This is just guess work but Zentyal are carving their niche.
I read about the 4.0 Roadmap and initially was quite despondent.
Yeah all these modules are a loss but if this means the developers and staff can concentrate on a Samba4 / Openchange core then its swings and roundabouts.
I have been a long term protagonist of making Zentyal slimmer and at first I thought wow this has gone too far.
I am starting to look at zentyal not being my gateway any more and actually this isn't detrimental.
I am a sysadmin who tries to provide linux solutions but often by client dictate this means windows desktops.
I don't think this is unusual also I am an ex SBS solution provider.
As far as I am aware Zentyal is the only completely functional AD/Exchange replacement and that is pretty important. So when I think about it, it would seem natural to make that their main goal.
Due to windows being part of client dictate I need an AD server that is really interoperable and for me Samba4 is extremely important as an authentication server.
Having all manners of authentication support is hugely important and the central part of how I view Zentyal. Then file sharing and even mail is secondary.
That is Zentyal and they could probably also remove the proxy as far as I am concerned. Get the previous right and extensible is so important its the only importance, as with all honesty there has been stability problems.
It doesn't make sense to follow the all in-one philosophy of SBS as hardware is so cheap whilst the cost of maintaining the complexity of an all-in one is so high.
Also I wish Zentyal would open up and make it more extensible. Opensource in isolation from other Opensource is just weaker Opensource. A huge part of the Open of Opensource to me is that it is Open to choice.
The menu system in Zentyal is static and it shouldn't need a developer to add custom menu items. We should be able to add custom menus in a similar fashion to Joomla or Wordpress where a url or script can be accessed.
It is very possible to offer more without support requirements and the ability to allow custom menu's easily, means Zentyal is a more interoperable and better system.
Soon as that is allowed one of the first things I would add is a webmin menu that also contains a start and stop button.
Webmin is as secure as you make it and also any web based admin console carries huge security considerations.
These are considerations though and just like the Zentyal webadmin console how its accessed and who can access it is extremely important.
When it comes to backups and downtime costs I am probably more likely to have a second Zentyal server that will be periodically using rsync to copy user data.
Currently its a bit clunky as the scripts to change home folders and networks shares needs to be run but its a five minute job.
If anybody has ever done an emergency backup and restore after fixing the server fault you will know this is not a nice time.
It takes too long and with modern hardware costs I can easily justify a second backup server with enough power to get me going.
If you want to do the classic backup way then really the backup and restore module in Zentyal really wasn't much cop.
All I can say is install webmin and bacula and have a look at the bacula module in webmin and I think you need to have a look as the zentyal loss might now seem less.
Irrespective of webmin its still a false claim that zentyal doesn't have a backup utility as it has the whole Ubuntu repository full of different backup utilities.
My preference for what I call offsite backup for disaster scenario's is bacula and the webmin module.
Some might want a GUI version and install on the zenbuntu-desktop of the server. I just happen to be in the headless crowd when it comes to servers.
Also even though its not in the Ubuntu repo
http://www.diffingo.com/oss/fwbackups fwbackups did get really good reviews for being easy.
I keep banging on about webmin, but it is such a good compliment to Zentyal and its not an alternative but provides some things that zentyal misses.
The bacula module is extremely good, we are talking enterprise grade backup services here.
Monitor again Ubuntu repo mon and webmin has a module, same with UPS.
Saying all this is that I believe there is a misconception in the community that dropping these modules means we lose the ability to have those functions.
What I do believe is that Zentyal irrespective of intentions do not give an impression that in the bigger scheme of things its just an Ubuntu server offering.
Yes it has a great web framework and the developers are leaders in Samba4 and Openchange solutions.
The community can supply and support much of what is needed and this should be more because the community has many heads.
Its self defeating for Zentyal to operate in isolation from other opensource and by embracing them it will create a much bigger product.
Personally I am not really seeing Zentyal as a gateway product any more or at least at this moment in time.
Products like Zentyal and ClearOS are quite heavy as file servers and email servers especially in the manner of Zentyal providing full exchange functionality just scream to me singular server.
I am looking at lighter gateway products that link to my Zentyal server and partition functionality and complexity over the network.
Again name dropping but after a long time with Zentyal I am looking to use
http://www.ipfire.org/ with Zentyal. Maybe even
http://www.nethserver.org/Because I see Zentyal being central to authentication I am not keen on them dropping RADIUS as I see that as losing a layer of interoperability.
Again RADIUS is in the Ubuntu repo's so maybe the community can come up with something.
I am presuming the web-server has been dropped so that Zentyal can get rid of the need for a reverse proxy. This is something I am not keen on at all.
I believe the need for a reverse proxy just added to much complexity and it wasn't needed. Is the reverse proxy being dropped and now there is something serving on port 80?
I am stuck and confused though because Zentyal is serving HTTP on the standard ports unless I can base my web applications on Zentyal then I will be forced to use a reverse proxy or non standard ports. For various reasons this is the biggest show stopper for me.
I don't really understand the comments made about IPsec as openVPN can create a secure tunnel so why bother with IPsec?
I am waiting for the first daily builds of 4.0 or maybe further explanation on the whole reverse proxy / web server solution.
The last note is about the user manager and LDAP / AD.
Its about extensibility and I know personally it would be relatively easy to allow custom ldifs in the user manager.
It would be a massive boost to be able to have those fields rather than the samba ldb tools.
Future wise I am hoping that Zentyal will see it can be much more than just an SBS replacement.
https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Clustered_Samba