Introduction
In 2001, my IBM Thinkpad R30 running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional failed me. I was trying to get IIS up and running to serve a website and encountered blue screen after blue screen, as well as spurious shutdowns with data loss. I resolved to investigate the possibility of "Linux," an operating system I had only heard about at the time. After much searching, I found
www.linux.org and browsed through the list of distributions, eventually settling on
Red Hat Linux, as it seemed to be well supported and user friendly.
Red Hat Linux 9 installed on my laptop without a hitch and I was sold! I pushed this laptop to the limit for the next five years using the
Fedora Linux line of operating systems. I retired the system in January, 2006, when the hard drive ground to a halt.
Meanwhile, I created Messinet Secure Services and began to learn about the
GNU/Linux platform, the
Open Source Initiative and perhaps most importantly, the mission of the
Free Software Foundation. I started to embrace the cause and configure some basic services such an email server and a web server. I initially offered these basic services to my family members, as they were the only population I could ever imagine depending on something I created. I also knew that they would not be using my services for "mission-critical" applications and could understand if a service was unavailable due to an upgrade or configuration error on my part.
Over the years, I have added five servers and three workstations, and of the eight computers I own, only one of them uses Microsoft Windows XP Professional.
Services
Messinet Secure Services provides secure email, web, network, VoIP, storage, VPN and various other services for its users.
Hardware Layout
Messinet Secure Services employs two
Dell PowerEdge core servers, one
Dell Dimension core server, one
Dell XPS intermediary server and one
Dell Dimension n-Series intermediary server.
Core Servers
- Dell PowerEdge 1800
- Two Intel 64-bit dual core 2.8GHz Xeon processors
- 5GB RAM
- 6TB SATA-2 RAID-5 drive space
- Dell PowerEdge 600SC
- Intel 32-bit 2.4GHz Pentium 4 processor
- 1GB RAM
- 280GB IDE drive space
- Dell Dimension 2350
- Intel 32-bit 1.7GHz Celeron processor
- 256MB RAM
- 40GB IDE drive space
Intermediary Servers
- Dell XPS 410
- Intel 64-bit dual core 2.4GHz Core2Duo processor
- 2GB RAM
- 750GB SATA-2 drive space
- Dell Dimension n-Series E520
- Intel 64-bit dual core 2.8GHz Pentium D processor
- 1GB RAM
- 160GB SATA-2 drive space
Software Layout
Messinet Secure Services uses the array of servers to provide many services to many GNU/Linux based and Microsoft Windows based workstations.
Core Servers
- Dell PowerEdge 1800
- Fedora Linux 12 x86_64 with SELinux enforcing
- Postfix mail server
- Cyrus-IMAPd mail server
- Apache web server
- Samba primary domain controller
- Samba/NFSv4 RAID-5 data server
- OpenLDAP master server
- PostgreSQL master server
- MySQL master server
- CUPS/Samba print server
- Asterisk telephony/voice communication server
- Dell PowerEdge 600SC
- Fedora Linux 8 i686 with SELinux enforcing
- CUPS/Samba print server
- Samba backup domain controller
- OpenLDAP slave server
- Asterisk telephony/voice communication server
- Dell Dimension 2350
- Fedora Linux 12 i686 with SELinux enforcing
- CUPS/Samba print server
- Samba backup domain controller
- OpenLDAP slave server
- Asterisk telephony/voice communication server
Intermediary Servers
- Dell XPS 410
- Fedora Linux 12 x86_64 with SELinux enforcing
- MythTV backend server
- Dell Dimension n-Series E520
- Fedora Linux 10 x86_64 with SELinux enforcing
- Fedora RPM buildsystem
