So my company just accquired another and seems they are bigtime users of Sametime IM running off their Notes server. As we are in the Exchange camp they are looking for alternatives. Now there is the IM in Exchange … but they are still hashing out the $ of that. In the meantime I’m here running an Openfire server for a few dozen of the staff at my facility. One of the other IT admins asked me if I could add this new bunch (aprox 250 users) to Openfire … I believe I can but I’m looking for some advise you experts.
As my server started very small and grows by ones & twos I’ve always just added the users by hand. So the first question would be whats the best way to get a batch of pople in… I see there is an XMP import but also I guess I could bring them in via LDAP / AD? Any opinions on that?
Second question would be we’re all on a WAn with 1.5M or 3M T1’s … that will be changing to 10M MPLS this year but for now would a single server handle it over a WAN connection? My thought was to spin up anew VM dedicated to Openfire … … I don’t know what the available server realestate for this new outfit is … would the WAN connection work? I have sime epople running SPARk over the wan now an dthey say it’s fine but I’m not sure where that starts to breadk down.
What kind of size limits are we talking about? If this new outfir goes on I’m wondeing if I am going to see the environment grow from there … to say 500 or maybe 750 … not sure … Should I think about starting the new server with it’s own DB?
I’d build a new system - External database (MySQL, MSSQL, whatever you are comfortable with) and use AD/LDAP backend for all the users.
As for WAN connectivity - Just open tcp/5222 in your firewall, or run a connection manager instance in your DMZ that users can connect to. As long as you have ports opened and IPs NAT’d, and have DNS configured correctly, then it should ‘just work’.
Well it’s the DB issue that I’m least certain about. So if I get MySQL laid down … when I go to do Openfire is it just a “point at the DB” and OF does it’s thing? … I am by no means a DB guy … I might even go as far as looking for a WAMP or LAMP VM appliance to simplify this … I don’t suppose anyone has down such a thing with OF on it ? … that would be marvelous
Pretty much just install MySQL, create a database and a user for it, then when you do the OF setup just point it to the database and give it the credentials. The setup will create all the tables for you, and you’re done.
LAMP will give you a bunch of other crap you don’t really need. I’d just install CentOS 6.4, use yum to install MySQL and then throw OF3.8.1 on it with the rpm from the download page.
It’s probably less work to just do a new install than it is for someone to make a VM, then you customize it to your environment.
WAN should be fine with simple text messages. Unless your users start to send files. Then i don’t really know how it will handle it.
Are you going to use one AD domain for all users? Then you can integrate Openfire with LDAP. But it won’t support two domains. If you want to go without LDAP, then i think you can use Import Export plugin (make an example xml, modify it for all new users and import it). Though you will still have to manually add them to groups. Not sure, but probably User Service plugin can help automate this also. There is also a php frontend for this plugin http://community.igniterealtime.org/docs/DOC-1706
I ran a 13 location WAN on an windows xp openfire server bound to active directory, with 200+ users and 20+ groups. There were no issues. they could connect from in the office or from anywhere outside the company as I used a FQDN for the server.