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I’m using Linux for workstations more and more and begun to use CentOS for some of the servers i have deployed. I’d love to begin the move over to to other apps for Linux but at present have Exchnage, SharePoint, OneDrive and mailny Active Directory consisitant thoughout both my setup and clients. I’d like to begin to build a small VM test area for a client who’s interested which can “replace” AD and Exchange in particular but most of these services to trial how functional this would be. Any suggestions would be most welcome. Client uses mainly Android Phones and Windows 8 workstations but will deploy some Linux Mint workstations as testers.

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Try Zentyal, it replaces Windows-based AD with Samba4 and MS Exchange with OpenChange. It’s pretty easy to setup.

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It sounds like you want the MS ecosystem without wanting the MS licensing costs. You can get close but in the end it will not be Exchnage, SharePoint, OneDrive, and AD.

For the exchange replacement, Zimbra is also a worthy mail system. They have a community edition to allow you to test drive the features.

Depending on how complex of a Sharepoint setup you have wordpress is similar.

For Onedrive, there are commercial offerings from Google, and Dropbox.

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For sharepoint it depends on what your using it for, KB stuff switch to a Wiki, there are ton’s of them Media wiki is pretty popular. 1 Drive… AWS buckets? Exchange, I’ve used Exim. before, not sure where it stands on features now.

What size company? Is Google for business a good alt for all of them? Then just run Mint with chromium browser.

I think it’s cool to want to start systems out in Linux, it’s very hard to get users to move to a linux environment from an MS one, Tech’s, Admin’s Servers… transitions easy, but end users not so much. Good Luck.

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What about Office 360 or Google apps? At least as far as Exchange goes. Thats a pretty easy order to fill.

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I was going to say that trying to move Microsoft solutions onto a non-Microsoft OS is probably not the way forward.

It sounds like Microsoft is quite engrained in your environment, so it would be a big project to switch.

So maybe move to Office365 for now, as mentioned above, and then think about replacing OneDrive with Dropbox or similar, Exchange with Google’s mail offering or similar. SharePoint will depend on how you use it - if just for file sharing, then Dropbox will help. Otherwise you need to investigate further.

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You might consider ownCloud for your OneDrive replacement. It’s optimized for Linux and has integrations with AD and SharePoint, etc. We’ve had some good luck with Kerio in place of Exchange.

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The cloud will be your friend here. Move to Google Apps or Office 365 Natsu_Dragneel suggested. Then You can use a wiki like Mealy58 suggested or a Wordpress site for the intranet. If you are not dependent on any Windows Apps you could move over to Chromebooks/boxes and get the management feature for them, I would go with Google Apps then.

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Yep I have zentyal running in two locations with replication. Super easy and works well. I have found that if you want any real GPO though you still have to have a windows server in the mix. I just brought up an old Server 2008 and then apply my policies and then turn it back off. Their customer support is crap though and if you ever have to call them, they’re in Spain and there’s always some kind of national holiday happening so expect them to take 3 to 5 days to get back to you. Really that’s my only problem with them. 99.9999% of all issues could also be solved trolling spiceworks and google. It’s just samba 4 running on ubuntu so not that bad to support. I haven’t used the exchange server which is built into it yet but I’m planning on trying it shortly.

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Having seen a few similar situations before, one thing to be mindful of is customer / user expectations.

A lot of the solutions suggested are excellent in their own right, but just make sure the users understand that Like Exchange / AD / Whatever doesn’t mean it is Exchange / AD whatever.

There will be obvious usability and feature differences, just make sure that’s fully understood and accepted, last thing you want is someone coming to you saying ‘Oh but Outlook could do XYZ (some Microsoft specific feature), you mean to tell me this new thing, which is supposed to be better, can’t do that??!’.

The other thing to keep an eye on is support and maintenance costs. A lot of people seem to think that because Linux and Open Source product equivalents are essentially ‘free’, that they are also free to run and look after, not so.

I’ve seen a few poorly planned implementations where the resulting support headache and overhead ended up costing them more than the MS licencing costs they were trying to save.

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You could try a Turnkey Linux VM to get you an idea: Domain Controller | TurnKey GNU/Linux

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The main questions are:

  • What are the requirements and usage of the network?
  • What is the primary motivator to move away from Microsoft product?

There are plenty of alternate solutions on a Linux platform, but not many (if any) that integrate within themselves seamlessly. Some of them are better solutions than the Microsoft. That being said, a client would need to be aware that some mundane tasks would become much more involved as services would become divergent solutions.

If the main concern is cost, the hidden factor is your time. You will spend a lot more time setting the systems up, making integrations, etc. than you would installing and configuring the Microsoft solution.

I love Linux and am peppering it in at my company. I also deployed various Linux servers when I was consulting. I’m a firm believer, though, that there needs to be a solid case to migrate over.

If the case to migrate exists, I have deployed OpenLDAP on a MySQL backend before, it makes it very easy to manage via web portal. I would suggest moving other services to a cloud environment, OneLogin does very well for intelligent provisioning and single points of authentication.

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Turnkey FTW! Thanks Guys

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Hi, One year ago I had similar situation. I have around 650 workstations and 250 printers. Everything worked as a charm until we start to connect printers. After one month of fight we gave up. If you have many printers from many vendors start from this point, if you succeed everything else is easy.

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i need to remember this thread for future reference. this rules

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Printers can be troublesome for certain. CUPS server is generally the best route, and then load the drivers up manually to the CUPS server. Slow and tedious, and yes most certainly very frustrating.

Best practice would say to decide on one brand and perhaps just a few models to simplify things for sure.

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One vendor is The solution. Unfortunately we had almost all existing vendors. We trained CUPS but there was a lot printers no full compatible. FAX, DUPLEX ware a problem too.

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We are in the process of looking to do the same thing. We use Kerio Connect instead of Exchange. You should it is simple and easy to use. we are looking in to an Windows - AD alternative also.

@robert_1

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Univention Corporate Server

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Came here to say owncloud and zimbra. But was beat to it.

Now that spiceworks can be hosted offsite I am throwing around the idea of shutting off another windows server.

Its important to make sure whatever email system you go with it will support Outlook. Some users may fight you on taking away outlook and activesync to phones.

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