Server and Network Solutions

Email Servers, Network Engineering, Databases

We know that in this day and age not everybody can afford the equipment and software to run things perfectly. Due to this, we support and highly recomend the use of free software for services, such as Email, Database and Web hosting. See below the list of altertative free software that we can assit your company with to save you costs:
  • Windows (Advanced) Server:
    • Debian GNU/Linux - Highly customisable unix like operating system perfect for mission critical systems
    • Ubuntu GNU/Linux - Another variation of the above, but with a more user friendly set of features (not as fast/customisable though)
    • Arch GNU/Linux - Another highly customisable variant, but designed for extreme performance (limited to x86 hardware)
  • Microsoft SQL:
    • MySQL - A free database server like Microsoft SQL, used on 90% of the world's webservers (Wikipedia use this)
    • SQLite - A free database engine designed for small databases without the need for the overhead of running a database server, excellent for small/medium sized database applications
  • Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS):
    • Apache - A free webserver supporting HTTPS as well as many other extra features
    • ligHTTPd - A light weight free webserver supporting HTTPS as well as many extra features (not as full featured as apache, but faster)
    • myDNS - A very fast DNS server that reads its information from a MySQL database
    • Bind9 - A fast, fully featured DNS server designed for handling very high DNS loads with multiple redundencies
  • Microsoft .NET (ASP.NET):
    • Mono - Not many people know that .NET is not a Microsoft invention, it was made by Novell, and this is their free alternative to Microsoft .NET
  • Microsoft Exchange Server (SMTP/POP3/IMAP):
    • Postfix - This is a very small, yet fully featured (S)SMTP server designed for extreme performance handling thousands of incoming email's a second with MySQL authentication support, RBL Blocking (Anti-Spam Blacklists)
    • Dovecot - A fully featured IMAP(s) and POP3(s) server designed for high performance with features such as MySQL authentication allowing you to manage your mail accounts from a database
    • Spamassassin - A very complete spam email detection server and flagging (this one requires a slightly more powerful server)
    • Postgrey - A very efficient method of rejecting spam email messages while guaranteeing no false positives
To further reduce costs, all of the above software can be run on old, outdated hardware with very good results, generally out-performing a Microsoft based setup on the same hardware, making your obsolete hardware useful again.

How Obsolete can the hardware be?

It depends on your requierments, but to give an idea we have set up a internal server for a network of 35 people providing a complete Firewall, with SMTP, IMAP, POP3, WebMail and the internal Intranet on an old desktop computer the client was about to throw out, below are the specifications:
  • Intel Celeron 2.2Ghz
  • 512MB SDRAM (100Mhz)
  • 20GB 5200RPM HDD (An extra 20GB HDD was added for redundency, also rescued from a obsolete computer)
  • Integrated Intel Graphics
  • Gigabyte Motherboard with a SIS chipset
This computer was built in 2004, and is still in service today. The total cost to the client was just the cost of the software setup which was also reduced by over $1000 due to the use of free software (Linux, Postfix, Dovecot, MySQL, ligHTTPd).

How much will it cost me?

Just give us a call, or email us with your requirements and we will see what we can do, if you have a tight budget, let us know what it is and we will let you know if we can work within it.