Zimbra NE: This went easy…

Recently I’ve had the pleasure to update an instance of Zimbra Server (Net Edition), a groupware solution I think aimed at small and medium sized organizations.

The server in question was an Ubuntu 8.04 server as a virtual machine in a VMware cluster with an existing Zimbra NE v5.0.13 install. The procedure was simple but lengthy:

1. Shutdown zimbra with zmcontrol stop, assuming you do want to retain your email once you have to roll-back a snapshot and new email arrived in the meantime?
2. Make a snapshot of the VM and add a snappy name.
3. Download the tar-ball of the desired version you wish to upgrade to on your platform.
4. Unpack the said tar-ball and change directory into extracted from the tar-ball.
5. Run ./install.sh and let the autopilot take it from there.
6. Start Zimbra again with zmcontrol start.
7. Perform some test (sending and receiving mails via the web-ui and an external mail-client etc) to see if your groupware environment still works.

The installation is really a breeze and takes under an hour to run, including preparations, tests and cleaning up afterwords.

Install.sh is basically an autopilot for the upgrade process, it takes everything in account before upgrading. And I mean everything:

• Updating tables
• Consistency checks
• Supported versions
• Disk space
• SSL certificates
• Database configurations
• Availability of back-ups

And before this all takes place it makes a few checks and asks on the right place on the right time if you wish to continue? Yeah!

The update itself takes care of the MySQL and the LDAP server and installs every update sequentially between the current version and the desired version without a hitch. The output verbose enough to keep track of what is going on and minimalistic enough to prevent the screen from filling up with useless clutter.

I made the unfortunate mistake of upgrading from v5.0.13 to v5.0.24, this should have been v6.0.7. Rinse, repeat and presto! Its upgraded to v6! It really didn’t take much effort on my side to update Zimbra. Or the update process is distilled into something clean and painless or the Gods of Silicon owed me tons of favors!

Don’t forget to clean up the snapshots afterwords to prevent the pollution of your storage with snapshots.

This was easy, but I’ve seen my share of updates going horribly wrong. It was a relief to experience something that didn’t end up in a huge (sleep depriving) mess!

A note on the side: VMware recently bought Zimbra. I suspect this is to add a groupware package and to expand their portfolio of appliances and to compete with the well established Microsoft Exchange. Time will tell how this will develop or aid VMware.