Factotum: Documentation Handyman

Just published: a white paper on designing tiered storage with Messaging Server, with the eye on cutting storage costs. Abstract:

Service providers face unrelenting pressure to increase storage for user mailboxes. This paper explains how using production products, such as Sun Communications Suite software, the Solaris ZFS file system, and a Sun Storage array, can cut storage costs by half, while performance (measured by messages per second) can be increased by more than 50 percent in environments with millions of users. Extensive load testing has shown that this single-rack solution provides a cost-effective message store for two million users. It is easily replicated and highly modular.

Wow, I'm really blown away by this Brazilian blues musician, Igor Prado. Here he is working out on some West Coast style swing tune:

More info on his MySpace site.

Have a look at the top twenty most frequently accessed pages on the Communications Suite wiki(s) for June. I see a noticeable uptick in access to Communications Suite 6 Update 2 information.

It's amazing to me how many people I come across, both internal and external to Sun, who, when the conversation inevitably turns to "what do you do," return a blank stare when I state that I work on Sun Java Communications Suite. (I mean, we only have like 150 million mailboxes deployed world wide, and we do eat our own dog food, people.)

To reduce the blank-stare effect, I usually start explaining automatically, like a marketing pamphlet, "Sun Java Communications Suite is a secure, scalable communications and collaboration solution with a lower total-cost-of-ownership than the competition." Blink go their eyes, so I try again. "Sun Java Communications Suite provides the solutions necessary to meet both enterprise and service provider communications and collaboration needs." More blinking. And so, before I lose them completely, I reduce the verbiage to, "you know, email, calendar, and instant messaging."

But that's really not it either.

So I decided to come up with some off-the-cuff, but potentially more accurate and relevant descriptions for Communications Suite. Here goes:

• Are you an end user? Whether you are at work or at home, CommSuite is your daily life-line to your most important information, like your email and appointments, that you need to have always at your fingertips. It works so well that you really never even know it's there.
• When you hit send in your email client, CommSuite takes over, routing your messsage to its destination. When you push the submit button on your newly created calendar appointment, CommSuite takes over, scheduling your calendar. And behind those simple actions, CommSuite is the engine that makes it all possible.
• CommSuite does standards.
• End users, want to pick how you access your information (the screen of your life, as some are fond of saying)? Choose from many standards-based desktop clients, use a web browser, or go mobile.
• More for end users (and by extension, those who meet their needs): Our new Web 2.0 client, Sun Convergence, looks like what you'd expect from some of those other popular free clients, and more, having been designed from the ground up with flexibility and customization in mind.
• Are you an administrator? If you need to administer and maintain uptime- and performance-sensitive applications (who doesn't?), you'll love CommSuite because it is built to scale as you need and provides a number of ways to build HA solutions. And you don't need hundreds of servers like you do for that other product. In fact, you can provision a single CommSuite server with many thousands of users.
• Are you a money pincher (okay, thrifty person)? I guess I should talk about overall lower TCO at this point, but that's too boring, right? I mean, in this economic environment, who cares about saving money? Still, if interested, see this report from the Radicati gruop.
• Since by some reports, SPAM accounts for a huge percentage of email traffic, I would think if you're an email administrator, you'd care somewhat. Good news for you. Comms provides many tools to deal with all kinds of email abuse, including Spam, phishing, viruses, denial of service, and so on. Two good places to start on this topic are Protecting Against Spammers and Preventing Denial of Service Attacks in Sun Java System Messaging Server.
• Architects: Companies love to say they are standards based. Well, in Sun's case, our engineers have literally written and driven Internet standards since they've been around.

For our existing CommSuite users, I'm probably just preaching to the choir. For those unfamiliar with CommSuite, perhaps I've described the product in terms that you can relate too. Let me know.

Please all welcome Anthony Waldron, Messaging Server expert, to the Sun blogosphere. Anthony has his first post up on detangling the CommSuite installation, configuration, and deployment..

If anyone can untangle those wires, that would be Anthony.

It probably goes without saying that these days, with the multitude of applications that users have to access, configuring deployments for Single Sign-On (SSO) is the way to go. By using SSO, a user is able to log in just once and gains access to all systems without being prompted to log in again at each of them. Of course, Sun Convergence provides three type of Single Sign-On (SSO) mechanisms out-of-the-box, but I'm not sure how widely known this is:

1. SSO with Access Manager
2. SSO with OpenSSO (starting with Communications Suite 6 Update 2)
3. Trusted Circle SSO (aka Messaging SSO)

None of the above quite what you need? Convergence provides a plug-in mechanism for you to develop a customized SSO solution.

How about some classic Sonny Boy II (Rice Miller), blowing his way through "Your Funeral, My Trial."

New and old (updated) Communications Suite docs of interest:

• Best Practices for Messaging Server and ZFS
• Installing Communications Suite 6 Update 2 on a Single Host

Another work week come and gone, another edition of Friday Blues Blogging. This time, we have Shawn Pittman performing Magic Sam's "Lookin' Good."

It's Friday, the end of the week, and time for another edition of Friday Blues Blogging. This time, sit back and enjoy Buddy Guy work out on First Time I Met the Blues. That's the great Dave Meyers on bass, by the way.

Download the latest update to Communications Suite 6, aka Communications Suite Update 2.

Quick list of Communications Suite 6 Update 2 docs:

• Main Communications Suite 6 Update 2 doc site
• What's New
• Release Notes
• Installation Guide

On the Record reports. As does Paul Hinz.

The next update to Communications Suite 6--aka Update 2--is on the very near horizon. Here's what to expect in terms of changes and new features. And don't forget that our new Calendar Server (CalDAV server) and Indexing and Search Service are also releasing beta versions.

What's New in Sun Java Communications Suite Update 2

System Virtualization Support

System virtualization is a technology that enables multiple operating system (OS) instances to execute independently on shared hardware. Functionally, software deployed to an OS hosted in a virtualized environment is generally unaware that the underlying platform has been virtualized. Sun performs testing of its Sun Java System products on select system virtualization and OS combinations to help validate that the Sun Java System products continue to function on properly sized and configured virtualized environments as they do on non-virtualized systems.

Communications Suite supports the VMware container (VMware ESX Server 3). As support for other virtulization platforms (LDOMs, xVM Server, and so on) becomes available we will update this document.

For information about Sun support for Sun Java System products in virtualized environments, see http://docs.sun.com/doc/820-4651.

Updates to comm_dssetup.pl

The comm_dssetup.pl script has been updated to include support for OpenSSO and to add schema for Instant Messaging.

What's New in Sun Convergence 1 Update 2

Convergence 1 Update 2 includes the following changes and new features:

Shared/Subscribed folders

Users can now share their mail folders or subscribe to other's shared mail folders. To learn more about how to Share a mail folder or subscribe to a shared folder, see the online help.

Mail Quota

The mail quota feature enables you to see mail usage information. You can see mail quota when the administrator sets your mail quota. To learn more about how to see your mail quota, see the online help.

Spell-Checking Email

Sun Convergence enables you to perform a spell check automatically before sending email. To enable this feature, select the "Always spell check before sending a message" option from the General Mail Preferences. After you enable the spell-check feature, your email will be checked for spelling mistakes before you send the email. For more information about setting the spell-check feature, see the online help.

Marking Messages as Spam

Spam messages are unsolicited bulk emails that the you get in your mailbox. You can mark messages as spam or not spam from the mail user interface. To learn more about taking action against spam messages, see the online help. To know more about how to do this, see the online help. To know more about how to configure Convergence for handling spam messages, see Enabling the Spam Feature .

Single SignOn and Authentication using Sun OpenSSO Enterprise 8.0

Sun Convergence 1 Update 2 now supports OpenSSO Enterprise 8.0 for authentication and Single SignOn. To know more about how to do this, see Configuring Sun Convergence With Sun OpenSSO Enterprise 8.0.

What's New in Messaging Server 7 Update 2

Messaging Server 7 Update 2 includes the following changes and new features:

Internal Version Number

The internal version number (displayed in various places like the SMTP and IMAP banner) is now 7u2-x.yy (was 7.0-3.01 for 7 Update 1). The number 2 in 7u2-x.yy now signifies the update number to help associate specific releases with the update release it was based on.

Microsoft Exchange Journaling Format

Messaging Server 7 Update 2 supports the Microsoft Exchange Journaling Format, enabling integration with ZLTI's archiving software.

Update of MTA ClamAV Filter Plugin to Support New INSTREAM Command

The following table shows the new option for the ClamAV option file, its description, and default value.

Option	Description	Default
USE_INSTREAM	Enables (1) or disables (0) the use of INSTREAM scanning in clamd. Starting with ClamAV 0.95, clamd fixed the deficient design that required two TCP connections to be made when scanning a data stream (control connection and data connection). Now only a single connection is needed which allows for simpler and faster processing (no setup/processing/teardown of data connection) and also allows ClamAV to scale horizontally by placing multiple scanning systems behind load balancers. Attempting to use this option with an earlier version of ClamAV will result in a scanning failure.	0

Redesign of the ENS Client and Server

The Event Notification Service server and client were redesigned in this release. There is a new client API (ens.h) that is backwards compatible. The previous ENS server is installed under the name enpd1 for customers who may wish to use it.

Enhancements to the reconstruct Command

reconstruct -a attempts to rebuild most aspects of a user's folder, thereby eliminating the need to run multiple commands (such as reconstruct -m then reconstruct -r. Since reconstruct -a rebuilds the entire folder, it was time consuming.

To rectify this, reconstruct -a now performs a consistency check on each folder in order to determine whether or not to reparse all the messages along with various other repairs. If you run reconstruct -a -f, a full repair and reparse is forced. If you run reconstruct -a -n, only a consistency check is run, printing out errors found in the folder. This may be useful in order to catch issues before fixing them.

LOG_ACTION Mapping Table

IP v6 Phase 1 Support

IP v6 Phase 1 is supported in this release of Messaging Server.

What's New in Instant Messaging 8 Update 1

Instant Messaging 8 includes the following changes and new features:

Yahoo Gateway in Instant Messaging

Sun Java System Instant Messaging 8 Update 1 co-packages a gateway for Yahoo messaging clients. The gateway enables Sun Java System Instant Messaging users to communicate with their contacts on Yahoo. This feature enables easy installation and configuration of the Yahoo gateway with Sun Java System Instant Messaging. You can configure the gateway by using the configure utility.

What's New in Delegated Administrator 7

Delegated Administrator 7 includes the following changes and new features:

Direct LDAP Access to the Directory

There are two choices for accessing the directory with Delegated Administrator:

• Direct LDAP access to the directory
• Directory access through Access Manager (Legacy Mode)

In this release, by default, Delegated Administrator accesses the directory through direct LDAP calls. By using direct LDAP access, Delegated Administrator removes the former dependence on Access Manager. You can now provision Communications Suite domains, users, and groups without installing or using Access Manager.

Alternatively, you can continue to use the old access method, via Access Manager.

• You can provision objects in a Schema 1 or Schema 2 directory
• You can use Access Manager (Realm mode) with the Communications Suite products (including Delegated Administrator)
• You can run Delegated Administrator, and any other Communications Suites product, without installing or using Access Manager

To take advantage of these choices, you must

• Select "Direct LDAP access to the directory (DL)" when you run the Delegated Administrator configuration program, config-commda

Support for Schema 1

Delegated Administrator supports provisioning domains, users, and groups in a Schema 1 directory. To enable Schema 1, you must

• Select "Direct LDAP access to the directory (DL)" when you run the Delegated Administrator configuration program, config-commda

Custom User Attributes Can Be Added to the Delegated Administrator Console

You can add custom user attributes that can be provisioned in the Delegated Administrator console. The custom attributes must belong to your LDAP schema before you can add and use the attributes via the Delegated Adminstrator console.

For more information about this feature, see Customizing the Delegated Administrator Console.

Preserving Customized Configuration During Upgrades

Now you can run a merge utility, damerge, to preserve your customized configuration after you upgrade Delegated Administrator and run the Delegated Administrator configuration program.

When you upgrade Delegated Administrator and run the Delegated Administrator configuration program, the properties in the configuration files are reset to the default values for the new release. However, you can replace the default values with your earlier, customized configuration by using the damerge utility.

For more information about this feature, see Preserving Delegated Administrator Customizations During Upgrades.

What's New in Connector for Outlook 7.3 Update 1

Connector for Outlook 7.3 Update 1 includes the following changes and new features:

Bug Fixes Only.

What's New in Communications Express 6.3

Communications Express 6.3 includes the following changes:

Login Access to Access Manager From Within Communications Express

You can now login to Access Manager directly from Communications Express. To do this, you must set either of the following parameters in the uwcauth.properties file:

• uwcauth.identity.login.url
• uwcauth.identity.ssl.login.url

If you have enabled identity, then you must set the above parameters to avoid receiving error messages when you login.

This configuration would only be possible if you have enabled Access Manager by setting the uwcauth.identity.enabled parameter to "true" in the uwcauth.properties file.

Friday Blues Blogging, this time, Derek Trucks. There is such a ringing, singing, lyrical aspect to his playing, you can't help but just be awed. Here he is, beginning with some single string action, then switching to slide at the end for a crescendo flurry.

A return to Friday Blues Blogging, after a many months' sabbatical. Today's edition: Lightning Hopkins doing his version of Baby Please Don't Go. Enjoy.