Goodbye Windows Small Business Server, Hello eBox

      by Wyatt Walter

Microsoft Small Business server finally has a competitor. I’ve been looking at eBox for a few years now, just waiting for it to go production. I missed the announcement, but it finally hit version 1.0 in late March. The software is a central management interface for a host of open source software packages that makes it easy to manage. One can use eBox for a network device, acting as a firewall, content filter, DHCP server, VPN server, etc.. It can also be used as a Windows domain controller, print server, IM server, mail server, groupware server, web server and a host of other features. The system can also serve a mix of both of those functions. It also centralizes user management by backing all services against its own LDAP server, duplicating much of the same services as Windows SBS as well as adding some features of its own.

eBox also has Asterisk integration and a captive portal on its roadmap. Plus, if you don’t see an application that your IT department needs to support on its network, you can always use their platform to develop for your application.

The software is built on top of Ubuntu Linux Server and can be downloaded via aptitude after adding the eBox repository, or you can download an installable .iso file to install on a fresh system.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Apr 16th, 2009