OX HE Tutorial 10K

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Tutorial: High Available OX HE Setup for up to 10.000 users

This article describes what you need for a typical OX HE Setup for up to 10.000 Users with minimal efforts.

It contains everything you need to:

  • Understand the design of the OX HE setup including additional services
  • Install the whole system based on the relevant articles
  • Find pointers to the next steps of integration


System Design

SaaS-10k.jpg

The system is designed to provide maximum functionality with a minimum of necessary hardware. All OX services are running on one single machine.

Core Components for OX HE

  • One OX HE server (HW recommendation: 16GB RAM / 4 cores each)
  • MySQL installed directly on this server
  • Optional: NFS Server to store documents and files

Infrastructure Components not delivered by OX

  • An email system providing IMAP and SMTP
  • A control panel for creation and administration of users

Overview Installation Steps

To deploy the described OX setup, the following steps need to be done.


Mandatory Steps

  1. Initialize and configure MySQL database
  2. Install and configure OX service

Steps depending on your environment

  1. Connect Control Panel
  2. Connect Email System

Recommended Optional Next Steps

  1. Automated Frontend Tests
  2. Upsell Plugin
  3. Mobile Autoconfiguration
  4. Branding


Mandatory Installation Steps - Instructions & Recommendations

The following steps need to be done in every case to get OX up and running:

Initialize and configure MySQL database

MySQL will be installed directly on the OX server.

LINK_TO_DOCUMENTATION

Install and configure OX on both servers

OX will be installed on the server.

Optionally: The NFS server will be mounted and registered as filestore.

LINK_TO_DOCUMENTATION

You also should install and configure the OXtender for Business Mobility

LINK_TO_DOCUMENTATION


Installation Steps depending on your environment - Instructions & Recommendations

The following components need to be implemented in your environment.


Connect Control Panel

You need a Control Panel to create and edit users.

OX is designed to integrate into every solution you may already have in place and into existing solutions, like the Parallels Control Panels


Integrate your own Control Panel

If you already have a Control Panel in production, you should integrate OX with it. It is recommended to use the SOAP provisioning Interface for that purpose.

Read more about: Provisioning using SOAP

A good start to test and to understand the necessary commands are the Command Line Tools. They have exactly the same calls like the SOAP API.

Read more about: Open-Xchange CLT


Integrate with Plesk Panel

If you want to use Plesk Panel to manage your users, there is an OXtender available to integrate OX into the Plesk Panel.

Read more about the: Plesk_Oxtender


Authentication

To avoid password synchronization issues, it is recommended to use your existing authentication mechanism within OX. Then you do not need to add user passwords to OX, you simply use plugins to authenticate e.g. against your IMAP server.

Find your authentication Authentication Plugins


Connect Email System

Every email system providing IMAP and SMTP can be used as backend to OX. Best experiences are made with the widespread Linux based IMAP servers Dovecot, Cyrus or Courier.

Other IMAP servers need to be tested thoroughly before going into production.

There are several possibilities to implement the Email system:

  1. You already have an email system available: Nothing needs to be done, it just needs to be configured
  2. You use Parallels Automation (POA): Nothing special needs to be done, everything you need is contained in the APS package
  3. You use Plesk Panel: Nothing special needs to be done, everything you need is contained in the OXtender for Plesk
  4. You want to setup a new Email system: It is recommended to use Dovecot, as this is very stable, fast, feature rich and easy to scale


Dovecot Setup

If you want to setup a new Email system based on Dovecot, you can install Dovecot directly on the OX server.

WOHIN_VERLINKEN_WIR_HIER_AM_BESTEN


Recommended Optional Next Steps

You will find plenty of additional documentation for customization of OX in our knowledge base [1]

When the main setup is completed, we recommend to start with the following articles to enhance your system and to become more attractive for your users.


Automated Frontend Tests

It is a good idea, to verify the functionality of your freshly set up and integrated system. Our QA department does that with tests, running automatically on the web frontend. We release this tests with every release and recommend you to use them to verify your environment with every update.

Read more about Automated_GUI_Tests


Monitoring / Statistics

It is recommended to implement at least a minimal monitoring/Statistics solution to get an overview of the systems health. If you have a support contract with Open-Xchange, it is very helpful, if the support can access the monitoring graphs. There are example scripts for a basic monitoring with [Munin] available.

Read more about installing and configuring Munin scripts for Open-Xchange


Upsell Plugin / Webmail Replacement

If you want to use your OX based Webmail system to upsell premium functions like full groupware functionality or like push to mobile phones, it is strongly recommended to use the in-app sales process.

Read more about Upsell


Mobile Autoconfiguration

If you have the OXtender for Business Mobility installed, it is recommended also to install the autoconfiguration plugin, to allow your users to configure their iPhones and Windows Mobile devices directly from within the OX webfrontend. All you need is to adapt the SMS interface to send autoprovisioning SMS.

Read more about WO_IST_DAS_DOKUMENTIERT


Branding

If you want OX to look more like your own Corporate Identity, including your logo, product name and maybe your colors, this can be easily achieved by changing the logos and stylesheets.

Read more about: Gui_Theming_Description

Read more about: Gui Branding Plugins


Backup

It is recommended to run regular backups for your OX installation. This can be done with every backup solution for Linux.

Read more about Backup your Open-Xchange installation