Openfire really free? supported users and other simple questions

Openfire Openfire Support
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I have a few simple questions that I can’t seem to find anwsers too quickly so forgiveme if they are posted elsewhere.

Is openfire really free no strings attached? Is there a limit to the number of concurrent users? I saw something in the connection manager about 25 max. Can someone tell me what that pertains too?

If the user turns off logging in spark does it still log to the server as long as it is enabled in the admin console?

I have ldap working with AD but I have multiple domains that are trusted, not part of the same forest. Is it possible to create ldap entries to grab info from multiple domains at the same time?

Does someone know good hardware specs for about 500 users and using the builtin database?

A comment: This is an awesome app. I have paid good money for IM apps that are not nearly as good. I am totally new to this product but had it up and running in less than 30 minutes. Great work!

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The multple domains across multiple forests will be an issue. There are two solutions i know of, one i use.

  1. Use microsoft ADAM to sync you DC’s into one large virtual domain. Theres plent of documantion on this but as far as I know its not a supported product by MS so you’ll be at the mercy of google, technet, and maybe consultants. I know its a common fix for mutlidomain Sharepoint sites, as thats how i first found out about it.

  2. Use Penrose Server to create an LDAP proxy and publish a virtual directory.

I use Penrose, i have it publish a new domain dc=proxy,dc=com and then I map the user OU’s from 3 other domains to this so that they show up as ou=Domain1_Users,dc=proxy,dc=com, and repeat for other 2 domains. Its also writen in java so i just run it on linux on the same server with Openfire. If you have a large infrastructure you’ll probably want to use caching with Penrose to keep it sane. BTW i was never able to achieve my setup with the Penrose Studio gui, and had to edit some of the config xml files directly to setup the proxy.

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  1. The 25 max connection pertains to Openfire connecting to and writing data to the database server. This has little to do with the number of users unless you have a very large user base.

  2. Server side logging is completely independent of the client logging.

  3. You will need a multi-LDAP aggregator to merge multiple domains. Openfire does not support multihoming at this point.

  4. A decent dual core desktop running windows XP with 2GB+ RAM would be fine (probably overkill). I use an old P4 with server 2003 and 4GB of RAM but it also runs 2 other very demanding servers.

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okay so what are the specs needed if a userbase reaches thousands… there’s no way openfire caps out on memory usage?

just curious that’s all

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I have + 5000 users currently with a load of 2500 + daily, I use a SUN V20 with 8 gb RAM, twin 3.2 g AMD x64 procs. Prolly a bit much, but I don;t have to worry much. You could probably get by with half as much machine, but with Enterprise apps comes Enterprise uptimes.

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sstepanski wrote:

Is openfire really free no strings attached?

Yeap. It’s GPL licensed.

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yeah i’m curious as to how much RAM i need to put on my servers and what type of hosting i should by (as in what grade of power… i plan to have thousands chatting it up… maybe around 5,000 at once max on each server) so what kind of power would i need to run on each server?

i really appreciate you taking the time to reply

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Being Java and all, I would stuff as much ram in there as possible. I never run out of RAM, but it does takes a lot to grab 8 gb of it. I upgraded from my original 4 gb to 8 gb because my setup is all on one box (openfire, postgres db, web client, old pymsn gateway) and I wanted to be safe. I rarely worry about memory though. I run Linux without X, so no overhead there. I do reboot my machine from time to time (about every 8 to 10 months).