I'm new to cloud storage and I'm wondering how a mail-client that is running on, say a rackspace server running RedHat, stores emails locally on it's machine so we can back emails up. I am trying to find the best mail client that can fit these requirements:
Backup of these email accounts is as follows:
1) Each email account must be backed up individually on a daily basis
2) We must be able to reconstruct our mail account as it looked on some past date.
3) Emails among these email accounts cannot be mingled. In other words, if we are asked to restore our "support" mail account, we should not be including emails from our "reports" mail account.
This client will:
1) Sit on a secured server accessible by us
2) Connect to each target email account over IMAP, securely
3) Synch down all emails for each account and retain emails on the file system. Each mail account must be stored in a location that is distinct from the locations of other accounts we are backing up (per regulatory requirement above). Thunderbird, for example, supports the notion of Profiles.
4) Each Profile maintains its own distinct folder structure on the fs. Each Profile is then responsible for pulling data for only of the mail accounts.
5) Mail stored within these profiles should be encrypted with the security key in our possession. This requirement will most likely be satisfied by the server infrastructure we select, ie the cloud servers at amazon will run on an encrypted file system.
If anyone has any ideas for an ideal replacement to thunderbird that would be of huge help.
Thanks,
Connor
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How could I use Google Compute Engine (or a similar service, like AWS) to send email on behalf of users via their SMTP server?
I am interested in building an online email client which allows users to enter their SMTP and POP servers and send/receive email, like they would with their desktop clients. GCE blocks all SMTP ports to prevent abuse and recommends using a mail service like SendGrid instead. However, after researching dozens of these services, they all seem to only support transactional email using their own SMTP servers, or possibly a pre-cleared smtp server. I simply want to send email using the user's SMTP server (ex smtp.mail.yahoo.com), just like they would if they were using a desktop client.
I realize I could host my own servers but I am not interested in maintaining the infrastructure. I would like to host everything on a cloud service. Is there any way I can work around Google's restrictions with an existing service?
As I'm sure you are aware, you would have to have the user enter their SMTP server information and account credentials. You would then use that information to connect to their SMTP server.
By default AWS EC2 instances have SMTP traffic on port 25 rate limited. To remove this limitation, you would need to fill out and submit the following form:
https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/html-forms-controller/contactus/ec2-email-limit-rdns-request
If you're looking to send mail as a Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo user, you'll probably want to call the service's API to have the server send mail on the user's behalf. There are several benefits of this:
You'll need to get authorization from users (usually via an OAuth flow)
in order to access their mail. This means that users shouldn't be
surprised that you're sending mail from their accounts, and they'll
have some control over your access.
The mail will be signed and come from the appropriate IP addresses to
comply with the various spam-control mechanisms set up by those
companies. Without this, it's likely that the mail you send will end
up in the bit-bucket of the recipient.
By using the API, the service should be able to keep a copy of the
sent mail in the user's outgoing mail folder. This will let the user
see and search for the original message sent if they want.
Unfortunately, this may also mean that each mail service you want to send from will need separate integration, and that you may not be able to send as the user's email address from smaller providers.
Note that the App Engine mail API allows you to send mail as the currently logged-in user (when logging in, users have a similar consent screen to the OAuth process mentioned above).
We want to set a profile in Database Mail on SQL Server 2008 R2 for all the developers in our team to receive notifications once an overnight job has completed.
Unfortunately, in the Notifications properties in the job it only allows us to select one of the Operators (Data Management Developers) and the problem with using the Operator is that there is a 100 nvarchar limit on how many characters (and therefore how many email addresses) can be added.
How can we select the new profile for notifications? Do we have to delete the Operator?
If you have access to administering your email subsystem you can create dedicated email account for Operator and configure email forwarding from it to all recipients you need. This simplifies database mail administering as well as email subsystem administering.
So we are planning to use AWS SES for sending emails. But how do we set up the email receivers? And how do we create an email accounts? When activating AWS SES, it asks to verify an email account (eg. help#example.org)...
I tried to create a mail server on one of the instances using postfix following this article: http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/, but it's not easy at all... Does anybody know any better alternatives?
Thanks.
SES is for sending email only. As you note, you must have some other way set up to receive email at least at the "From" address you intend to use, because Amazon will verify it before letting you send.
While you certainly could set up an email server and domain on an EC2 instance, it's very complicated. I recommend that you get an email service for just that purpose. If you only need a single address for all your messages, just get a free address from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.
If you need multiple addresses, consider getting Google Apps for Business, either for an existing or new domain name (it's easiest to set up if you have it register a new domain name for you). It's no longer free, but it's still quite cheap. A single user account can receive emails for every address in the domain, it's flexible, and it's reliable. It's a good companion to using SES for sending automated emails.
Use Amazon WorkMail if you prefer AWS. Gmail for work, Office 365, Hostgator, are some other examples. FYI, none of these providers simply provide domain emails. They come bundled with many other things such as chat clients, calenders, etc. Pricing of these services depends on what other things they are bundled with.
$4/user/month for AWS
$5/user/month for Google
$5/user/month for Microsoft
Since you are in AWS cloud, I will tell you a few things about Amazon WorkMail.
You get your own domain and 50GB of storage per user.
You get calendars for free.
You cannot use just any desktop mail client. You have to either use Outlook, or Mac's mail client, or the web interface. This is their weakest point. However, including other IMAP clients is in their roadmap (I guess atleast a year).
Integrates nicely with SES.
Important links:
FAQ page.
Features page.
There are many more features such as remotely removing emails from a device, managing your users, and so on.
What I can recommend you is to use Amazon WorkMail because they almost provide all the features supported by others, and you are tied with AWS anyway. AWS also recently launched Workspace and Workdocs (both separately billed) that will allow you to create a complete work solution. These services also combine nicely with IAM.
I am moving my bussines website from a shared Bluehost server to a MyHosting VPS. The only problem here is that we have some mail accounts that we use to receive orders from our customers, so we can't change the email direction or else we would lose some customers. Is there any way to change the account's server without losing the accounts?
You can take backup of your email on your local system by using Outlook or Thunderbird etc.
Then you can create same domain & mail accounts on your VPS.
I have a dedicated Linux web server where my website is running like www.example.com.
Now I want to start another service for my users and want to give mailing features like Gmail and Yahoo mail.
I want to give facility to my users to create email IDs as they create on Gmail or Yahoo Mail and use it as their email address like XYZ#example.com or ABC#example.com.
Is this possible for me to use my dedicated web server as mail server too,
or I need to hire a new specific mail server for this purpose.
Also, if I can use my server as mail server and can give IMAP and POP like features then what are the PROs and CONs in that?
My hosting company says that I have facility to create unlimited email addresses
and I have created a few for mt like support#example.com and feedback#example.com
and I am getting emails on these IDs.
Is that mean, my hosting already have setup a mail server for me (the same I mentioned in my question and want to setup)
Or this is just for me to use and manage my website and I can not share these email addresses with my users by giving an email service.
Yes you can run simultaneously a web and mail server. Follow part 3 of this guide: http://mysql-apache-php.com/ to set up email. Just make sure that your router is fully capable (supports NAT etc.) - it should be able anyway
However it does appear from your question that your hosting company has set up its own mail server. Which does mean unlimited emails, however the only issue could be the amount of space they are willing to host for you (As in you can only have 2 GB of space on their mail server). Hope this helps.