Novell's NetMail XE an alternative to Exchange?

Antivirus protection
It's also important to have antivirus protection, not only to protect the files on the server but also to be able to check messages coming in and going out of NetMail to make sure they're not infected. Normally, this would take two products -- one to scan the files on the server and another to check incoming and outbound SMTP messages. NetMail supports McAfee NetShield, CA's InoculateIT, and Symantec's Carrier product.

I'll use McAfee's NetShield product as my example. After installing McAfee NetShield, enter the drive letter and path to the signature files in the WebAdm screen. Since NetShield will use hooks or API calls into the McAfee antivirus engine to scan email messages, you should configure McAfee itself not to scan the directory structure used by NetMail to store and route the messages. It's possible that an antivirus package and NetShield trying to scan email at the same time could cause the email in question to become corrupted or cause other avoidable problems with NetMail.

There's a quick and easy test to see if everything is working as it should. Go to EICAR and download one of several test files. These are benign files that will trip an alert when a test virus has been found -- which is definitely better than playing with the real thing. email the test file from an outside account. When NetMail XE finds the "virus", it will return the email to the sender with a warning that a virus has been found and send a message to the intended recipient informing them that someone has tried to email them a message or file with an infected attachment. It's a good idea to go through this process periodically to make sure that the antivirus portion of NetMail is doing what it's supposed to do.

When using either the Web interface or a POP/SMTP client with NetMail XE, be aware that your logon ID and password are passing over the Internet in the clear, so anyone with a network protocol analyzer can see them. The more users you have, the more problematic this can be. Just as bad, if not worse, is the fact that you'll also be downloading email in the clear to the workstation you're using.

One of the options with NetMail XE is to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This gives you the ability to encrypt the information between the server and the workstation accessing email. You'll need to generate a certificate request and then submit the request to a recognised certificate authority (CA). Once you receive the certificate back from the CA, you can install it and force the use of SSL.

Which client to use?
One of the strong points of NetMail is that you aren't required to use any particular client. The only choice you need to make is whether to use POP/SMTP, IMAP, or the Web interface. The manual that you can print out for NetMail details how to configure Eudora, Novell GroupWise, Netscape Messenger, Outlook Express, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002, and Pine. You're not limited to those clients, however. As long as what you have is RFC-compliant with the POP3, SMTP, and IMAP standards, you should be able use just about anything.

Getting under the hood
Administrators of Novell's other email solution, GroupWise, faced problems when debugging problems with sending or receiving mail. Finding the file path and directory structure of GroupWise can be frustrating, but Novell has made changes with NetMail. Appendix A in the NetMail manual goes into great detail on the directory structure, how the messages are stored, how to turn up the logging, and, most important, all of the registry changes that NetMail XE puts in during installation and what they mean.

The directory structure used by NetMail is easy to follow and far simpler to deal with than that of GroupWise. The manual goes into detail on how to decipher the headers in the messages to help you to trace what's going on.

Who needs Exchange?
Although NetMail is positioned as an entry-level email system, it's one that can get the job done for large organisations. You don't have to get fancy with the hardware to put up a mail server. It's a great solution for an organisation that needs a basic mail server without all the extras that come with Exchange.

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