Plesk with SmarterMail on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64

[weising]

Hi All,

I finally manage to set up the the plesk + smartermail + windows server 2003 r2 x64.

It take me quite sometime to understand all the constraints between plesk and smartermail, and the x64 make the situation even more complex (the .net compatibility). Each little contraint from each component (Plesk, SmarterMail, x64 OS) is pulling each other and causes tons restriction to the whole deployment. I guess those who struggle through this will understand what I mean...

I would like to highlight those challenges, and please help to highlight those that already have solutions in case I overlook some patches/workaround/fixes/how-to etc.

- when SmarterMail is on IIS, the default webserver is still required for Plesk for internal communication. In this, I guess Plesk should try to undo this constraint as even SmarterMail is recommending IIS.

- Unable to do webmail on port 80 yet. This has got something to do with Host Header in IIS, and also configuration of dedicated IP for SM.

- The default webserver and IIS cannot work at the same time. This one is more for SmarterMail + x64 OS issue, and the restriction of IIS mode imposed by Plesk (due to requirement of some components of Plesk, IIS can only be in .net 32 bit mode.). By default, SM is installed as 64 bit mode on a x64 OS. Though we can use the corflags.exe (.net sdk) to force the mailservice to run at 32-bit mode, the default webserver does not seems to work. Hence, I can only have either IIS + SM on 32bit, OR default webserver + SM on 64bit.

- It is very tempted to go to x86 to make thing easier, however, there is a cap for memory size, 4GB. I plan to have 8GB in future for virtualisation purposes.

Please kindly comment if you know that some of my "problem" above is actually being addressed.

Thanks.



--
WeiSing

 

[JackL]

Check this Microsoft KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894435

John S.G.

 

[weising]

Thanks for the reply JackL.

Finally after a few more days of research on the internet, manage to find a solutions.

Someone have posted in this forum previous on how to cheat Plesk on the IIS webmail(default) so that the host header get updated automatically. That instruction is perfect for those who are on 32 bit OS. For those who are on x64, one more challenge is to make that webmail(default) to support .net 2.0. Here the link, with URL that come to help.

http://www.asp.net/learn/whitepapers/side-by-side-with-1.0/

You may want to get the metabase explorer in IIS Resource Kit in order to identify the website path, or check the metabase.xml directly.

One more highlight to the my own question abt "The default webserver and IIS cannot work at the same time"... Actually the corflags, which make the mailservice.exe to become 32bit, can be used to make the smwebsvr.exe as well. That way, you can have SM default webserver to listen on port 9998 for adminsitration, where have the IIS to serve the webmail at port 80 if you want to. This is NOT necessary though, just make the IIS to listen to 9998 and 80 (with host header auto-update by Plesk) and you can do away the SM default webserver.

This forum is rather quiet, or my posting just deviated too far from topic.

Just feel like to close this thread with an answer and hopefully it helps other who have been through the same path. Thanks.

 

[raben]

hello i have a similar problem,
i have plesk .82 and smartermail enterprise, i change the host of plesk from raben to raben2 and when i go to webmail.domainname.it redirect to http://raben.domain.it:9998 instead of http://raben2.domain.it:9998
do you have some idea how to solve this update of the hostname?

 

[weising]

the redirection can be changed(using notepad, for eg.) in the default html file in the webmail(default).