We have a moderate-sized Cyrus system for 30,000 students and 3000 employees. It's a critical service in the sense that thousands of people depend on it. It has excellent performance, lots of capacity, and plans for expansion. I'm the only one familiar enough with Cyrus and sendmail to maintain it, although this is not normally full time. I'm also the one who tracks down hard problems in Unix and does development in a number of other areas. Other than our data management person, who supplies the LUNs for the e-mail store, I'm the one who manages the system. I'm also going to be 65 in two days, although I plan to stay around for a year or so. My director will be replacing me, but I assume this will be with an entry-level person who will not have the ability to maintain the Cyrus system, at least initially. Other people in my group do not have the skills or the available time to administer this system. I'm trying to convince him to hire somebody with development and programming experience, but without much success so far. How many and what sort of people does it take to maintain a system such as this? I need a good argument for hiring a replacement for me. My director seems interested in outsourcing our e-mail system, judging by the number of articles on outsourcing that he sends to me. Google and Zimbra with a commercial contractor are the latest two. Replacing a perfectly functioning e-mail system seems ludicrous to me, as does subjecting our users to a migration for no reason. I assume at least that he wants vendors to quote on a replacement system. Perhaps once he sees the cost, he will change his mind. I suppose it depends on whether the quote includes the real cost. Does anyone here have experience in this area? I know that CMU and other universities want to maintain their own e-mail systems. What's the justification in these cases? -- -Gary Mills- -Unix Support- -U of M Academic Computing and Networking- ---- Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html
