Zentyal Forum, Linux Small Business Server

News and Announcements => News and Announcements => Topic started by: J. A. Calvo on July 22, 2014, 02:21:44 pm

Title: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on July 22, 2014, 02:21:44 pm
Zentyal Development Team is glad to announce the roadmap for Zentyal Server 4.0! Zentyal 4.0 is a new Community Edition, that will be published in October 2014 and with this release Zentyal's drop-in replacement for Microsoft® Exchange Server gets out of technology preview! Due to this, most of the development effort of the next months will focus on stabilization and improvement of the mail and mail-related directory features. Simultaneously, large effort will be put in establishing the necessary Quality Assurance procedures to guarantee the stability of Zentyal Server. The code freeze is expected on September 15th, 2014.

Besides focusing primarily on the improvement and consolidation of both OpenChange and Samba4 integration with the goal of providing a drop-in replacement for Microsoft® Exchange Server, some additional improvements will also take place. The L2TP module will be restructured and improved, migration from Zentyal Server 3.5 to 4.0 will be made as smooth as possible and the free configuration backup - the most popular feature of the Free Zentyal Account - will be made available directly through the Zentyal Server UI without having to register a Free Zentyal Account. This release will run on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS.

In addition, the Zentyal Development Team has taken the decision to remove a number of modules in order to focus on Zentyal Server’s goal: Offer a drop-in replacement for Windows® Small Business Server and Microsoft® Exchange Server. The dropped modules are: IPS, UPS management (NUT), Backup (Duplicity), Monitor (together with the Zentyal Remote client), RADIUS, Webserver and Webmail (Roundcube), IPsec (replaced by a new module supporting only L2TP). Also the Free Zentyal Account will be discontinued. Documentation will be provided on configuring some of these services with specific software and naturally, community members interested in maintaining any of these modules will be warmly welcome.

The availability of the Zentyal 4.0 Daily Builds for testing will be announced shortly. We strongly encourage everybody interested in a drop-in replacement for Windows Small Business Server and Microsoft® Exchange Server to join the testing effort and submit bug reports and feedback as soon as possible, in order to make this the best Zentyal release ever!

You can check the details at: http://www.zentyal.org/roadmap/zentyal-4-0-roadmap/
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: robb on July 22, 2014, 10:52:26 pm
Seeing most of the current modules being dropped is for a lot of people a major setback. I can understand te logic behind it, but all those features will be missed a lot.

Too bad the community is not capable of maintaining all those modules. I doubt there are enough/any skilled devs in the comunity that can take that job on them.

Maybe we should focus as a community on documentation how to install and configure 3rd party features on a Zentyal server?
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: royceb on July 22, 2014, 11:50:21 pm
I hear the community a ton when you see the list of continued dropped items.  In the end though I think it is better for Zentyal as a platform to be a specialist rather than a jack of all trades.  More attention on a stable, robust and completely native AD/Exchange setup for me is a sale.  If I wanted security or some other functionality I'd use a different distro like ClearOS or Nethserver.

Keep up the good work Zentyal.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: oiaohm on July 23, 2014, 06:22:42 am
Its one thing to be specialist is another to cut own foot off.

RADIUS interesting enough is a feature of SBS server.  To be exact its VPN link ups.   http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/VPN_Single_SignOn_with_Samba_AD VPN Single Sign On kinda requires it.  If RADIUS controls are ending up in the L2TP module everything is fine.  If you are dropping RADIUS off cliff you have problem.

Freeradius provides one web based administration tool as part of the package.  Freeradius Dialup Admin is not the best but its better than nothing.

Some things I do agree with.  Like dropping the zentyal IPS module.   Could you consider pulling a full IPS like Suricata as a sub webpage.   Reality the IPS module in zentyal was never going to keep up with the web interface software designed for it.

Removing the  Webserver functionality worries me for working around some of the limitations.   Will this mean zentyal will leave all web server setting alone or fairly much alone?   So I could set up sub-domains for Suricata and other things to replace the functionality you have just removed.   Like I am not going to miss the IDS module in zentyal if I can cleanly setup Suricata or one of the other program built todo IDS.

I don't want to sound mean.  With IDS I will be happy with zentyal form gone to allow full third parties built for the job in.   The only thing that worries me is how much will zentyal put in my way to prevent using the third party.

royceb problem I have got is this time 1 part that is part of AD/Exchange setup is marked as being cut.  Radius.   Remote logins by VPN Radius is a requirement to be able todo them exactly how Windows does.

Roundcube gone but I guess sogo webmail remains.  This is fine less duplication.

Monitor mostly got in way of using third party IDS systems.

Will NUT the application still be installed and possible with one of its GUI tools like http://knut.prynych.cz/ ?   NUT management removed from web interface is not a disaster.  NUT-Monitor that currently monitors has been merged into the main project with goal to become the "NUT Control Center".   This is another one of my problems. dropping NUT from zentyal web interface if focus is moving to like the "NUT Control Center" or knut.   Lets not reinvent wheels when we don't have to.


Right I can understand the overhead issues.   Now lets see if we can come up with something a little more sane requiring less overhead by allowing other project to pick up the load.   IDS work does not have to be main zentyal interface,  NUT control software again does not have to be main zentyal web interface.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: mpnegro on July 23, 2014, 01:00:49 pm
Hy,
So you are going to droop some of the things that I use in my servers, because you wana to replace the Microsoft product? Strange thing, and I really don't like "imitations"...
Ok, I have 2 months to find a replacement to my paid and non paid servers. Wish you luck!
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: ian on July 23, 2014, 01:03:17 pm
Hello,

What is the alternative for the data backup in the new release ?
Backup the configuration is a must, but also a backup of the data is a must.

So if Zentyal drops duplicity, why the do not implement an other data backup item in the new release 4.0 ?

Best regards,
Ian
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on July 23, 2014, 01:36:02 pm
I think the idea is to keep a small band of experts as trying to support a wide range of technologies with a small crew is just impossible.

I think Robb said it and anyone representing the community should be saying the same.

Code: [Select]
Maybe we should focus as a community on documentation how to install and configure 3rd party features on a Zentyal server?
The only thing that has me head scratching is what do I use for a webserver. I presume apache has gone so we don't have all the reverse proxy complexity (which sucked)

Can we use nginx or whatever sogo is hosted on?

If Zentyal supply a module then really they have to support it. Legally there are probably stipulations.

This doesn't mean duplicity, rysync or any other method isn't there but it will have to be from the community so there is no support stipulations.

I presume if you purchase a subscription then Zentyal will do essentials like backups.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: CNServices on July 23, 2014, 04:48:04 pm
Maybe we should focus as a community on documentation how to install and configure 3rd party features on a Zentyal server?

That may prove important even to small businesses who subscribe. As more modules drop more work (and cost) falls on the business, whether internally or through a third party/additional hardware. The community may be the only cost-effective Zentyal support option for some small businesses versus custom Zentyal support (beyond the scope of the subscription).

That assumes the small business market is important to Zentyal. If Zentyal as a business finds it difficult to keep everything running, it should not be too difficult to imagine the challenges Zentyal is shifting to small businesses.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on July 23, 2014, 05:05:31 pm
CNServices, Robb I think the pair of you have hit the nail on the head.

I think when it comes to support and solutions of something like a small business server, it is one of those it sounds simple until you actually manage it.

I have always worked in the SMB arena and wow its a complex and diverse enterprise that has a lot of need for a community backed small business server.

I really hope Zentyal make a rock solid base and provide premium support subscriptions.

Also I really wish they would broaden there horizon, provide a market place of community solutions.

Packages, software, support, hardware to documentation based very much on current app styles of high volume and low cost.

There is a huge market out there which would be beneficial to many business's.

I am back to my call for contribution licensing, there are so many ways that people can contribute to a project and sadly the reality of open source is so many people not contributing.

Personally I would love to see a contribution license scheme that allows contributors to freely trade whilst making a few bucks off the many who don't contribute.

This allows for a mass and diversity of not only product but industry specific product and Zentyal see the light make a market place and make some money. :)

Its a contribution protection method that values contribution. The only people hit for a few bucks are the leachers and that is only after there free trial ends.

If they don't contribute before the trial termination then it might need a few bucks.

Opensource is a new business model and there are many ways to offer more.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: idr_mito on July 23, 2014, 09:42:36 pm
Hello Developer Team,

Anyone knows if Zentyal will provide an upgrade from 3.2 Professional Edition (12.04 lts) to this 4.0 (14.04 lts)?

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Torsten73 on July 23, 2014, 09:43:41 pm
I have read nothing about "External mail retrieval" which has been dropped with 3.4 . I can´t believe, that a goal focus is to be a own mailserver without using an isp´s relay.
I would like to read a clear statement about it.

I hope 4.0 is really a stable and fully functional base. Without cutting more and more modules. Good luck.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: oiaohm on July 24, 2014, 02:01:14 am
Ok the idea might be hey we keep on cutting back you will have to install third party modules and then have to work on third party modules for zentyal.   I will make this clear now.  With the removal of External Mail retrieval I installed webmin with that I can configure External Mail retrieval.    This is the problem lot of the missing features is not going to bother me as I am dependant on the zentyal interface to perform them.  Zentyal interface stopping doing stuff means I now can use webmin todo more.

So I have a serous question.   Should Zentyal just give up on its own interface and instead choose like webmin and integrate that.

The elephant in the room is so far there is no mention of IPv6 support that Zentyal has been missing.    Webmin has IPv6 and I have ISP's with IPv6.

The hard reality of Open Source projects sometimes you just have to admit you don't have the resources and choose a different solutions that will have other people doing other solutions will work on you with.   Webmin is used by many other parties.

Yes the other reality is that I will be more likely to look at making a module for Webmin than a module for Zentyal.  Why I can take a webmin module everywhere.

Of course there is a third option coping SBS.   SBS has a simplified interface and the full advanced interface of a normal Windows Server.   Now I don't think most people would be that upset if the removed features were all supported by webmin that also came with Zentyal.   Ok a more complex interface to get job done at times but at least you get the job done.

There are other elephants in the room like Ubuntu commitment to change to systemd.  Webmin already has this covered.

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on July 25, 2014, 09:06:28 am
Hello Developer Team,

Anyone knows if Zentyal will provide an upgrade from 3.2 Professional Edition (12.04 lts) to this 4.0 (14.04 lts)?

Absolutely, direct upgrade from 3.2 to 4.0 will be provided for professional editions.

There will be of course also an upgrade path from 3.5 to 4.0 for community editions.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Gary Schiltz on July 27, 2014, 03:19:15 am
I'm ambivalent about the dropped features. None of them are showstoppers for my installation, so I hope this gives the team time to make the product more rock solid. What I would like to ask, though, is how feasible is it for us developers to add features back in our own local installations/forks?

I've seen a lot of references to "moved to contrib". From a repository standpoint, this appears to mean that "modules" are moved from the "main" subdirectory to the "contrib" subdirectory of "zentyal" (which is one of several GitHub repositories owned by the "Capital Z" Zentyal user). Is there any documentation on how to add modules?

I had originally thought that Zentyal would be a modular system where you could fairly easily add or remove modules (ClearOS calls them "apps" - more trendy terminology, but still the same concept as modules, I think). But from looking at the code quite a bit, I'm thinking I was wrong. Could someone enlighten me a bit?
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: shadowfire on July 27, 2014, 05:06:55 am
I understand the need to make sure you have a rocksolid foundation for Zentyal.  I have known of Zentyal from 1.0 and just recently found Zentyal to be ready for deploying to my customers who still have Win2003 SBS running and want to move on.  Now with the Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap, I guess I am confused as to how you guys came to the decision of moving away from the following modules? Can you give some clarity on this??

Removal of the IPS module   (if Zentyal will be a gateway - then removing this is a mistake)
Removal of the UPS module (NUT) (It seems like this should be included)
Removal of the Backup module (Duplicity)  (no SBS would be complete with out  a backup solution)
Removal of the Monitor module (This seems to set Zentyal a part from other SBS, this gives the Admins a way to track down problems and make sure things look ok)
Removal of the RADIUS module (I don't use this much, but I know in Enterprise settings this will upset balance and flow for those in the Enterprise)
Removal of the Webserver and Webmail module (Roundcube)   (I and many others run websites from their SBS so this will be a hit for us - I guess Roundcube is being replaced with OpenChange Webmail so that won't be an issue)
Removal of the IPsec module (I am sure those who like an availibilty to fine tune their SBS routes and nats and such will miss this module)
Removal of the Free Zentyal Account (I don't use this... I think, so I don't know what this affects)

Could their be another way around getting rid of these modules???  The whole reason I jumped on Zentyal is that it is feature rich and it can provide the solutions I need at my choosing for each client, and it can all be setup, configured and changed in the Zentyal dashboad.

If your still gonna do this removal of modules,  could you take on a more Webmin module availibility to Zentyal?  Where you could allow these modules to be add and removed from the Dashboard.  Could you allow a place to allow the modules to be looked at and cared on by your fellow Zentyal members and community members?  I don't see why you would want to axe something that could be helped through other means.

The questions is... is there another way to allow them to remain and still have the benefit from the modules that I have seen, as I am sure others have seen as well?

I am so far happy with Zentyal 3.2 SP2 and Zentyal 3.5.   Making these cuts seem extreme.  And could put people out to find other homes for there SBS setup.  Putting them on ice to me seems drastic and not in your best interest.

What would it take to keep them in the plans, what is holding you back from keeping them in Roadmap 4.0?

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on July 27, 2014, 11:30:37 am
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


   




 
 

   
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: CNServices on July 27, 2014, 05:07:43 pm
I understand the need to make sure you have a rocksolid foundation for Zentyal.

The complication to this is that there are two kinds of rock solid, from a business point of view. One kind we all share an interest in, the technical reliability kind. The other kind is no less real but harder to define, the feature set reliability kind.

Zentyal has become a drastically moving target. Businesses that prefer the Zentyal they adopted or hoped to adopt are going to think differently about that fact than businesses that are excited about the new Zentyal.

But from a business end user point of view, long term feature set instability is going to be a problem for everybody. The businesses that embrace Zentyal 4.0 can’t reliably predict that they will be able to embrace the next commercial version. There is no credible history for that kind of rock solid.

A business can’t maintain a competitive edge or operational stability if the technology providers keep changing the infrastructure. What small business routinely renovates its physical plant every couple of years? Who wants to do that with their technology infrastructure?

When Debian users start experimenting with a Debian LTS project (https://wiki.debian.org/LTS), I think that says something about a growing negative response to open source rates of change. Business growth generally happens better when the infrastructure is both reliable (technical stability) and predictable (feature set stability).

EDITED to improve clarity.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: ff8jake on July 28, 2014, 05:55:44 pm
Are the daily builds not available yet, or have I missed the download option somewhere? I plan to eventually deploy this is as an Exchange alternative for approximately 250 users (with varying Outlook versions from 2003 to 2013, and mobile devices), so I would like to help with the bug testing.

Thanks!
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Torsten73 on July 28, 2014, 09:35:46 pm
@stuart,
mostly i agree with you. But one pint of view more is that we are speaking of a sbs replacement. Furthermore we talked about sbs2003 (thats what i used further) i am not sure in what direction as replacement 4.0 should be.

And we also have an alternative in Univention Corperate Server. Not only in Clear OS. UCS is much more feature rich and extensible. Maybe nearer on a modern Version of Microsofts last SBS as Zentyal will be.
On the other hand, ucs is only free for 5 users. zentyal is totally free.

For me it seems to be, that the development team has been reduced, and the time line is too short for what they want to achive.
So contribute addons is a nice way (like ucs also do) but lets have a look here in the forum. I am not sure, who from us could do this? the activity level in beta testing is really low, i thing for addons it won´t be better.  Lots of new user, and less advanced ones.

I hope one missing thing will comes up, thats the backup of mail store. Could we do this with backula? Backula is also used in UCS.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on July 29, 2014, 07:19:08 am
For me it seems to be, that the development team has been reduced, and the time line is too short for what they want to achive.
So contribute addons is a nice way (like ucs also do) but lets have a look here in the forum. I am not sure, who from us could do this? the activity level in beta testing is really low, i thing for addons it won´t be better.  Lots of new user, and less advanced ones.

I hope one missing thing will comes up, thats the backup of mail store. Could we do this with backula? Backula is also used in UCS.

I am really not sure what is happening with the development team, could swear they lost a key person a long time back around 2.0 era.

It has been a strange ride with Zentyal as I am an ex MS developer, mainly I would use MSSQL and bridge applications. Where ever  possible I used off-the-shelf products to create solutions and where ever possible development is kept to a minimal or preferably none. The more advanced you get the bigger ticking time bomb in terms of legacy code you provide. Some IT providers hold clients to ransom this way as they become indispensable. I pride myself in working for my clients best interests.

I have to say it but when it comes to bacula it is a very good example of why Zentyal enforced method of repackaging opensource and only allowing that method is never going to work from my perspective.

http://blog.bacula.org/ almost 3000 downloads each week also it is repackaged and published on my distro of choice Ubuntu.
https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/bacula.html so it does get documentation that is offsite also.

Now bacula has a console and from the cli you just use bconsole. Or for the GUI desktop people apt-get install bacula-console-qt
Then its just bat as it needs to be run as root (Bacula Admin Tool)

If your not a GUI desktop fan then there is the webmin module.

Bacula  can backup everything but to be honest I haven't got my head round Openchange. Zarafa used to be a mysql dump.

I am glad you mentioned Bacula as its a perfect example to some questions I have.

Why should I repackage this and create a Zentyal module? Firstly soon as I do I will have to maintain that package.
Then personally I have an absolute hate of the Zentyal redis registry. There isn't a chance that I will hide away configuration settings from /etc to an absolutely pointless windows like registry. Also logically why would create a config method purely to write out a config method.
Then there is the Zentyal object model that consistently seems to change
So I could still do this and create Zentyal buttons that would work from /etc and rebrand Bacula as Zentyal as logically that is the only thing I would be doing.

There is a hugely important side of opensource and that is the many heads of opensource that are user communities. There is a value exchange in opensource that is maximised by number of users and choice. If I package Bacula as Zentyal the user community decreases and also I have negated choice.

It already exists and has large user communities via bacula or the webmin module and this plagiarisation and brand loyalty thing is not why I am here.

Would someone create some community documents on how to use bacula as without doubt it has one of the biggest user bases and that is often a very good indication.

There are many backup utilities and they should all be mentioned as each has its merits.

For me personally the packaging system of Zentyal doesn't sit well with me. It causes work and I shouldn't be creating legacy code that only an expert can do.

A simple menu system with a URL https://192.168.3.1:10000/bacula-backup/ From the screenshot you will see yeah its webmin and that module is contributed by linmin which is a huge part of what I see as the important value exchange between opensource.

Opensource in isolation from other opensource is weaker opensource. What you are asking me to do is in my opinion counter intuitive.

 

 
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: robb on July 29, 2014, 10:54:11 am
Even Zentyal uses a non Zentyal UI with the printer sharing module. It is nothing more than a redirect to the CUPS webinterface.

Anyway, in a sense I have to agree that the continuity suffers a lot with the change from a SBS replacement to a Windows AD/Exchange replacement.

Besides the already mentioned SBS solutions like UCS and ClearOS, you should have a look at Karoshi schoolserver (http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=karoshi). A webgui put together through a set of bash scripts connecting all kinds of features you ever would want in an all-in-one box (or split over several servers solution)
For now this is fully focussed on a school situation, but imo it shouldn' t be too hard to make a more SBS like variant of it.... (besides that it has a fully automated client install tool for linux clients... )
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on July 29, 2014, 11:52:29 am
Never seen  http://www.karoshi.org.uk/ looks good.

My main argument is that a simple menu manager and extensible ldap would make things much easier to make Zentyal extensible.

Cups is exactly my point as it takes the normal cups package and puts into a zentyal package just for configuration and a button to a url.

Hasn't even been set up with kerberos authentication which you might of thought it would of.

The module making and packaging of zentyal modules is just to much hassle.

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: yoyomonkey on July 29, 2014, 06:51:33 pm
I guess I am quite worried about the changes in the 4.0 Roadmap.

I have been using Zentyal for a number of my customers (Solicitors, Warehouse, 1 Independant school) and for me it is a simple one stop shop office infrastructure in a box solution.

With the announcement of removing features like RADIUS and webserver  and Webmail roundcube... I am thinking what will be next?
Granted only 2 of my clients uses roundcube and mail but a large  number of the small start ups i work with work are in rented offices with a rented internet service and use cloud based email services like office 365 or GIACOM and a nearly all of them use the webserver and RADIUS.

They have no need or want to host their internal mail server for a small number of accounts and are happy with using cloud. Only one of the solicitors I am working with now is growing into their own premises and now have budget to bring in email internally from the cloud and have their own elastix solution.

I typically offer solutions like pfsense for firewall RADIUS etc, asterix or elastix for comms, freenas etc initally but a number of these small start ups have very limited budgets and resources they always pick zentyal.

With Zentyal I can design build and test all the features a client needs in a fraction of time keeping costs lower. Every client who is a new starter (Under 10 users)  have always picked zentyal first. I can typically get a majority of what they need built out in Zentyal in a less than a day which in turn kept my costs low. Zentyal allows me to offer my services for free to build an infrastructure for a local charity that needed help.

My clients who are not IT savvy just want to do what they do best and have IT empower them not restrict them. They don't want to understand IT they just want everything to work and zentyal made this easy.

My clients typically want:

Backups
Firewall when a DLINK router just does not cut it :)
Domain Logins
VPN (Life saver for a director on holiday)
Website (Internal/External)
File and Print Share
Messaging
"Cheaper phone Calls"
Zentyal helped me do this.

I am currently about to spend over £400 for the ZECA Zentyal courses and exam but this recent announcement has got rethinking this.

Out of all the small and new business I have come across that are looking for solid IT without paying the earth I have not come across any using outlook 2003 or 2007.

Its bizarre this change as I really thought Zentyal have nailed it with 3.2 for any start up that doesn't have the budgets but want to do things right and cost effectively from the beginning and when the company grows  can easily segment these services from the "one box" when the budgets and requirements expand.

I will give 4.0 daily a test and see how it goes . I could be worrying over nothing here.

Zentyal offers so much and I understand supporting it is a massive demand but I wouldn't mind waiting longer for a new release with "all in it" instead of more frequent releases with less. Look at SME server they take years ! :)


Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: batonac on July 29, 2014, 10:36:34 pm
Just another small business sysadmin here who has deployed Zentyal, both professional and community, at several business and schools.

I'd like to chime in to say that this roadmap is severely disappointing to me and has me scrambling for alternatives to Zentyal.  I've been able to understand the removal of modules in the past that were used only by a niche market, such as ltsp or kvm, but these changes are very confusing.

What small business doesn't want a built-in backup system on their servers?  Are you expecting everyone to be using a sophisticated visualized environment where data backup is performed outside of the server instance?  If modules like backup, IPS, and UPS, which are huge perks to Zentyal for my usage, are working fine currently, is the development load really too incredibly high to continue hosting them with their current functionality?

I agree that instead of dropping modules like hotcakes Zentyal should seriously consider making everything so modular that "cumbersome" features could be easily developed and maintained by the community.  This would increase both the commercial and community appeal substantially...
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: idr_mito on July 30, 2014, 10:00:10 pm
If Zentyal want be a substitute of Windows AD, why don't create two "boxes"?

Zentyal Gateway, and Zentyal Active Exchange

Remove all of these "already created" modules, don't sounds good.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: mbertens@xs4all.nl on July 31, 2014, 08:28:28 am
So seeing all posts for Zentyal 3.5 and 4.0, I come to the conclusion to stay with 3.4 and never upgrade. And find a replacement for Zentyal.   Its fine with me that Zentyal wants to be a replacement for MS sh*t i dont care, but dropping all kinds of modules Fetchmail, usercorner, web-server, web-mail, UPS monitor and so on... Is to me not a smart choice.

I'm home user (community version) of Zentyal, I have 2 machines; one as gateway/rev.proxy/mail/vpn server and one as data/web server. And i have no windows machines at any more :-D.

When I found Zentyal I was very happy it was/is (until 3.5) what i wanted and needed, and i've recommended Zentyal to others. And i see a lot the same kind of posts, I think that Zentyal should re-think its strategy before only MS personnel like Zentyal, and the rest of the world only sees Zentyal as a secondary MS product.

So will it be "Hasta la vista" Zentyal, or Zentyal "lives another day"

Regards
Marc
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on July 31, 2014, 12:21:03 pm
Hi all,

As many of you have raised more or less the same concerns, instead of replying separatily I'm going to try to clarify all your doubts in this post.

First of all, about the dropped modules, as the roadmap announcement says: "Documentation will be provided on configuring some of these services with specific software and naturally, community members interested in maintaining any of these modules will be warmly welcome."

This means that we will write some documentation about suggested specific replacements like Bacula for data backup, etc. Of course community will be very welcome to improve and extend these documentation (as some of you already pointed out).

Also, for people interested in keeping maintaining the modules in the contrib section, we've written already some quick documentation about it:

https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/Building_and_maintaining_a_contrib_Zentyal_module

Maybe is not enough but it may be a good starting point and we will be commited to improve it and help anyone with real interest in helping with that.

Please remind that (as some of you were also wondering), Zentyal has been always a modular platform, and even with less officially maintained module, this has not changed at all. Nothing prevents you to build and install existing modules in contrib, or even create your own ones (and of course share them with the rest of the community!).

About suggestions like creating different boxes like "Zentyal Active Exchange" and "Zentyal Gateway", the thing is we don't have infinite resources, and to provide a really good Active Exchange we *need* to focus on that. The work required to maintain modules properly is more than you may think, to give a quick example, is not only about if a module "works" or not (as you have raised the issue that some of the dropped modules just work), you also have to care about them during the upgrades , you need to ensure you don't break them with any change in the core framework, etc. Anyway, if some community members want to fork their own "Zentyal Gateway" distribution with modules like RADIUS, IPS or even new ones, we won't have any problem with that, even we will be willing to help as much as possible.

By the way, about the external mail retrieval (fetchmail), it was removed together with usercorner, but the part that doesn't depend on it is back again in 3.5 now.

Hope this clarifies things a bit. Don't hesitate to ask any other question you may have.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Gopher on July 31, 2014, 05:10:14 pm
OK, I did have a long ranty post ready arguing many of the same points as others already have and how I came to be using Zentyal (I may yet post it). However it seems to me what has happened is Zentyal has made a clear change of direction from an "All-in-One"/"SBS Server" to an AD/Exchange alternative, that is all well and good but what most of us came to Zentyal for was the full package not one new bleeding edge feature that is not as I understand it entirely stable or by any means feature complete. This seems to mean that we should now deploy a separate server alongside Zentyal to deliver the other requisite features or perhaps deploy Zentyal as a virtual instance.
It could be argued that making Zentyal a virtual appliance as standard is actually a very good idea, if it is running critical tasks such as DNS and authentification. Being able to quickly restore a known working up to date image or redeploy it on new hardware after a failure could be a very useful thing. But Zentyal / its community should document a clear, supported procedure and possibly host requirements for creating and maintaining this setup so we don't end up with 1000 threads and questions and 10 different solutions some of which are out of date or never worked in the first place.
I would also suggest the current model of a constantly moving out of support, constantly breaking  moving target "Community" edition and a commercial stable one should be scrapped, there should be ONE current, stable version. A development release should be seperate. Licensing should be for support only, you could even look at support options charged on a pay as you go or event basis. I personally have no particular issue with Zentyal offering chargeable closed-source modules that add "enterprise" features like email archiving that is a legal requirement in some scenarios but not necessarily as easy to implement as it could be.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: jonathan38 on July 31, 2014, 06:04:22 pm
So Zentyal is exiting the Firewall/Gateway/UTM market, and focusing purely on Exchange/AD. I wish you guys luck, but I'm pretty disappointed by this.

I've never understood web server, ftp, etc as part of Zentyal. If you have the capabilities to create websites, you don't need a point-click Zentyal interface, your development team can handle that. L7 never really worked right, so that can go. If you're doing OpenChange webmail, dropping WebMail makes sense.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Zentyal is the only OpenSource point-click fireware/gateway that offers instant IPS/IDS setup. Zentyal is also the only one that provides point-click IPSec setup. Zentyal is also offers point-click web filtering, again the only open-source based product I can find that does this.

PFsense will do Monitor, UPS, and Backup, but they tend to be squirrelly, and forget IDS/IPS, IPSec support is a running joke, and Content filtering is nearly impossible.

We're two weeks away from our migration from pfsense->zentyal, but I think we're going to reverse that decision after this announcement :(
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: ctek on July 31, 2014, 08:56:09 pm
I'll share my opinion on the "new" announcement and maybe will help someone see things different.

I've been using Zentyal for some years only at home. I could not make any commercial project with it, I've come across  Zentyal in search of a small SBS 2003 replacement. After years of MS administration i've seen that ebox was doing more than the windows server could do.
As compared to windows you could have one box and do the tasks of three boxes.

However, not having all the features complete to replace a SBS 2003 the customers rejected the proposal of having to do without some features.
Also the fact that the "stable" release was not so stable was another big issue.

After a time i have seen that Zentyal has changed the way they developed the software more to the MS style.
As another user say'd before. It was all in a box and that was great! Now you see yourself without the things that make it great and just a MS clone.
Then the question arises... Why not go with MS since it is the same ? At least the price for a 2012 server is 500$ for 25 clients ? and i can sure create a small mail server on it with programs for windows ?

You can say that: "Ok but it is free".
Correct, but it is not quite free if you think that for each glitch or error encountered the client will pay you to solve it.

You can also say that you still have Open Change that works great with outlook
Correct but does it work "great"? No and there are issues. And Outlook is not the absolute tool. There are other tools used in Enterprises (Ex: Lotus Notes)

Do not get me wrong. I love that Zentyal (Ebox) exists. But in the current form not in what will become.
The strategy that "we want to do it our way and listen to nobody" will sure be the downfall for Zentyal. Adopting the same policy as Ubuntu because of previous success is not a good thing.
You have to listen to the requirements of the consumers / customers, otherwise they will turn on you.

Create software for the customers not for you. Or you will be the only one to use it.
I love Open source and I've use it as much as I can. I agree that the developers should get something in return for the work and time invested in this.
But let's keep it real if something like MS (the principal target of Zentyal ) comes to the market with prices like 500$ or 800$ you can't have any business.

Again: Listen to the consumers / users / customers. They ask and you should provide.
Getting something like Zentyal for free is a great thing and we appreciate this. The people using the free community version in their commercial project should donate a couple of bucks.

Keep in mind that Microsoft has changed and adapted their strategies to beat the linux distros. They are adapting, and  Zentyal is acting in reverse.
drop more of the modules and you will end up just a MS server but with no future.

Think again what were the things that make Zentyal great, where are you going to, and what the people are telling you now...

Best regards
Bogdan
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Miklos on August 01, 2014, 03:43:10 am
I want to add my 2 cents on this.

First I support the narrowing of Zentyal's scope. There is nothing that is stopping them from doing another distribution down the line if they want to make a GW product etc. - but for now to be successful they need a scope that is reasonable so it's smart to focus on what they are the only ones doing right - the Exchange drop-in solution.

Now it's no secret that for the GW part there are other free solutions that are much better than what Zentyal is/was in that area - pfSense comes to mind. If you can't make 2 machines then make a VMware solution and run pfSense as your GW/IDS/SDI/Whatever solution and run Zentyal for the Exchange - seems like the smart way to go.

The only thing in the Roadmap that confused me was this: Removal of the Free Zentyal Account - What does that mean exactly? No configuration backup for community?
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 01, 2014, 12:20:31 pm

First of all, about the dropped modules, as the roadmap announcement says: "Documentation will be provided on configuring some of these services with specific software and naturally, community members interested in maintaining any of these modules will be warmly welcome."

Also, for people interested in keeping maintaining the modules in the contrib section, we've written already some quick documentation about it:

https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/Building_and_maintaining_a_contrib_Zentyal_module

Maybe is not enough but it may be a good starting point and we will be commited to improve it and help anyone with real interest in helping with that.

Please remind that (as some of you were also wondering), Zentyal has been always a modular platform, and even with less officially maintained module, this has not changed at all. Nothing prevents you to build and install existing modules in contrib, or even create your own ones (and of course share them with the rest of the community!).


Hope this clarifies things a bit. Don't hesitate to ask any other question you may have.

Thought I would kickstart things a bit I am going to have a go at the Zarafa Module because I think Openchange is a great idea but until it has bedded in a bit I think Zarafa the free version is a good basic groupware package.

Going to move to a new post in contribution Zarafa community module & development.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: netwarrior on August 01, 2014, 05:23:24 pm
Hi Everyone!
Straight to the point. I've been a Zentyal user for just some months but I also came to this ship because it was a UTM/Gateway and a fully Linux modular solution. Having said that, as many of you have pointed it was a little disappointment when I saw the 3.5 roadmap and I was hoping that some module were coming back (BWMonitor) but now I with the 4.0 roadmap I see more modules being dropped. I have deployed 3 zentyal servers as UTM/Gateway solution for a government organization in my country 8) and they were very pleased because it cut them lots of cost, but now I'll have to think how to maintain the dropped modules.
I'm new to the forum but I've been reading posts since my first day using Zentyal and I decided to join the conversation because I feel like we can together find a feasible way to maintain some of those modules and maybe add new ones focusing on a UTM/Gateway Zentyal version as someone pointed.
I would like to see some kind of documentation on how to modify the GUI since I couldn't find one yet, I have already made some modifications to fit my needs but it took me sometime to figure them out and I'm sure modifying other module may be harder.

Greetings from Peru!
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 01, 2014, 05:29:56 pm
I am trying and because I am unsure about openchange my first port of call was zarafa but if you are up for the many heads approach you decide on the module and I will give it a go in a shared effort.

https://forum.zentyal.org/index.php/topic,22799.msg87788.html#msg87788

I can give you a few tips that I have found so far.

https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/Building_and_maintaining_a_contrib_Zentyal_module

First of the wiki needs an edit change the line apt-get install zbuildtools to apt-get install zbuildtools build-essential fakeroot

Also deb http://archive.zentyal.org/zentyal 3.5 main extra already exists in apt sources.list

So doesn't need to be added

From there follow the url and actually if you get a file manager it starts becoming apparent

I think it would be very possible to hack an existing module in the contribs

You choose the module

Do the above and have a browse and maybe say

PS I am much better with applications than the network side

Also because of the move between openldap and samba4 I think actually Zarafa might be a bad one to pick the is a huge transition needed with the ldap.

I get the feeling ftp might be a good dev noobs pick
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Gary Schiltz on August 01, 2014, 05:45:28 pm
Thought I would kickstart things a bit I am going to have a go at the Zarafa Module because I think Openchange is a great idea but until it has bedded in a bit I think Zarafa the free version is a good basic groupware package.
Going to move to a new post in contribution Zarafa community module & development.

I'm glad to see someone stepping up to get started on maintaining a dropped module. I have never used Zafara, and I may or may not use it in the future, but I applaud your stepping up to the plate and look forward to hearing how it goes. One of the reasons I got interested in Zentyal is as a way to learn how to do a modern single-page web application. Zentyal is cool in that it uses some very mature (practically ancient by today's standards) technology (Perl) on the backend and modern JavaScript/HTML/CSS on the frontend.

I may just dust off the old Camel Book and see how it goes with the UPS (nut) module. Seems that would be a lot simpler as a starter. If that goes okay, then maybe the virtualization manager would be a next step - it is something I never got a chance to use, as it was moved to contrib before I started with Zentyal.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: CNServices on August 01, 2014, 08:09:33 pm
I'm glad to see someone stepping up to get started on maintaining a dropped module. I have never used Zafara, and I may or may not use it in the future, but I applaud your stepping up to the plate and look forward to hearing how it goes.

While I agree with congratulating initiative, where will this effort take the community? If the goal (and there should be a goal) is to salvage Zentyal as a gateway product, then J. A. Calvo’s suggestion to fork Zentyal makes sense more than retrofitting future versions of Zentyal.

If the goal is to improve Zentyal 4.0, then perhaps that should be clearly identified as the purpose of the community effort.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 01, 2014, 08:19:08 pm
Good point and I missed the fork suggestion. Which really makes me wonder that actually we should fork Zentyal 2.0 but place it on the new ubuntu LTS.

Just wondered what others thought?

PS I know that sounds weird but just an idea that maybe an more linux pure with AD connectors and 3.0 would be better for Zentyal.

I dunno as just as happy with 3.0 but if any-one would like to kick start a thread in contributions it would be great if the community discussed.

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Panzerfather on August 02, 2014, 04:31:31 am
First of all, about the dropped modules, as the roadmap announcement says: "Documentation will be provided on configuring some of these services with specific software and naturally, community members interested in maintaining any of these modules will be warmly welcome."

First of all I am a bit disappointed that Zentyal is cut down this way but I can understand the background behind. For me it's a little bit too widely cut down in some points and I want to say why and the thoughts behind in detail and MAYBE a solution to get the best out of it. Maybe a synapse between free and payed modules for community edition will lead a way out of this scenario (like in ClearOS).

Now to the points I thought of. I have no problem with the removal of:
- IPS module
- RADIUS module
- IPsec module
- Free Zentyal Account
- Webmail module (Roundcube)

For a most secured network upset Firewall + IPS + RADIUS should always be outsourced to another (hardware / virtual) machine. There are enough (free/open source/payed) distributions like IPFire, pfsense, smoothwall that can be used for this propose and has same or better functionality in this areas than Zentyal.
What I don't understand when removing these security modules is the point that the Squid module won't be removed also because running squid on a system without an IPS can be very dangerous. All of the mentioned distros also support setting up a web proxy in an easy way (at least for IPFire). Also the VPN Service could be removed because it can be run on these distros.
The point that the free Zentyal Account is removed points to the thing that this is either not used or that it is too expensive to provide it. If it is the second one, than it could be converted into a payed module.
The Webmail module (Roundcube) won't be a great loss when it will be replaced with Sogo-Webmail.

But I'm a bit concerned about the removal of:
- UPS module (NUT)
- Backup module (Duplicity)
- Monitor module

When people have to splitting up security and their mail + AD system because of the removal of the security modules, you must have in mind that they need to handle at least two machines. So they have more work to stay updated and needed to be informed if something is getting wrong.
Therefor the Monitor module is the right thing and makes a real difference in competition to other AD/Exchange Servers which don't have these functionality even Windows SBS and 2012 Servers don't have such reporting functionality.
The UPS module (NUT) made it so easy to connect and setup an USV. Nowadays it is essential to have such a module to avoid data-loss and get a clean server shutdown before running out of power.
A backup module is also essential for such an environment Zentyal wants to play in. Administrators should have an easy way to backup and/or restore files when they need to and therefor Duplicity is the best solution for now. Bacula is to complicated to be run in a small business environment because of the too powerfull interface and bash. It has no GUI interface at all and so your target audience won't be reached at all.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but which of your supported companies have their own linux administrator? So all this 3 modules are essential for your audience you want to reach and were you have your niche you should focus on.

Now to my SOLUTION I thought of:

Why don't Zentyal integrate a "payed" module solution like ClearOS foundation has one?

As example [because there are a lot more modules like these in ClearOS]:
For the ClearOS community edition there exists a payed Zarafa module with outlook integration which costs about 10 EUR which is supported by an freelancer and not by ClearOS directly.

Maybe that's a way Zentyal could also inspire the community to do more work and get a "little" payment back for their time and work they spent in providing and supporting modules to Zentyal. I know that there is much work to do to integrate such a workflow, but I think this could be the way to get through without cutting down the potential Zentyal has too much.
For my point of view I wouldn't have a problem to spent 5-10 EUR per module/year when I have an UPS module (NUT), Backup module (Duplicity), Monitor module back again. Directly from Zentyal or someone in the community.

These are my thoughts about the future of the Zentyal development.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Gary Schiltz on August 02, 2014, 05:11:59 am
Good point and I missed the fork suggestion. Which really makes me wonder that actually we should fork Zentyal 2.0 but place it on the new ubuntu LTS.

Just wondered what others thought?

PS I know that sounds weird but just an idea that maybe an more linux pure with AD connectors and 3.0 would be better for Zentyal.

I dunno as just as happy with 3.0 but if any-one would like to kick start a thread in contributions it would be great if the community discussed.

I think it would be better in the long run (for the Zentyal ecosystem), to try to keep "resurrected modules" in sync with the Roadmap builds. But, I doubt this would work in practice, with the volunteer developers not being part of the planning and design of the Roadmap version. I can imagine very fundamental changes just showing up in HEAD and having to try to figure out how to deal with them. Maybe the best would be to fork the current release, then work on adding modules from the previous release. Then, when the Roadmap release is out, start updating the modules for that release. If the modules work as advertised, perhaps Zentyal the company would be interested in bringing them back into the following Roadmap version. Is there a list of all modules that have ever existed, along with the versions that they were included in?

Perhaps we need a "Developers" forum.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 02, 2014, 03:57:38 pm
Gary thanks for your input as your right.

The current version I think we know just from install is a rolling road. I wouldn't like to develop anything on it, maintenance could be high.

I guess its the call from the community for a separation of stable and bleeding edge versions.

Which I guess is good as at one time Zentyal are going to have to stop changing the fundamental base of Zentyal if they ever want to be taken seriously.

With 4.0 maybe we have a chance of this as the differences between 3.5 & 4.0 are pretty big and I guess this will mean working an upgrade path is pretty big.

I think maybe Zentyal needs to have a look and a big think if they have finished  making major changes and maybe even more needs to come out of 4.0?

Also if the community does start adding modules are Zentyal going to cherry pick them and place them in the main repository?
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: shadowfire on August 02, 2014, 04:55:10 pm
There are so many good ideas and thought processes here.  It would be ashame if Zentyal  does a Micro$oft  Windows 8 to 8.1 on its users.   Let me explain.  Micro$oft decided to move in to the touch experience head on... running, jumping and pointing the way as if to lead (which I know there has to be direction - but not at the cost of your soldiers and supporters)   Saddly to say this is not the first time that Micro$oft has done this and had to eat crow.

Back to the point and I will dumb it down to two main feature and not a list for time preservation.   Micro$oft went through Alpha and BETA testing  with their audiance they getting appal amounts of feed back from users - for dislikes and likes, keeps and throw aways.   And at first it seemed that MicroSoft was listen with the new Windows 8 request and thoughts from the test community and users.  Then slowly it became apperant that Micro$oft was vearing of course from the feed back they were getting from their community that was testing Window$ 8.  Things like making Metro the new desktop... almost completely stripping the old faithful desktop away. Taking away the Window$ Start button and all its menu items.

For some reason Micro$oft forgot that the users were the ones who were commanding their experience on the desktop and still had first hand knowledge of what happens or doesn't happen on it.   Micro$oft also miss the memo that the users that would using Window$ 8 didn't all have touch screens and they all didn't want to use a new desktop.  Luckly they at least kept the desktop and made it an app on Metro but wouldn't for the life of them make it possible for the user to select their enviroment they wanted - desktop or Metro.

To make matters worse, even with strong feedback from the users and external test contributors Micro$oft stongly bucked and ignored the Start button/menu suggestions and feedback and desided to make the new side start menu.

On October 25, 2012 they release it got not mixed feelings, but a great number of strong feelings against it's assumptions of how the users wants to work on their already established desktop.  Yes - some people went with the flow and accepted the awkward changes made to their desktop, but many more were disappointed at the direction Micro$oft pushed on them.  I doing so Micro$oft had to rethink it decision in its  public beta in June 2013 that it rolled out to manufactures in August 27, 2013.  They also decided to make the upgrade free, because they knew they screwed up and had to gain the confidence back of their audience with the blunder of not listening to their customers and testers communities feedback.

Please Ignacio Correas and Zentyal Developement - You are at a pivitol point right now, and making a decision like the one your about to make can have very lasting effects on your clients, customers, users, and community.  Don't do a Micro$oft on your users.   Don't loose the respect of those who enjoy this product by alienating those people who use your product on a daily basis.  The ones who get you in the door to the companies would would have never know of you, except by the IT person who has trusted in your product and plans on rolling it out to many other client/cuistomers in the future because of its strengths.   You may not see or understand that these modules create a strengths for your server offering to your clients and the community - but I suggest at the very least, you should give your customers and community a chance to help you with the ideas that may make you, from the idea that you have decided that may break you.

If their is one thing that I know about, it is the willness of your followers and fans of your product to want to help you make it better!  To help where they can.   The reason for all these posts is that these are users who enjoy your product and want to keep using it and keep enjoying it.   Even I would like to see how I could help with allowing backup module to move forward - as I feel this is extremely important in setting your self apart from other packages out their that are in your niche.  As you know and I won't list them... there is more then just Micro$oft in the SBS market.  We are willing to work with you, yet at the sametime, we don't want to be shaffed and ignored.   Reading through the forums we know that this has happened in the past.  I believe you have lost enough people in the past.  I would guess being to proud and arrogant is an additude towards those that help you, that you can not afford to make.  Zentyal is not the only one who has gone through these growing pains, but they can make a concious effort to stand with their cutomers/user/community instead of letting them stand alone and having to go at it alone.  So reach out to us and help us help you! 

Let me suggest this.  Why not hold a gathering of Zentyal/user/community on a medium like mumble (voip server) / screen connect meeting, on a specific day, where parties who are interested in letting Zentyal Company Reps/Devs, know why these modules or lack of would be good or bad.  What Zentyal has help them and where it needs help.   You can gain alot of user feedback, but at the same time allow participation from your user/community base to help you find a road to a solution.  I think some great ideas have been stated here on this thread - but I beleive we can build upon them.  Due to time costraints and life, people are not able to always convey everything they want to in a post.  Let do it via conversation, let find a solution to Zentyal module dropping together.  We all love what Zentyal has been and we all want to see Zentyal succeed and be the best it can be. 

I realize Zentyal Company members are busy and have things to do like us all.   I would be glad to help with setting up a day and the availibilty of a mumble or screenconnect meeting with the proper Zentyal Rep/Devs.  (helping Zentyal setup a server if they have never done it - also putting together instructions for those customers/user/community that want to be apart of it)  Let me know what I can do to facilitate this event with Zentyal.

Thanks,

-SF-
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 02, 2014, 05:11:49 pm
Maybe that's a way Zentyal could also inspire the community to do more work and get a "little" payment back for their time and work they spent in providing and supporting modules to Zentyal. I know that there is much work to do to integrate such a workflow, but I think this could be the way to get through without cutting down the potential Zentyal has too much.
For my point of view I wouldn't have a problem to spent 5-10 EUR per module/year when I have an UPS module (NUT), Backup module (Duplicity), Monitor module back again. Directly from Zentyal or someone in the community.

+1 again in fact your karma might considerably grow just for one post.

Its been mentioned so many times that Zentyal is a small team with limited resources. Please allow a marketplace and follow the huge success that free product can garner from third party transactions. Start looking at alternative forms of revenue so you can increase the availability of resources.

There is a huge potential for high volume low cost purchases and the only way to do this cost effectively is that we can all share the same mechanism.
Provide the mechanism, take a percent at least it will pay for itself.

It might take a fiscal carrot to really kickstart community modules, but don't limit the offering to modules, make this a true marketplace of offerings from documentation to services.
The market place is a purchase point with a community feedback network and the community can start to gauge the quality of offerings by community review.

If zentyal had this in place we might even see diversity of function, a specific module say FTP might have several offerings increasing the choice to the community and making Zentyal a more valuable product.

Before I go to far though leave the marketplace open and allow free product to be offered in the same manner.

Also this doesn't mean we are all going to be solely out to increase wealth as we could have community modules that create revenue to fund activity.

There is a faction in opensource that take the free model too literally which is detrimental to opensource. There are ways to help projects grow and this takes resources.
If we lived in a free world then the free model would work. Unfortunately this isn't true but don't hinder innovation in business models even if they are not of the free model.
Allow them to coincide and gather resources and leave things Open.

There are so many things you can do by creating a totally open market place where the activity, delivery, review and licensing are centralised and part of the product.
Unless the activity, delivery, review and licensing are centralised and part of the product then this creates a huge amount of work for the offering and offerer.

I just have this gut feeling that all communities throughout history have a certain level of protection and if they are not self sufficient there is only a singular outcome.
I feel that the Zentyal marketplace should offer a years free access to at least all zentyal community modules.
This is the hello period where you can evaluate but also get to know the community and the community to know you.

Then allow a licensing scheme for active modules of a time period but leave the percentage of free vs subscription modules open to the community.
Even allow your own developers to have side projects or zentyal projects of specific function that are not main stream that create revenue and are self supporting.

Then last of all because from experience of quite a number of opensource projects there is a norm of a huge difference in the size of the active community and the leacher.
The leacher  isn't a bad term its just a community perspective for the large number of users who don't have the time or energy or even inkling to join in community effort.
Contribution licensing can reward community activity that doesn't really fall into the standard offerings of product. It helps promote community activity and also can create revenue for the project.

I could quote a load of clichés from "give a man a fish and he will feed for a day, show him how to fish..." I know the above is different, like what the hell is contribution licensing. Free year subscriptions!!! WTF!!!

Non of this has any effect on Zentyals core support subscription model and actually please believe me it would be really easy to accomplish if we all collaborated.
 
     
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: netwarrior on August 02, 2014, 08:06:08 pm
IMHO  ::) I can say that looking to Zentyal website and the features they present the North they are taking is to push the Communications and Office Servers while dropping modules from System, Infrastructure and Gateway/UTM.

So as Gary pointed lets make a list of all dropped module since lets say version 2.2 and after having a full list make some polls to see what modules are the ones the community wanna see back, maybe only 50% of them will get many votes, and after those results we gotta make one last poll to see how many of us will be committed to maintain those "wishlist" modules, in the end we may have only 25% of the modules from our original list but we'll be sure those are the modules the community voted for and that we will have people involved to maintain them.

Greetings,
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 02, 2014, 08:51:21 pm
Thats fine and its a community.

I have opinion don't know if its humble :)

Been part of the Zentyal community for a long time now and one thing I am sure of is this vast disparity between usage and usage with support subscription.
The difference in downloads user base and support subscriptions its a guess but its massive, infact huge with two Gs.

So this is the scenario from me what I could do is the Zarafa module, In fact I am going to have a go at the Zarafa module. Done quite a bit already.

I could offer this free and provide support services on my module.

Thing is firstly I know it runs as is if correct its got a plethora of people who know Zarafa and actually quite frankly doubt even if I might get a single dime.
There is no marketplace and I am still going to do it, but wow from experience this is the exception.

Even if I did get a support subscription it still doesn't benefit Zentyal.

Really in terms of numbers the only people who are really grinning are those who just leach.

I don't like that and I am quite passionate about value networks and paying my due.

What I am going to do is say... Hey run this for a year free, after that I don't think anyone will begrudge $5 a year for my Zarafa module.
Or go and develope it yourself!

But that is from all people running it and quite probably actually that has a bit of potential for a few beers.
MMMMMmmm beer Stuart happy and he is thinking maybe another module rather than thinking bloody leachers.


Also with that little bit of revenue there is 10% for Zentyal. Being like I am prob there will be a 10% donation to Zarafa.

My 80% just keeps Robbs moderators chores very pertinent.

Also though if I am not being a pessimist and you do want support subscriptions well here is by offering them through a Zentyal market place we might be talking revenue that is of use to Zentyal. Again zentyal the offer the software and the payment gateway where my reviews are good yeah hell please take my 10%

Its a mutual value network.

Also being me for tireless people like robb and a few others I want to say I value your input as you are a contributor. For you its free.
Hopefully they will do the same for me.
This way contribution starts to get value and creates another type of value exchange.

Currently people who are active will get me doing a Zarafa module and if it works everybody will leach it and we are all the poorer.
At one point I will be too busy or lazy and there is the chance it will just lie stale.

Its just reality from my opinion and there are other ways.
 
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: jgould on August 02, 2014, 11:49:05 pm
Rather disappointed. Radius removal makes no sense to me. They are removing features that windows servers provide which is what they are trying to replace/compete with.

I don't get the big interest in an exchange replacement. Most companies especially SMBs that I see are moving away from on premise email anyway. Easier and more reliable using hosted email and the cost actually ends of cheaper (unless you don't value your email data and don't require any redundancy, HA, fail over).

At this point Samba 4, openvpn, and CUPS are the things that Zentyal does that interest me. But honestly at this point setting samba 4 up is easy via cmd line and then handle with RSAT. OpenVPN I've been doing with cmd line for years. And CUPS has its own admin tool but I was hoping the permissions and sharing would be simplified with zentyal, however at this point the module is a mess with various bugs. So probably easier to just install Ubuntu 14.04 and set it all up without the GUI.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: b.deivid on August 03, 2014, 02:58:58 pm
I have been using Zentyal for years now. Every year I was more and more impressed on Zentyal's progress and new features.
Zentyal was always the first thing I would recommend to others.
After bringing Openchange on board, I was excited and could not wait to get it testet.
But, after bringing Openchange on board, unfortunately Zentyal started to change.

And now this, dropping the Gateway functionality, Backup, free account, Radius, Web server.... this is just not acceptable, not for me.
So, my dear Julien Kerihuel, on Your presentation You mentioned  a method called: French Caffe. Accordding to that method, You can now observe, how the community reacts on this provocative road map [let us call it an error] !
For me, I just can say, back to ClearOS as a replacement for SBS.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: CNServices on August 03, 2014, 04:29:35 pm
So, my dear Julien Kerihuel, on Your presentation You mentioned  a method called: French Caffe. Accordding to that method, You can now observe, how the community reacts on this provocative road map [let us call it an error] !
For me, I just can say, back to ClearOS as a replacement for SBS.

I think Zentyal version 4.0 marks a clear, and presumably required change in business strategy. It seems necessary to suppose that the existing business model was not working—that the gateway product was not generating enough revenue to be sustainable.

If true, they have intentionally walked away from that portion of their installed base not wanting an Exchange Server replacement, as a business decision. The overall community response is almost certainly not a total surprise.

The real question is not what will the community say, but do. The lead developer is supporting a fork of the gateway product. If the gateway product was not commercially sustainable, it will be no great shock to see inadequate community support for a fork. Community support of various modules is not a bad idea, but of course that effort falls short of salvaging Zentyal as a gateway product.

So the situation is becoming clearer rapidly, and thankfully. If nothing else, I learned a lot working through Zentyal deployment.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: oiaohm on August 07, 2014, 06:55:53 am
The real question is not what will the community say, but do. The lead developer is supporting a fork of the gateway product. If the gateway product was not commercially sustainable, it will be no great shock to see inadequate community support for a fork. Community support of various modules is not a bad idea, but of course that effort falls short of salvaging Zentyal as a gateway product.

So the situation is becoming clearer rapidly, and thankfully. If nothing else, I learned a lot working through Zentyal deployment.

The real question is why is the Gateway product not commercially sustainable.   The answer is not good.

Lets take the Zentyal IDS.   http://suricata-ids.org/features/all-features/  Completely feature poor compared to competition.   As a Gateway no IPv6 support this is becoming a problem so other solutions end up used as gateway.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: b.deivid on August 07, 2014, 11:51:34 am
I doubt in Zentyal's future as a open source project. All those decisions about dropping modules is leading to one direction - profit.
They are leaving the goal to be an SBS replacement. Dropping functionality like fetching emails from external providers or backup makes no sense.
Why should fetching emails from external providers not be dropped:

1.) it is a feature of MS Exchange server and is very often used , leaving this out means that Zentyal is not able to become a drop in replacement for MS Exchange
2.) big external providers do care about all the emails - antispam antivirus, so they do a god job and there is less for you to do
3.) you can leave emails on providers server so the email is reachable through providers webmail and other software - very often the situation

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 07, 2014, 05:50:12 pm
I don't think profit and opensource are mutually exclusive.

I believe opensource is about being open to all and accepting input from all.

But there manner in which things have gone apart from having code on git is very similar to closed models.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on August 12, 2014, 07:43:05 pm
There have been a lot of new replies since my last one, so I'm going to try to clarify your doubts again.

I see that some of you have already understood the change of direction from "All in One" to Active Exchange, so, first of all, thank you for your understanding :)

There is no way back from this switch from the company point of view, if the goal is focus on a rock solid and complete Active Directory / Exchange replacement, any other effort from the company resources would go on the opposite direction. Anyway we are commited to help as much as possible community members wanting to maintaining them, but we need to see some real action (fork + pull requests in github), so far although we haven't received too much of them, we've always been very open to integrate community contributions (network bonding is an example of feature developed by the community).

As some of you have also pointed out, there is the possibility to have Zentyal as a virtual instance inside of other Gateway machine if you don't want to have two separate servers, but as we've said at all moment, we will also provide documentation on how to deploy the missing services on a Zentyal server (we've started already writing that documentation and there will be completed and published in the following months).

My guess is that, instead of an "all in one" with a lot of half-cooked functionality and bugs, users would prefer a smaller set of functionality that just work and where they can supplement the missing functionality with other more specific and complete solutions. For example RADIUS module is not working right now, some of you say that the removal of it doesn't make any sense, having broken stuff probably doesn't have any sense either, and maintaining it properly is not the main priority right now (this doesn't mean that it can't be resurrected in the future if there is high demand for it), and of course documentation on how to set up RADIUS on a Zentyal server will be provided.

Some of you also tell us: "listen to the users and customers. they ask and you should provide", well, that's exactly what we're doing, if you haven't guessed yet, we can openly tell you: there is a high demand for an stable Active Directory and Exchange replacement between of customers, we wish if we could fulfill also the expectations of all the users (including non-paying ones), but I'm afraid that's not possible, resources are limited.

Regarding the "Zentyal Gateway" fork, I want to clarify: we don't have anything against that (for example if someone wants to make a custom Zentyal installer with all the gateways modules being included and installed by default), but this is not the only option, we have no special interest in the "fork", I mean, if there are people really wanting to maintain the modules moved to contrib, we will be wanting to host the contrib package repo in our servers (and give permissions to upload the packages to the maintainers), and any user would be able to add this repo to its Zentyal server and install those additional modules, no need of a fork at all. Another clarification: when I talk about forking in github I mean of course for doing the pull request later and integrate those changes back in the Zentyal repo, that's the spirit of Open Source I think.

About if Zentyal would move contributed modules to the main section of repository, the answer is that only if they make sense as Active Directory / Exchange replacement or there is no other better specific replacement, if it doesn't meet these requirements they will continue forever as community maintained modules. Please note that Ubuntu also works this way, they have a main section officially supported by Canonical and universe/multiverse repos unsupported and maintained directly by the community.

Regarding the questions about the configuration backup without the "free account", it doesn't mean no configuration backup for community, just the opposite: free configuration backup for everybody without needing to register your server to Zentyal Remote nor provide any other data (only your email address so you can recover your backup in case of need).

For the ones requesting the list of all the contrib modules, you can find it at https://github.com/Zentyal/zentyal/tree/master/contrib But note that not all of them have been removed from main, some of them were always community modules.

Finally, about fetchmail functionality (and user corner removal), we are not getting back the old User Corner module with is generic and complex design, but as we've restored already the fetchmail functionality in the Zentyal administration UI, we plan also to provide a simpler replacement for user password changes and fetchmail configuration as soon as possible.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: kbrault on August 12, 2014, 10:23:52 pm
I for one .... think this may be a good direction. We are not Zentyal users because every time we tried it we found too many little issues that just made us uncomfortable.

As far as I know no one has entered the Active Exchange market with an open source product. This market looks untapped. But there are others in the all-in-one market.

We can find other products to fill the holes. Especially since we run everything on VM's. Our customers do pay maintenance and we usually steer them towards ClearOS with NAS and with Endian or Sophos for a firewall.

But the AD/Exchange replacement has always been the "Holy Grail" that we could not find.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: CNServices on August 12, 2014, 11:10:34 pm
...no need of a fork at all.

I may not understand, but to me this seems true only under ideal conditions, long term:
I think this is unlikely, but even so I do appreciate your willingness to be helpful in any way possible. That says a lot.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: estebanldu on August 12, 2014, 11:30:25 pm
Saludos a la comunidad

Me pueden explicar porque estan quitandole funcionalidad a Zentyal con cada nueva version, creo que deberian aumentarle, ya que desde la version 3.0 que quitaron el modulo de Asterisk a mi forma de ver fue un error, y en esta nueva version que saldrá en octubre quitan el IDS, Webserver, Radius, que va a pasar luego solo quedaran el modulo de DNS y NTP.
Comprendo que Zentyal busca reemplazar a Windows Server, sin embargo el enfoque que yo conocía era de un servidor ALL IN ONE, pero con estas nuevas versiones esta dejando de serlo.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: ptiglobal on August 13, 2014, 01:52:37 am
I understand for many people this is an unpopular path you are undertaking. I, however, can see the value of a straight-up AD/Exchange replacement.

I am curious how you're going to handle calendaring. How will that be integrated such that an Outlook client will see the Zentyal server as a single Exchange system that handles both email and calendaring?
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: fasttech on August 13, 2014, 02:31:22 am
I've always used Zentyal as a mail, web and file server, behind gateways, for really small business and true non-profits, places using mostly home versions of windows.

That said I'm not sure at this point how 4.0 will fit in, if it won't have a public facing web server, I'm still not clear on that, it'll be tough for me to justify investing anymore time in Zentyal but when 4 is released I'll check it out.

So, for my installations, a couple dozen, I'll continue to use v3.3 for new installs, because of the basic server functionality listed above as well as Nut, Monitor, Events, Mail Filter and Roundcube. It's easier than rolling my own and most importantly, security updates from Ubuntu will be good until 2017.

I don't think anyone should be using v3.4 since it's built on 13.10 which will be dead very soon.
I don't think anyone should be using v3.5 since it's a bastard child and though it's built on 14.04, good till 2019, v4.0 will be such a change where could that possibly leave v3.5?
Certainly no one should trust an upgrade to v4, I've had successful upgrades from 3.3 to 3.4 but that's scary and still not trustworthy.

No, I'll continue with 3.3 iso installs until I find a replacement, ClearOS went weird with v6 and I still haven't sussed that out yet.

There's also webmin on 14.04 for basic server.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Escorpiom on August 13, 2014, 03:15:00 am
Some people suggest virtualization as a possible solution to the missing modules.
Been there, done that.
I found it's definitely not workable, having Ubuntu as a base OS for virtualization.
At the point of making changes (updates for example) that require reboots you also take down the gateway.

What worked for me was to physically separate the gateway stuff from the server stuff.
Firewall, proxy, Radius, Snort and Squid on one dedicated box. Gained (at last) a functional ipv6 implementation.
Web server, mail server, Samba, CUPS and Zoneminder on another box.
Hardware has become fairly efficient and small these days.
 
Obviously I'm not happy with the changes in the upcoming Zentyal. Probably it's not even going to work.
Untapped potential? Market niche?
In my opinion, if you offer exactly the same type of product (Exchange drop-in replacement) businesses will stick with MS paid solutions anyway.
If you wan't to win over those people, you'll have to offer a better or more feature rich product.
The argument Zentyal being "free" is moot, businesses gladly pay for a superior product.   
I don't see that happening anytime soon, but please prove me wrong.

Zentyal was a great way to learn, but for me it's a dead end.
Many times on the forum I've launched ideas, reported bugs and problems, waiting for some input from the dev team..
But participation from Zentyal staff is nearly none, and for me that's a real deal breaker.

As far as ClearOS concerned, I agree v6 was a bit weird, and it still seems it's not a finished product.   
That said, I'm not going to fiddle with COS again, neither with Astaro (Sophos) or the like.
For the remaining services I'll just roll my own. If anything it will be a lot more flexible.

Again, these are my personal views.

Cheers.   
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 13, 2014, 10:59:42 am
To be honest I have gone a full round circle.

I think the Zentyal team have there Dev hands tied and at the moment a lot of modules had to be dropped.

I don't think this was a matter of don't want to just can't at the moment.

Personally I have jumped ship as 389 Directory server co-exists nicely with AD shame there isn't a winsync & passync plugin for samba4.

So I am looking at Kolab as I think the web groupware product offers more and is a more standardised product.

Strangely I am probably going back to an M$ AD just for windows clients.

So its 3 servers for me Kolab, IPfire and M$ AD and they all fit quite nicely together.

I made a massive push for samba4 as I saw it as a gateway off M$ and exchange brings a client set that is the opposite to my horizon.

I do feel there is a market and if Zentyal can nail things down to how a Windows market see's software then I can't see why it wouldn't be a success.

Its all about choice and there are many platforms available now which is good and they all have their own slant on things.

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on August 14, 2014, 08:56:43 am
Saludos a la comunidad

Me pueden explicar porque estan quitandole funcionalidad a Zentyal con cada nueva version, creo que deberian aumentarle, ya que desde la version 3.0 que quitaron el modulo de Asterisk a mi forma de ver fue un error, y en esta nueva version que saldrá en octubre quitan el IDS, Webserver, Radius, que va a pasar luego solo quedaran el modulo de DNS y NTP.
Comprendo que Zentyal busca reemplazar a Windows Server, sin embargo el enfoque que yo conocía era de un servidor ALL IN ONE, pero con estas nuevas versiones esta dejando de serlo.

Hi, I've tried to explain everything in these two posts:

https://forum.zentyal.org/index.php/topic,22671.msg87700.html#msg87700
https://forum.zentyal.org/index.php/topic,22671.msg88221.html#msg88221

You can use google translator if you need help with the English, if you still have any doubt after reading that, please ask in the Spanish forum:

https://forum.zentyal.org/index.php/board,6.0.html

Thanks!
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 14, 2014, 09:43:39 pm
Jose I had a go with Zarafa and my logic was to get it up and running on 3.5 and then get the Zentyal module going.

With a lot of major changes also about to take part with the move to 3.5 > 4.0 I just feel its pointless creating a module yet.

I did have a go at just repackaging the zarafa module with zbuildtools but it failed and like I say it doesn't feel like it would be worth while yet.

When 4.0 is released I will have to see how things go but so far the reverse proxy and removal of apache seem large obstacles but until 4.0 I dunno.

Zarafa 3.5 install (https://forum.zentyal.org/index.php/topic,22332.msg88118.html#msg88118)

There is an install for zarafa and it seems to work quite well but apart from tose (https://forum.zentyal.org/index.php?action=profile;u=162107)

Nobody from the community gave any input what so ever not even moderators, bug checkers or any of the more mature Zentyal community members.

I was hoping that if I had a go with Zarafa maybe others might pick other modules.

Lol, that was wishful thinking :)

Maybe when 4.0 is released I will put the effort in with the module.

I have major doubts if this will be worthwhile on the whole, the community seems to be poor with the majority just being leachers.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on August 19, 2014, 08:24:20 am
Jose I had a go with Zarafa and my logic was to get it up and running on 3.5 and then get the Zentyal module going.

With a lot of major changes also about to take part with the move to 3.5 > 4.0 I just feel its pointless creating a module yet.

I did have a go at just repackaging the zarafa module with zbuildtools but it failed and like I say it doesn't feel like it would be worth while yet.

When 4.0 is released I will have to see how things go but so far the reverse proxy and removal of apache seem large obstacles but until 4.0 I dunno.

Well, daily builds of 4.0 will be available very soon, and they will include most of the changes already, so maybe you can start working on that without wait for the final release :)

In any case, thanks for your effort trying to resurrect the module!
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: StuartNaylor on August 19, 2014, 11:06:19 am
I have done enough with the setup on 3.5 https://forum.zentyal.org/index.php/topic,22332.msg88121.html#msg88121

There is enough there community to get Zarafa going all that is missing is the GUI from zentyal.

Gonna wait to 4.0 as haven't a clue what is going to happen about a webserver?

Sogo must be hosted on something but what where and how 4.0 and will give it a good go.

Also I did a roundcube setup and the new roundcube on dovecot actually is quite good also.

Kolab have a calendar module for roundcube and its pretty damn good if anybody is interested in seeing if they can mod it for zentyal.

But again 4.0.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: thorsten on August 22, 2014, 10:50:01 am
OK, I will miss Radius  :(

But...
No Web-Server   ???
No Backup  >:(

This is Nonsens - lets try alternatives.

Sorry and best regards
Thorsten

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: illunis on August 22, 2014, 03:01:33 pm
I can only say that i am very happy i never proposed Zentyal to my company....i would be jobless now....

cya all

 :-X
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: ctek on August 23, 2014, 02:50:26 pm
There is a lesson to be learned here for us the community and for the company / devs.
Some things change in ways that we do not agree...

I think Zentyal V4+ will be a good replacement for a Linux AD/Exchange instead of Microsoft. This is a good thing for those who are looking for this.
For the rest of the community (In my humble opinion) this is not what we had in mind, I for one, was looking for a SBS in a box solution to replace all those MS and Linux boxes.

For now let's wish the Zentyal staff and devs good luck.
The rest of us can still use the previous versions of Zentyal (2.0 - 3.3). Or use a combination of Gateway/Firewall/Server from different provides.

If there is a "demand" we can start a thread of "Alternative setup solutions and configs " to compensate for the dropped modules.
And of course if the Zentyal guys do not mind starting such a thread.

I wish you luck and best regards
Bogdan

PS: if i offended someone please edit/correct my post.





Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on August 25, 2014, 02:02:15 am
If there is a "demand" we can start a thread of "Alternative setup solutions and configs " to compensate for the dropped modules.
And of course if the Zentyal guys do not mind starting such a thread.

It's perfect if community can document about alternatives to previous Zentyal functionality, anyway, as we've stated several times, there will be also documentation provided by the Zentyal team about that ;)
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: -pekr- on August 26, 2014, 02:48:44 pm
If there is a "demand" we can start a thread of "Alternative setup solutions and configs " to compensate for the dropped modules.
And of course if the Zentyal guys do not mind starting such a thread.

It's perfect if community can document about alternatives to previous Zentyal functionality, anyway, as we've stated several times, there will be also documentation provided by the Zentyal team about that ;)

I really don't know, who does business development in terms of your company, but maybe you should gyus better all fire yourself and close the shop, no? :-)

Well, not sure it was funny, but what surely is not funny is the 4.0 roadmap. Many of us here can have rather good understanding of what and why is happening with the product. On the other hand, many of us came here with certain needs. I am surely not alone migrating to Zentyal from ClearOS, and kind of loving the product. It works and it has everything I need.

But! You should ask yourself if the community is big enough to do any modules development. For many of us, the reason to further follow Zentyla, will just vanish. I do remember, how my favourite Rebol language got itself into the point of irrelevance, because at certain point at time, the company and their investors thought, that they will do some products for corporations. They even created nice product, but they lost many crucial members of the community.

As someone already said - if someone really needs Exchange, then he buys Exchange. It will be interesting to watch, how successful you are going to be in the 4.0+ era. Of course I wish you a luck ...
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: ichat on August 26, 2014, 06:50:36 pm
back for a bit because i can,

i think that with opting for the removal of certian aspecs zentyal might (or might not) grow towards a better solution to its goal,
but at the same time it breaks a lot of essential stuff going on...

the problem here lies with that zentyal is really a verry high level management interface, which for most novice sysadmins is a "good thing TM".

but there is and always has been a key issue...  zentyal for example wants to also do  dhcp  and other network stuf. where it shouldn't  dont mess with my  router/firwall/utm gateway servers...  by now we should ALL know that zentyal is decent at best if we look at lan / wan management.  even in small  (less than 10 workstations), setups  a dualcore xeon E4xxx  had issues routing my 100mbit wan connection, and  stuf like youtube online games or torrents would hogg the system down to... well     you really dont want to know...



so instead of droping the webserver (whitch should have been improved  (like i have said  about 200 times), rather than abandoned,  and NUT  which could also use some work (you really do want to use an  Uninteruptible power supply on your office server)

why not instead drop dhcpd  and the firewall module...   


take pfsence for example https://www.pfsense.org/about-pfsense/features.html  has loads and loads and loads more features than zentyal could ever hope to get...   why not just  give a screen at the end of your setup wizzard,   telling people what settings to choose in there network management tool...  rather than doing it yourself poorly...


as for  removing webserver,  8 out of every 10 offices run custom software crap on thair windows servers,   either build in ms accees or vb or what not,  when migrating those offices to linux  requires them to also  change thos badd  build it in exel or access habbits,   what better way is there than to offer  of the shelve  wwwroots  where you can host any php app you can get (or build),  prefeably with some aditional tooling to supply them with  user / group authentication  or restriction etc.   

the default configs of sutch should probably be a default created   /srv/www/dns-name/  folder stucture,  with  a log folder, a httpdocs  root folder  and a  config file to override  apache.conf and php.ini  as well as aproprate  dns atributes for the domain. 

intergrating 3rd party aplications into your  user-managment / office email etc  infra structure is way more importand and a lot less trivial than managing a nework,  withc any  soho-router can already do just fine, if need be

if you want to commit zentyal an office server,  than make it one, that works, and abandon the right modules
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Escorpiom on August 26, 2014, 10:40:48 pm
I absolutely agree with ichat. +1.
If you are going to drop modules, then drop the right ones.
I had hopes to be able to maintain Zentyal as a Office server, running web server, zoneminder and samba.
The network stuff could be migrated to, for example, pfsense.
Zentyal could be a perfect complement to this.

But with the webserver being dumped next, I don't see how it would work for me and the rest of my organization.
I really wish the Zentyal devs would reconsider leaving the webserver in, as it is otherwise an excellent product.

Cheers.
 
 
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Torsten73 on August 26, 2014, 10:45:09 pm
I really don´t know what to do in the future. Till now, zentyal has given me many problems, i am far away of seeing it a fully working due to many problems when setting up and using it for just the basics like DC, Outlook and ActiveSync. And i also miss backups including mails, which is essential for a mail server.

Many things are half way done, its getting more and more a openchange distro than a sbs replacement.

Let me list some of major problems i noticed:
Next thing is that i don´t see the power in this community to maintain own packages for zentyal. Who can do this? The active community seems to be small, and most of them seems to be (like me) only soho admins or users. Have a look in the beta forum, where only a handful people are trying to test beta iso´s. Some of best knowledge users are leaving, this makes me saad and gives me not much hope for the future.

I also agree, that cutting the gateway functions is not the right way. I also thing that integrating a well working other projects is a much better way that giving it back to the community.

For me it seems, that the main aspects are loosing there focus. A sbs replacement must have something better than MS. The product price is not the main thing, but it should be easy to set up, maintain, absolutly secure and stable and devices indipendent. Can we found this in the roadmap ? Not really.
I am also on a turning point. Shall i try zentyal furthermore or better switch to an other solution. I the last moths i spend to many hours in getting foreward  :(
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: c4rdinal on August 27, 2014, 07:52:31 am
Just wanna express my disappointment with the 4.0 Roadmap. I feel the same like most of the active members. I suppose v4.0 simply lack the spirit of a fully functional SBS server.

I hope Zentyal will try to reconsider their plans...
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: ichat on August 28, 2014, 01:27:45 pm
well basically if they dont,


i would consider finding a programmer,  and setting up some kickstarter project to finance the development of an office server pluging for openmediavault,

as it stands they at least have a more robust way of storing and providing your data both via  cifs/smb  and  nfs.  as well as a more flexible way of managing and mounting data stores.

debian based as it is it wouldn't be impossible to add groupware and usermanagement.   paired with for example pfsence it somehow makes more sense these days.


Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: CNServices on August 28, 2014, 03:07:57 pm
Interesting.

I’m willing to fund for a year a website to be used to explore the possibilities. (Before I agree to that I would want to make certain things clear. In general, I’m not willing to provide anyone, including me, with a free [bully] pulpit or soap box about anything, for or against anything. No exceptions. That’s not negotiable.)

I’ll be away until the second week of September. If I see interest when I get back, I’ll move forward.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: timroijers on September 05, 2014, 11:39:29 am
Installed Zentyal 4.0, got it up and running.. Works fine.... BUT!

Can't believe that they actually dropped the backup, webserver and ups module while Jabber still exists... gotta be a joke right?
I really see no reason why I (or anyone else) should upgrade (or rather downgrade) to Zentyal 4.0.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: tigerman on September 07, 2014, 05:48:50 pm
All I want for Christmas is...   Working Openchange (and Active Sync)

I have joined the Zentyal community only recently having been quite happy to 'roll my own' services using standard Linux tools but the one thing I have not been able to provide is Exchange Server with contacts and calendars on mobile devices so, of course, I am VERY HAPPY INDEED with the roadmap.

I feel for the folks used to an all-in-one solution but I'm not so sure it really matters these days.  If you run your servers virtualised then then the customer doesn't care if you have one or 10, they only see one box.  So, run NUT on the hardware, run a separate Apache server, RADIUS server, the more you split these boxes the better, each VM has it's individual purpose.

I even run a separate Ubuntu file server, albeit joined to the domain, so I can reboot Zentyal without killing the shares :-)

Question:  To the folks who lament the removal of some of the modules: "What do your customers do for Contacts and Calendars on their devices?"

I really haven't seen a good replacement for OL and Exchange other than Zentyal yet.

So, I think that Zentyal is the only hope that small IT shops have to be able to compete with Office 365 and give customers the facilities they demand or expect these days.  The ONLY* bit that we really can't do any other way is Openchange so please Ignacio et al just get on and give us that :-)

SimonF

PS - I am looking for help installing Z at customer sites and happy to pay if anyone here is able to assist... Staffordshire (UK)

* OK, not the ONLY way but manually setting up Samba4 and OC and ZPush is VERY scarey.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on September 07, 2014, 07:43:21 pm
Installed Zentyal 4.0, got it up and running.. Works fine.... BUT!

Can't believe that they actually dropped the backup, webserver and ups module while Jabber still exists... gotta be a joke right?
I really see no reason why I (or anyone else) should upgrade (or rather downgrade) to Zentyal 4.0.

No it's not a joke. Jabber is a potentially interesting module for a possible integration with the webmail (like gmail + hangouts), to offer a more complete groupware solution. The other modules you refer do not fit so well in our current focus, they are more for the previous "all in one" approach. We decided that there is no point in trying to do an "all in one" because there are lot of better specific alternatives and because the negative impact in the "Active Exchange" focus.

By the way, we are already documenting how to replace all that functionality not present in 4.0 ;)
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: timroijers on September 08, 2014, 01:10:16 pm
By the way, we are already documenting how to replace all that functionality not present in 4.0 ;)

Now that would be great!
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: fasttech on September 09, 2014, 12:40:35 am
By the way, we are already documenting how to replace all that functionality not present in 4.0 ;)

I really not trying to be an ass but I feel the need to point this out.

This forum is full of posts from folks suffering failures of all the modules working together in versions 3.whatever.
Versions 3.whatever being the semi official ? community version of the all in one.
Most of these posts are unanswered and or have no responses because of poor posting or simply no one able or interested in trying to help.

Now, v4 will be released without all these modules but with 'documentation' for the community to try and make unsupported modules work.

If there were so many problems, many I experienced myself, with the unsupported community version of the all in one, who in the hell would dare waste their time trying to make v4 work with other functionality especially when the next core update would be liable to render the server inop?

Seems like a wasted exercise, I wonder how many people will bang their heads against their desks trying to follow this 'documentation', fruitlessly.

Now I'm waiting to see the finished, polished v4, to see if I can use it, but years of experience with Zentyal guarantees I won't waste a minute trying to get v4 to do anything it isn't already written to do and I'll continually recommend no one else does either.

All I can say is, thank God for vm's and snapshots.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: J. A. Calvo on September 10, 2014, 10:47:17 am
By the way, we are already documenting how to replace all that functionality not present in 4.0 ;)

Now that would be great!

There are some already, but more will appear here:

https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/How-to%27s_and_tutorials#Complementary_functionality_not_covered_by_Zentyal_Server
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: RAB on September 10, 2014, 11:16:22 am
So there is a lot of talk on modules that are being abandoned. Although  I do agree that it is for some modules regretful and for sure inconvenient - I also think it is something that is a fact and the company's good right.

However - the incrementally scrapping of supported modules over the last releases leaves me (and I presume many others) in uncertainty on what I can rely on for the future. It makes me very hesitant and wonder if and how Zentyal fits into my infrastructure (be it commercial or community edition).

It would be extremely helpful if Zentyal could list the modules they are (and will be) committed to supporting such that I can make a founded decision on the future position of Zentyal in my organization.

Thank you!

Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: mateusz.stepien on September 11, 2014, 06:01:20 pm
Are we going to be able put exchange services on SDC instead of PDC since that realease? I would rather not put such a huge service on my Primary Domain Controller.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: Luke on September 24, 2014, 11:50:45 pm
I was one of those who wondered what happened to Zentyal. Modules that disappeared one by one. A little stressed we wondered which way we should go with Zentyal. Before we used Zentyal 2.2 as main server.

We bought a QNAP TS-420U and installed zentyal 3.5 server on a computer and through Active Directory joined QNAP to zentyal server. I think zentyal is very good as replacement for Microsoft Small Business Server.

We have web server and ftp in QNAP and zentyal is working very well as replacement for Microsoft Small Business Server.

So for me i think somehow the Zentyal team is on the right way with 4.0.

Good luck Zentyal team with the release of 4.0. We will go for Zentyal.

Sorry for my little half bad English.  :)

Greetings from Sweden.
Title: Re: Zentyal 4.0 Roadmap Published!
Post by: johnpavvo on July 27, 2017, 01:29:13 pm
Hello Developer Team,

Anyone knows if Zentyal will provide an upgrade from 3.2 Professional Edition (12.04 lts) to this 4.0 (14.04 lts)?

Absolutely, direct upgrade from 3.2 to 4.0 will be provided for professional editions.

There will be of course also an upgrade path from 3.5 to 4.0 for community editions.

hi friends:
i have some problem in 4.0 edition