Zentyal announces Zentyal Server 3.4, a new Linux Small Business Server release

(Full press release available in English, Spanish)

Zentyal Development Team today announced Zentyal Server 3.4, a new release of the Zentyal Linux small business server. Zentyal Server aims at offering small and medium businesses (SMBs) a native drop-in replacement for Windows® Small Business Server and Microsoft® Exchange Server, that can be set up in less than 30 minutes and is both easy-to-use and affordable.

“Zentyal is the only vendor worldwide to integrate both the complex Samba and OpenChange technologies – that guarantee native interoperability with Microsoft Active Directory® and Microsoft® Exchange Server” said Julien Kerihuel, CTO of Zentyal. “These two technologies allow to integrate Zentyal Server seamlessly into an existing Windows Server® environment and carry out a phased, transparent migration. At a moment when many popular Microsoft’s® server products are reaching their end of life and SMBs are searching for alternatives, they should definitively give a try to Zentyal Server”.

Zentyal Server 3.4 release focuses on providing greater integration of the OpenChange technology with the goal of offering improved Microsoft® Exchange Server replacement. In this regard, the release features Outlook Anywhere support, Out of office-message support and fully renewed, modern webmail user interface.

Another major feature introduced by this release is high availability for the UTM & Gateway services (gateway, firewall, DNS, VPN, DHCP and routing modules), helping the system administrators to guarantee maximum network reliability and uptime. The most important characteristics include configuration replication among nodes, multi-node active/passive redundancy configuration and an option to select a node as active (Promote) or passive (Demote).

Zentyal Development Team will deliver a 6-hour tutorial entitled “Deploying a native replacement for Microsoft® Exchange Server and Microsoft Active Directory® in your business with Zentyal” during the SambaXP 2014, the international Samba conference for users and developers taking place in Göttingen, Germany, from May 13 to 16. The tutorial will take place on May 13 and it will be held in English. If you are interested in attending the event and the Zentyal Tutorial, you can register here.

Technical features

Zentyal Server 3.4 offers improved native interoperability with Microsoft® Exchange Server including fully renewed webmail and high availability for the UTM and Gateway services. It also comes with new Ubuntu base distribution (Ubuntu 13.10), improved bug report system and improved management of exceptions.

New features and improvements include:

• New base distribution: Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy
• Improved interoperability with Microsoft® Exchange Server, including Outlook Anywhere support, Out of office-message support, Improved use case of Zentyal as additional Microsoft® Exchange Server and fully renewed webmail
• High availability for the UTM & Gateway services, including configuration replication among nodes, multi-node active/passive redundancy configuration and an option to select a node as active (Promote) or passive (Demote)
• Removal of Apache instance for Zentyal Administration
• Improved system of bug reports
• Improved management of exceptions

Upgrading

Automatic migration path from Zentyal 3.3 to Zentyal 3.4 will be provided shortly. The migration not only affects Zentyal Server, but also involves a Ubuntu base distribution upgrade (from Ubuntu 12.04 to 13.10). Given the complexity of the scenario and to ensure no regression is experienced by users, the migration process will be made available in a few weeks in order to consolidate the scenario.

Availability

Zentyal Server 3.4 is released under the GPLv2 license and is freely available for download at:
http://www.zentyal.org/download/

The Zentyal Server source code is available at:
https://github.com/Zentyal/zentyal/

Additional information

The detailed Zentyal 3.4 release announcement is available at:
https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/Zentyal_3.4_Announcement

The full change log from Zentyal 3.2 to 3.4 is available at:
https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/Zentyal_3.4_Changelog

Program and registration for SambaXP 2014:
http://sambaxp.org/registration.html

The official Zentyal 3.4 documentation will be shortly available in English and Spanish at:
http://doc.zentyal.org

Additional articles

• Article #1: Zentyal as an Additional Microsoft Exchange Server
• Article #2: Zentyal Webmail Restyle
• Article #3: Introducing High Availability in Zentyal
• Article #4: Support for Out of office-messages