Product information:Release 3.6
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Release date
- First released: 6th Jan 2012
- Last update: 5th March 2012
Whats new
- Connect Xf has exciting new features for end users as well as the admins.
- End users get
- A new Baya (web client) interface
- A connector to Thunderbird which allows users to update their used quota, password and vacation reply without leaving the Thunderbird interface.
- The new admin features include
- Support for RHEL 6 and CentOS 6
- 25+ MIS reports
- Improved DRBD integration
New Baya interface
- With Connect Xf 3.6, users get an all new Baya interface.
- The new interface sports a more modern and cleaner look.
- The older themes have been replaced by 5 themes.
Figure:Themes in 3.6
- The default login page now reflects the theme chosen.
Figure:Login Pages
Plugin for Thunderbird
- Starting with Connect Xf version 3.6+, users can update their properties such as the account password, the value of the quota used on the server and the vacation reply from the Thunderbird client itself. (In earlier versions, users had to login to the web client Baya to update these properties.)
Figure:Thunderbird plugin interface
Resources
Description Resource User Documentation Admin Documentation
MIS Reports
- Connect Xf 3.6 introduces about 25+ new reports.
- These reports are classified into three types:
- Activity reports
- Mail traffic reports
- Server statistics reports
- These reports lead to better server management, making the servers more secure and improve overall server performance, leading to higher ROI.
Figure:Sample report
Resources
Description Resource Admin documentation
Support for RHEL and CentOS 6
- Connect Xf Release 3.6 is now available for RHEL 6 and CentOS 6 plaforms. (Note: The Connect Xf version for RHEL 6 can be installed only on 64 bit platforms.)
- The Connect XF 3.6 release for RHEL 6 brings in better performance and higher security. For details on RHEL 6, please refer to http://www.redhat.com.
- In addition to the upgraded operating system, this release also upgrades key open source components used by Connect XF. The following table shows key components which have been upgraded in this release.
Component Older version New Version Apache 2.0.52 2.2.15.5 SpamAssassin 3.0.6 3.3.1 Clamav 0.95.3 0.97.1 elinks 0.11.2 0.12 iptables 1.2.11 1.4.7 Java-utils 1.5.0_12 1.6.0_17 JDK 1.5.0_12 1.6.0_17 Postfix 2.4.3 2.6.6 Tomcat 5.5.4 6.0.26 jsvc - 1.0.1 filesystem ext3 ext4
Resources
Description Resource OS installation docs (using kickstart). This is the recommended option - RHEL 6 64 bit - refer RHEL_6.0_installation-Kickstart
- CentOS 6 64 bit - refer CentOS_6.0_installation-Kickstart
OS installation docs (interactive). - RHEL 6 64 bit - refer RHEL_6.0_installation
- CentOS 6 64 bit - refer CentOS_6.0_installation
Data migration docs
Improved DRBD configuration
- Connect Xf 3.6 introduces a new version of the DRBD component.
- The earlier versions of Connect Xf integrated DRBD version 0.7. *Connect Xf 3.6 integrates DRBD version 8.0. The new release of DRBD has a lot of improvements over the earlier versions.
- Some of the key benefits are as follows:
- Reduced downtime when adding a DR server for a live server.
- Earlier version would require up to 8 hours of downtime to setup a DR server for a live server having a mailstore partition of 200GB. The downtime is now independent of the partition sizes. The approximate downtime to setup a DR server is now approximately one hour.
- Performance improvements
- The DRBD 8 assures faster synchronization or replication of data from the primary to the secondary server
- Increased reliability
- DRBD 0.7 allowed setting up a DR server whose partition sizes did not match with those on the primary server. However this would lead to data loss when the data filled up the partitions. DRBD 8 does not allow setting up a DR server with different partition sizes, increasing the overall reliability of the solution.
- Support for new Linux kernels
- DRBD 8 supports newer Linux kernels which enables the deployment of Connect Xf 3.6 on newer hardware.
Note:
- DRBD 8 is supported on RHEL 6 only
- DRBD 8 can be installed only on 64 bit architecture
Resources
Description Resource Admin documentation Administration:Disaster_Recovery_-_version_3.6
Improvements
- In addition to the new features, the release also incorporates a lot of smaller improvements leading to better performance and higher security.
Module Description Resource Authentication - The Authentication service which is used by POP, SMTP, HTTP and IMAP protocols has been improved for better performance
- IMAP can now be configured to use the Authentication service
Enterprise setup - LDAP replication management
- The used quota store is not in a database
Security - Added a new SMTP control to check Domain Spoofing
Replication - Added a new script to check the LDAP replication status
Spam Control - The greylist anti-spam engine can now work work with a central database
Baya - Added a configuration to update password and mail filters directly on Master
Pre and Post Upgrade Steps
Pre Upgrade Steps
Step 1: Preparation
[A] Upgrade the server to 3.4 following the steps for upgrading to 3.4
[B] Backup
- Servers: All servers of the enterprise (Master and slaves)
[C] Make a list of services running on the server
- Servers: All servers of the enterprise (Master and slaves)
- Steps:
- Confirm whether greylist engine is running on the server
- Confirm whether webcal is running
- Confirm whether postfix services are running
- Steps:
Step 2: Prepare the Connect Xf 3.4 for upgrade
- Servers: All servers of the enterprise (Master and slaves)
- Steps:
- Follow the instructions given here
Upgrade
- IMPORTANT: DO NOT START MAINTENANCE MODE BEFORE UPGRADE
- Follow the rest of the upgrade steps
Post Upgrade Steps - To be executed immediately after upgrade
[A] Enable quota updation
Servers:
- All servers at a single site where the setup is load balanced and has common storage.
Steps:
- Starting from Connect Xf 3.6, the used quota values are stored in the database. Earlier versions maintained this value in LDAP.
- Refer to the quota topic on how to reconfigure your server such that the used quota and quota alert sent dates are maintained in a database.
- Each mailbox location will write to a separate database.
- Reference: Administration:Quota_and_Quota_Policy#Used_Quota_Store_-_Configuring_the_store_to_hold_used_quota_values
[B] Copy the greylist file
- If the greylist control was on before upgrade, then the greylist file will have to be restored as follows:
cp --reply yes /mithi/mcs/modules/mithi-bl/admin/bl/bin/greylist /var/qmail/bin/greylist chown root:qmail /var/qmail/bin/greylist
[C] Restart webcal and postfix services
- If the webcal service was on prior to upgrade, then it will have to be restarted.
- Similarly if any postfix queues had been configured, then all the postfix queues will have to be restarted after the upgrade.
[D] Configure Baya to upgrade password on Master
Servers:
- All servers (Master & Slave)
Steps:
