←back to thread

433 points zdw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
stackskipton ◴[] No.45660335[source]
As usual with all these types of posts, people go "HA HA, MICRO$OFT SUCKS" without understanding business practices that keep them afloat.

Don't use Exchange? Cool, what should we use instead? Does it support 15 people all the way up to 150000 people? I used to run Exchange cluster for 70k people, is there other mail software out there complete with non-shared disk redundancy? Where the users connect to single endpoint and software figures it out from there?

Sharepoint with another 2 RCEs. Not shocked, the software is terrible. However, it's only software that will stand up under load and let us shard it easily. All open-source software is one of those, runs fine in Homelab, likely falls down under load. Few Open Source Developers want to work on this stuff which I get because it's tedious work interfacing with computer illiterate end users. I'd rather chug sewage then do this work for free.

Finally, it's somewhat backwards compatible. Most businesses are filled with ancient software that no one has worked on in 20 years. That Excel document with Macros from 1997. With some registry changes degrading security posture, still works. I doubt you will find Office software with level of backwards compatibility unless they are using Microsoft Office level of compatibility.

Microsoft has real gordian knot here and few solutions besides "Backwards compatibility is OVER. Upgrade to modern or GTFO". Meanwhile, I get hit up by $ThreeJobsAgo over some Exchange Web Services solution I slapped together for them in Python they wanted me to upgrade to GraphAPI since Microsoft turned off Exchange Web Services in Office365.

replies(13): >>45660418 #>>45660587 #>>45660597 #>>45660667 #>>45660671 #>>45660681 #>>45660723 #>>45660777 #>>45660784 #>>45661246 #>>45663047 #>>45663124 #>>45665208 #
necovek ◴[] No.45660667[source]
I see you build a case for traditional MS product in Exchange, yet this issue is about Sharepoint.

Just like with Windows, Microsoft has built a moat with Exchange, but the question is why do all the companies buy into their full ecosystem, especially for anything relating to web technologies (you even bring up Exchange Web Services), because this they do really badly, and Sharepoint seems to be the worst.

However, I am certain there are big Postfix/Dovecot installations scaling easily to 150k people, but we probably wouldn't know about them. Eg. here a couple of accounts of people doing that: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/32fq67/how_woul...

replies(6): >>45660796 #>>45660845 #>>45660876 #>>45660981 #>>45663661 #>>45665175 #
inopinatus ◴[] No.45660845[source]
I was running millions of accounts using Postfix/Dovecot on shared-nothing storage with a single MUA-facing endpoint and complex policy options, and that was over a decade ago.

Fastmail today would be much bigger again, and they’re on CMU Cyrus.

150k is rookie numbers. Perhaps that was meant ironically to satirise mediocre enterprise thinking?

replies(3): >>45660911 #>>45661642 #>>45663234 #
xxs ◴[] No.45663234[source]
>Perhaps that was meant ironically to satirise mediocre enterprise thinking?

It's a serious post, unfortunately.

replies(1): >>45663725 #
stackskipton ◴[] No.45663725[source]
Yep, my point was “What is the alternative besides other enterprise cloud like GSuite and others?”
replies(1): >>45665303 #
1. necovek ◴[] No.45665303{3}[source]
FWIW, GSuite seems to do fewer things, but at least does them better (think nested groups and calendar invitations for parent groups: adding/removing people does not update future events with MS tools).

But at the same time, within an org of 150k people, we have separate people to support our Teams usge, our Outlook usage, our AD/Entra usage: with the same number of "sysadmins", could we do the same with open source stack?

I don't know, but I know the bugs I see with MS365.