Requirements

System Requirements

Hardware requirements

CPU

Intel/AMD 64-bit CPU 1.5 GHz

RAM

8 GB min, 16GB recommended

Disk space (Operating system and Carbonio)

40 GB

These requirements are valid for Carbonio Single-Server or for each Carbonio Node in a Multi-Server Installation and may vary depending on the size on the infrastructure, which includes the number of mailboxes and the functionalities running.

Supported Virtualization Platforms

VMware vSphere 6.x

VMware vSphere 7.x

XenServer

KVM

Virtualbox (testing purposes only)

Software Requirements

Carbonio is available for 64-bit CPUs only and can be installed on top of any vanilla Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server Edition or RHEL 8 installation.

The following requirements must be satisfied before attempting to install Carbonio.

  1. valid DNS resolution for both the domain (MX and A records) and the FQDN (A record)

  2. Python 3, latest version available on the Operating System chosen

  3. Perl, latest version available on the Operating System chosen

  4. IPv6 must be disabled. Make also sure that the /etc/hosts does not contain any IPv6 entries.

See the dedicated box below for details and examples.

Support for other distributions will be announced in due course when it becomes available.

Additional requirements

  • Acquaintance with the use of CLI is necessary. All carbonio commands must be executed as the zextras user (these commands will feature a zextras$ prompt), while all other commands must be issued as the root user, unless stated otherwise.

  • Commands or groups of commands may be different between Ubuntu and RHEL 8. This is shown by blue tabs: click on the tab of your choice to find the correct command.

  • When no such tabs are given, the commands to run are the same on Ubuntu and RHEL 8.

Configuring DNS resolution

To make sure that the DNS is correctly configured for both A and MX records: to do so, you can use any DNS resolution server, including dnsmasq, systemd-resolved, and bind.

We show as an example, only suitable for demo or testing purposes, how to install and configure dnsmasq for DNS resolution.

Example: Set up of dnsmasq for demo or test environment

Follow these simple steps to set up dnsmasq. These instructions are suitable for a demo or testing environment only.

Warning

On Ubuntu 20.04, installing and running dnsmasq may raise a port conflict over port 53 UDP with the default systemd-resolved service, so make sure to disable the latter before continuing with the next steps.

# apt install dnsmasq

# dnf install dnsmasq

To configure it, add the following lines to file /etc/dnsmasq.conf:

server=1.1.1.1
mx-host=example.com,mail.example.com,50
host-record=example.com,172.16.0.10
host-record=mail.example.com,172.16.0.10

Remember to replace the 172.16.0.10 IP address with the one of your server. Then, make sure that the etc/resolv.conf contains the line:

nameserver 127.0.0.1

This will ensure that the local running dnsmasq is used for DNS resolution. Finally, restart the dnsmasq service

# systemctl restart dnsmasq

Firewall Ports

For Carbonio to operate properly, it is necessary to allow network communication on specific ports. On a Single-Server installation, only ports in the External Connections must be opened, because all the remaining traffic does not leave the Server.

In Multi-Server installation, ports listed in the Internal Connections and Carbonio Mesh must be opened on all nodes, while those in the External Connections only on the node on which the service runs. For example, port 443 should be opened only on the node hosting the Proxy Role.

TCP External Connections

Port

Service

25

Postfix incoming mail

80

unsecured connection to the Carbonio web client

110

external POP3 services

143

external IMAP services

443

secure connection to the Carbonio web client

465

deprecated SMTP authentication relay 1

587

Port for smtp autenticated relay, requires STARTTLS (or opportunistic SSL/TLS)

993

external IMAP secure access

995

external POP3 secure access

8389

access to LDAP address books
1

This port is still used since in some cases it is considered safer than 587. It requires on-connection SSL.

Warning

SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 ports should be exposed only if really needed, and preferably only accessible from a VPN tunnel, if possible, to reduce the attack surface.

TCP Internal Connections

Port

Service

22

SSH access

389

unsecure LDAP connection

636

secure LDAP connection

3310

ClamAV antivirus access

6071

secure access to the Admin Panel

7025

local mail exchange using the LMTP protocol

7026

bind address of the Milter service

7047

used by the server to convert attachments

7071

Port for SOAP services communication

7072

NGINX discovery and authentication

7073

SASL discovery and authentication

7110

internal POP3 services

7143

internal IMAP services

7171

access Carbonio configuration daemon (zmconfigd)

7306

MySQL access

7780

the spell checker service access

7993

internal IMAP secure access

7995

internal POP3 secure access

8080

internal HTTP services access

8443

internal HTTPS services access

8735

Internal mailbox mailbox communication

8742

internal HTTP services

8743

internal HTTPS services

9071

used only in one case 2

10024

Amavis Postfix

10025

Amavis OpenDKIM

10026

configuring Amavis policies

10028

Amavis content filter

10029

Postfix archives access

10032

Amavis SpamAssassin

23232

internal Amavis services access

23233

SNMP-responder access

11211

memcached access
2

When the NGINX support for Administration Console and the mailboxd service run on the same host, this port can be used to avoid overlaps between the two services

Ports Used by Carbonio Mesh

These ports are used by Carbonio Mesh internally.

Port

Protocol

Service

8300

TCP Only

management of incoming requests from other agents

8301

TCP and UDP

management of gossip protocol 3 in the LAN

8600

TCP and UDP

DNS resolutions

8500

TCP Only

clients access to HTTP API

21000-21255

TCP range only

Automatical Sidecar service registrations
3

The Gossip protocol is an encrypted communication protocol used by Carbonio Mesh for message broadcasting and membership management.

Ports Used by Carbonio VideoServer

If you install the Carbonio VideoServer, you need to open these additional ports:

Port

Protocol

Service

8188

TCP

Internal connection

20000-40000

UDP

Client connections for the audio and video streams