I've reported about Zentyal Linux few months back and showed two types of installs (prepackaged and on the top of Ubuntu server). I found that this Linux distro is interesting enough for small, or very small businesses. Its Ubuntu Server based distribution which uses an GUI front-end for easy administration. This is interesting for people wanting to setup a server system without going Microsoft way, and still be able to do management via GUI.
The free product called Zentyal Community Edition can be found here. I do not know the folks at Zentyal, (FYI they are from Zaragoza – Spain) but like the concept, where they offers subscription based support. So if you're getting serious, you can take support. Or if you're consultant and installing this at one of your clients, you can talk to your client and to tell him about the support option. Zentyal offers two packages:
- Standard – with SLA – Next business day.
- Enterprise – with SLA 4 hours.
Note that the standard edition is limited to 25 users and you have to pay an extra for mail services, where the Enterprise version has unlimited users option and mail service included. Both version has an add on for cloud services, which are actually offering users/group management through Internet together with some storage space for cloud storage.
If you're new with Zentyal Linux, you can just visit this link to get you started. You'll find tutorials which will teach the basics. You can be up and running only in about 10 min.
Some of the Zentyal Linux features:
- Windows file sharing (CIFS)
- Roaming Profiles
- AD domain controler
- Windows 7 support
- GPO support
- Multiple OU support
- Windows AD syncronization
- OpenLDAP w Heimdal Kerberos. It's also possible to integrate with existing AD servers.
- Samba 4 file sharing services
There are all network services which you probably need when setting up new network (DNS, DHCP, WebServer, Firewall, routing, proxy, RADIUS, VPN…) It even offers Captive portal option, which allows you to manage Wifi networks. Concerning other service, I can see Mail server, or UPS management.
I quickly tested using my VMware Workstation, after downloading the ISO. You can use easy install feature which asks you about the login/password information, when you setting up the VM and that's it! The installation rolls on by itself, including VMware tools installation. All you have to do at the end is to find out which IP the VM picked up and then you can login through the web interface and install the packages you need.
You can even use the upload function to place the VM on a remote VMware vSphere host. (Right click the VM > Manage > Upload) Zentyal VM takes about 1.5 Gb of disk space after install (before installing any other packages), so the upload to the remote host is really fast and takes less than 2 min. The only thing is that when you do that, the thin disks goes thick at the remote location, so you have to storage vmotion to another datastore. And a second gotcha comes when you want to edit this VM by using the legacy Windows client….. You can't, unless you created the Workstation VM as a version 9!.
