Dedicated MTA's Fading?

Carlwill · 2010-10-08 12:42:07

I remember 6 years ago when I was running dedicated MTA's like Qmail or Sendmail from a Linux server for email but now it seems that there are so many "all-in-one" suite options. VMware has 'Zimbra' and there are quite a few others out there that offer an all-in-one message / collaboration suite for Linux. They basically all appear to mirror what Google has done with Gmail. It's nice to see the option of having a global address book, web mail, email, calendar, and even messaging all in one package but I still love running my own MTA. Do you guys think this will eventually phase out or force programs like Postfix and Exim to do more than just piecing together multiple individual applications like Dovecot, Roundcube, Postfix, Amavisd-new, Clam-AV, etc etc etc?

fukawi2 · 2010-10-09 01:46:28

IMHO, the biggest 'threat' to MTA's is Exchange - both in terms of the integrated functionality (MTA, POP, Calendar etc) and in terms of standards compliance. We run qmail on the devices we sell at work, and we are forever coming across issues where Exchange is breaking RFC's, which causes problems, but our clients (generally) have the attitude of "but it's Exchange.... You fix your end!!" The most common issue we see is where Exchange refuses to recognize a '250-' message (wait) and immediately starts delivering a new message instead of waiting. (For those interested, refer to page 49 of http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0821.txt)

But at the same time, I don't think dedicated MTA's will go away -- there's still plenty of us who believe in the "one tool. one job" mantra, as well as the need for relay and backup MX hosts that only need an MTA.

Last edited by fukawi2 (2010-10-09 01:49:40)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-10-08 12:42:07

Dedicated MTA's Fading?

#2 2010-10-09 01:46:28

Re: Dedicated MTA's Fading?

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