Offering comprehensive documentation on Zentyal Server is fundamental. Only by providing useful advice on how to install and configure Zentyal Server we allow users to test Zentyal as an Windows Server alternative and take the system to production and maintain it. For each new Zentyal Server version, the official documentation is reviewed, updated and new content is created regarding new features or topics that are seen necessary.
The official documentation walks you through the installation of Zentyal Server and basic configuration of all the network services it provides. In this post we share the most popular documentation from the past year. We want to remind you of the availability of this documentation as a basic Zentyal Server guide and perhaps help you to discover new Zentyal features that you still didn’t test.
1. Installation
The Zentyal Server Installation-page is logically the most popular part of our documentation, as it is where all the users should start from. On this page you can find information on the two different options you have to install Zentyal: using the Zentyal installer or on top of an existing Ubuntu Server Edition installation. The documentation walks you through the installation steps when using Zentyal installer in the default mode. It also walks you through the initial configuration with the configuration wizard and provides basic guidelines for selecting the hardware for your Zentyal server.
If you would prefer to see a video, we recommend you to check out these complementary video resources:
- Basic install & overview on Zentyal 6.0 on VirtualBox
- How-to: Create a Zentyal Server VM for macOS with VirtualBox
2. Directory
Directory services allow sysadmins to manage all the user-related information across the organization, centralizing and abstracting the authorization and permission management for all the other services. Thanks to the integration of Samba and Kerberos technologies, it is possible to turn Zentyal Server into a native drop-in replacement for Windows Server. Most of the people choose Zentyal because of the easy-to-use domain & directory server it provides so it is not a surprise that the Domain & Directory-page is the second most visited documentation page.
This documentation starts from the basics: how to configure the Zentyal Domain Server, how to configure Zentyal as a standalone domain server with Windows clients and how to join Windows clients to the domain. It then continues by describing how to enable roaming profiles and folder redirection, what is the Kerberos authentication system and how it works on Zentyal, how the users can change their passwords or how Group Policy Objects (GPOs) can be managed. As Zentyal is many times deployed in mixed environments (Zentyal and Windows servers), the documentation also covers joining Zentyal to an existing domain, total migration of the FSMO roles and importing and exporting of users and groups. Last, but not the least you are provided important information regarding known Zentyal/Samba limitations and issues.
If you would prefer to see a video, we recommend you to check out these complementary video resources:
- Zentyal as a stand-alone domain controller
- Zentyal as an Additional Domain Controller of a Windows Domain
- Total migration from Windows Server to Zentyal – Transfer of FSMO roles
3. First steps
The First steps-page is the third most visited page of the Official Zentyal Documentation. It is definitively recommended reading for everybody making their first Zentyal deployment and a good place to start if something very basic seems to have gone wrong. Besides providing a basic introduction to the Zentyal Server web GUI, it takes a good look at the network configuration options for each detected network card. The documentation also covers briefly the basic network diagnosis tools.
4. Mail
Email continues being one of the most used communication tool for businesses. And be it for the control, privacy, security or the cost, many users deploy Zentyal also as a mail server despite the growth of cloud-based mail services. This fourth most popular Zentyal documentation page describes how to carry out the SMTP/POP3-IMAP4 server configuration via Zentyal web GUI, including the configuration of virtual domains and e-mail accounts or retrieving mail from external accounts with Fetchmail. It will also give you a brief introduction to the SOGo webmail and ActiveSync® and how to enable these services for your organization. Finally, you are given detailed instructions on how to harden your mail server by using the SPF and DKIM techniques and help to protect users from spam, spoofing and phishing attacks.
5. DNS
Domain Name System (DNS) is extremely important service in Active Directory (AD) so unsurprisingly, the DNS documentation page comes in as the fifth most popular. The basic function of DNS is to provide access to hosts and services using names instead of IP addresses. As in Active Directory clients locate local Domain Controllers and other AD services (Kerberos and LDAP) by DNS queries, correct DNS configuration becomes imperative. This page covers the configuration of DNS cache server, transparent DNS cache, DNS forwarders and authoritative DNS server with Zentyal.
6. Proxy
Anyone deploying Zentyal Server as a gateway, will most definitively take a look at the Proxy documentation. Zentyal integrates Squid – that is probably the most popular and used Linux proxy server, for HTTP proxy server and Dansguardian for the web content filtering. This page walks you through the creation of web access policies and content filter profiles that help to enforce your organization’s web policies and improve security. It also describes how to control the bandwidth usage and block HTTPS pages by domain.
Other popular documentation pages include: DHCP, Certification Authority, Firewall and Virtualization Manager. If you would like to learn more, keep in mind that you can also get the Official Zentyal Book for the latest major Zentyal Server (eBook starts from 29.90€). Other official training resources include on-line training courses and ZeCA Certification Exam.