Why choose MailEnable?
Advantages for Users
MailEnable Mail Servers provide a messaging infrastructure that enhances and increases productivity for the end user. The features are designed to facilitate ease of communication by making the process fast, accessible, customizable and simple to use.
Spam prevention MailEnable employs several methods of blocking or filtering spam, so that the user or the mail system never receives junk email. MailEnable features message and content filtering, allow/block lists, SPF, Bayesian filtering and several other features for stopping unwanted e-mails being delivered.
Advantages for System Administrators
Administration is a necessary cost of operating MailEnable, or any mail server. MailEnable is designed in such a way to reduce the amount of time systems administrators spend managing the mail server. By providing the necessary tools and resources to support systems administrators, they can manage the system efficiently and productively.
Comprehensive Inbuilt error and diagnostic reporting - MailEnable’s SMTP Connector provides W3C logging to record service usage, Activity logging to record system activity and Debug Logging to provide low-level information on system activity.
Easy to install and configure - The intuitive administration interface means that you will have your mail server up and running in minutes. With an easy-to-use Microsoft Management console application, setting up mail services is a simple procedure.
General Infrastructure Advantages
The final area for consideration is in cost savings related to infrastructure. Infrastructure costs in this context include such things as hardware, software, administration costs and server downtime. Server costs generally mean productivity losses for end users. MailEnable can generate cost savings for your organization in terms of;
equirements - MailEnable has low system requirements. The platform is lean and robust designed as an enterprise level mail solution, with only modest system requirements
Non-restrictive licensing - There is no per seat licensing on any product, MailEnable allows you to host unlimited domains and users. Therefore, as your organization grows, the cost of your licensing remains the same.
Maximized uptime - MailEnable open and modular architecture and service isolation promotes uptime because the system is comprised of different logical processes. For example, if one service should fail, other services are not necessarily affected.
Scalability - MailEnable is designed to grow with your organization; the product range allows you to upscale your operation without having to change vendors.
Integration
MailEnable integrates with several third party applications.
Anti-virus products
Anti-virus applications that integrate with MailEnable include:
> F-Prot
> Sophos
> McAfee VirusScan
> Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition
> Norman Virus Control
> Panda Antivirus Command Line
> Grisoft AVG
Other command line scanners can also be configured
Control Panel Software
MailEnable integrates with several Control Panel applications including:
> Helm
> Plesk
> Hosting Controller
> Hosting Accelerator
> Ensim
> and more
Installing and configuring MailEnable
Configuring the environment
Before installing MailEnable, ensure that the environment has been configured correctly. This includes configuring network connectivity and the Public DNS Server. MailEnable should be configured in an environment with a static IP
1. Before installing MailEnable, ensure that the machine can access the Internet (i.e.: ping ex: www.koithara.com). Ensure that other computers can ping the server’s IP Address from the Internet (note: technically computers do not need to be able to ping the server, but they will definitely need to be able to connect to TCP/IP Ports 110 and 25 of the server). In most cases, this requires some firewall configuration. For those unfamiliar with configuring firewalls, the best approach is to open all ports and then secure the server by blocking access to specific ports or services as appropriate. If experiencing difficulties with configuring the firewall, consult the respective manuals/resources associated with the operating system and communications infrastructure.
2. Ensure that the correct entries are registered in the DNS. The first step to doing this is to determine who has control of your public DNS records. Contact your ISP or DNS provider to determine who holds the records for the domain. This will allow you to determine who can create new DNS records for the domain. When hosting mail for a domain, each domain being hosted requires a number of DNS records to be created. The DNS records that need to be created are A Record, MX Record, PTR Records: Article: http://www.mailenable.com/kb?ID=ME020048
It is important to understand the role of DNS and how it relates to running mail servers. This is outlined in the following Knowledge Base article: http://www.mailenable.com/kb?ID=ME020190
Installing the MailEnable software
Now that the environment is configured, MailEnable can be installed. The product manuals explain how to install MailEnable. These are installed with the product or available from our website here: http://www.mailenable.com/references.asp
Once MailEnable has been installed, check the MailEnable Diagnostic Report to ensure that all services are configured correctly. Instructions on accessing this report can be found here: http://www.mailenable.com/kb?ID=ME020136
Configuring the MailEnable software
MailEnable provides a ‘quick start’ guide with basic instructions on configuring and running the MailEnable software. Quick Start Guide: http://www.mailenable.com/support/MailEnable_Quick_Start_Guide.pdf
The majority of MailEnable configuration and maintenance is done through the MailEnable Administration application. You can start this application by using the Start menu in Microsoft Windows: Start->Programs->Mail Enable->Mail Enable Administrator
The MailEnable Administrator will open are you will be presented with a window similar to the following:
MailEnable Administration Program
The tree view on the left allows you to navigate through the various components of MailEnable in order to configure them. The first item in the display is Messaging Manager. This is where you modify the various global settings, such as domains, post offices and mailboxes. The second item, labeled Servers, is for configuring the various servers that are in your MailEnable configuration.
Step 1 Check that Services are running
There are five services that are copied onto your computer when MailEnable is installed. These services run in the background and handle the sending, receiving and distribution of email. After your initial installation, you should check that these Services are running.
Expand the Servers >localhost >Monitoring branch, and click Services.
Step 2 Creating a Post Office
A post office is where you group domains and mailboxes for a customer. If you are a home user, or only expect to host your own domains, you will most likely only have one post office. If you host multiple domains for various people, you would create multiple post offices.
Step 3 Adding a Mail Domain
A domain is of course needed in order to create emails. From the right hand side window of the MailEnable Administration Console, click on the Create Domain icon.
Step 4 Adding a Mailbox
A Mailbox in MailEnable is a storage area for email sent to the server from the Internet. When your server users connect via POP with a mail client application (such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora), they connect to a Mailbox in order to retrieve their email. A Mailbox can have multiple email addresses. This means a user only requires one Mailbox to connect to, from which they can retrieve email from all their email addresses.
Step 5 Adding Email Addresses
When you create a mailbox, email addresses are created for all the domains available in the post office. If you wish to create new email addresses, you can add them by selecting the Emails tab at the top of the window. A list of the current email addresses will be shown. In order to add another email address for this mailbox click the Add Email button.
Step 6 Server Configuration
MailEnable is now ready to send and receive email. The server you have installed MailEnable on must be properly configured to accept and transmit Internet traffic. The Domain Name Server (DNS) for your hosted domains needs to be configured with the correct details. The DNS informs other mail server software what your IP address is in order for them to connect to you and deliver email. This means you need to make sure that the DNS that
contains the details about your domain has an MX record. Your domain name provider will be able to configure this for
Step 7 Configuring Email Clients
Lastly, in order to read and send email from an email client such as Eudora or Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express you need to configure them to connect to MailEnable. The POP3 and SMTP server should be the server name you are running MailEnable on. Email clients have to be able to resolve this server name to an IP address. The username needs to be the full logon name for the mailbox. Remember that this is formatted as mailboxname@postofficename. You will not be able to retrieve email if you do not use the full username.
Relay Settings
An important part of running a mail server is to make sure it is secure from abuse. Abuse of a mail server is most commonly done by sending out spam without your permission. This means that a user will connect to your server, and instead of sending an email to one of your users, will send it out again. If anyone is able to do this with your mail server, you are running an open-relay. When this happens, your mail server may get blacklisted by other mail servers, and they will refuse to accept your email (because you are the originator of spam although you didn’t authorize it). MailEnable offers a variety of authentication methods, and it is recommended that you implement them. Find below some of the relay options that are available in MailEnable. You can access the relay options via the SMTP properties page:
Servers >localhost >Connectors
Right click the SMTP icon, select Properties, and when the window appears, click the Relay tab. For a server on the Internet, the best relay setting to have is to only have Allow relay for authenticated senders, and leave Allow relay for local sender addresses unchecked. This will make everyone who wants to send email out via your server provide a username and password. Find below an explanation of the various relay settings.
Allow relay for authenticated senders - this means that people who try to send mail out through your server need to enter a username and password (i.e. SMTP authentication). To set this is different for various mail clients, but in Microsoft Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook for instance, you do this in the account properties via the “My server requires authentication” checkbox under the “Servers” tab. It is advisable that you have this option enabled if you aren’t using privileged IP ranges.
Allow relay for privileged IP ranges - this means that you will allow people with certain IP addresses to send email through your server. If you know the IP addresses of those persons who are able to send email out through your server, you can use this option. DO NOT select this if you haven’t set a list of IP addresses, as you may inadvertently allow everyone access. Normally this option is not selected.
Allow relay for local sender addresses - this will allow people to send mail if their ‘From’ address has a domain that you host on MailEnable. For instance, if you host domain.com, and someone sends a mail that has their ‘From’ address as peter@domain.com, the email will be sent. Unfortunately spammers may still abuse this by pretending they are one of your users, so most servers will not use this option.
Prepared By Sony Antony
Sony Antony is working as Sr.Systems Engineer(Team Lead) in SupportPRO specialized in Linux and Windows administration . SupportPRO is a webhosting support company providing 24×7 support.
