentyal.  Backups are handled at the hypervisor level.

So the real question is:
Is this a fresh install or are you trying to implement around an existing server environment?

[christian]

OpenMediaVault is another option for file sharing. This is the one I use, relying on Zentyal LDAP for accounts & groups.

[benronlund]

I have to agree with half_life on virtualisation. It is without a doubt one of the most under utilized tools to small offices. They make doing backups so simple but more than that so encompassing. You can also keep all the HDDs for your servers on a file server and then whenever a machine dies just boot up another barebones server and tell it to boot from that image. Talk about redundancy huh!

[Sam Graf]

I agree with the emphasis on virtualization (of both servers and desktops), but in a small or smaller medium business, it's probably not a completely useless strategy to have a mix, especially in the case of a buisness with satellite locations. Why automatically virtualize Zentyal running primarily as a gateway server in a satellite office, for example?

Just sayin' 

[christian]

I agree Sam. Why would you virtualize Zentyal running as internet gateway.
I don't think virtualization is under utilized. Well, in the real life, you're perhaps right benronlund, when it comes to look at implementation in SMBs.
However, I'm always very surprised to notice how this "virtualization" concept is promoted everywhere for everything:
- would you need fast deployment, go virtual
- would you need backup, go virtual
- do you need high availability ? virtualization is the right answer
- if you need to segregate environments, virtualization is also the right answer
- virtuaization is obviously the perfect answer for testing and sandbox too.

For sure virtualization permits all of the above and anything else you may dream about but there is nothing magic: it adds one extra level of complexity plus some specific problems.
Not to discuss about the additional OS you still have to manage.

- Without SAN, it will bring quite little in term of high availability.
- it does indeed help designing efficient backup plan but this is only one (small) part of the answer.

So, to make this post short: virtualization, from my standpoint, is a very nice part of the solution to many different problems but never THE solution by itself, except maybe when it comes to deploy test-beds... that's why I'm "fighting" (kindly  ) against the approach that is to present virtualization as the ideal answer.