CERN Accelerating science

Central Mail Service: Status and Next Steps

  Arnaud Taddei IT/DIS (for the Mail Project - MARCH)

In the last CNL issue ( 227 - "Expansion of the Central Mail Server") we announced the expansion of the Central Mail Service. A second machine went into production (see note 1) in the middle of August and we now have enough capacity to start a migration exercise for legacy systems (QuickMail first and subsequently MSMail).

The QuickMail migration will begin in September/October 1997 (see note 2) and some work is currently being done so that we can start the MSMail migration, we hope around January 1998.

Concerning migrations - we noticed that some users have felt the need to migrate on their own but this is clearly not what we recommend. Unless you know exactly what you are doing, wait until you are requested to migrate; it is coming soon. This will save you and us a lot of trouble. In particular, by the time this issue of the CNL is released more documentation should be available and we will soon start proposing training sessions.

Now that the architecture is in place, the Mail Project (MARCH) is moving to its next phase and continues to look at all the aspects of e-mail from a global point of view. We are working on the documentation (see note 3), training, seminars, and a demonstration with the recommended Mail Agents like Pine and Netscape. Other projects are going to consolidate some of the servers, continue extending the capacity, look at new implementations of servers, improve the security level, optimise some features, study alternatives against spam (mars mailing) attacks, and enable more advanced features.

We are certainly moving into a new phase which will reveal new problems when people migrate from one system to another. We are trying to make it as smooth as possible but it would not be realistic to think it will be without initial problems. This move is necessary and we are here to help you. Thus, when you face problems, don't hesitate to contact the UCO Help Desk (User.Support@cern.ch or x74952).

Notes:

1. Now users must access their inbox using the new naming scheme:
   user.mailbox.cern.ch
   where user is the Mail Server login id of the person.
2. Another short CNL article in this issue ("QuickMail Migration") reviews the QuickMail migration.
3. Yet another article in this CNL issue ("Mail Services Documentation") reviews the documentation available.