Zimbra Server Architecture

Server architecture

After detailed research and multiple inferences, JavaScript has emerged as the right choice for Zimbra Collaboration Server. Mentioned below are some of the reasons:

• Java is very well-integrated with the web.
• Java cleverly integrates all codes without the chances of garbage collection, memory reference errors, etc.
• Zimbra offers better performance in head-to-head benchmarking when pitted against even the fastest C- based programs.
• Java environments quickly and securely carry out thousands of transactions per second.

Message store

The Zimbra message store is built on a system where the mapping frequency is one file per message. This has a number of benefits:

• In Zimbra, messages once written can be easily retrieved as file systems are very efficient at storing and retrieving information.
• Information assortment for garbage is provided by the OS, resulting in greater efficiency and lower administrative overhead.
• Independent utilities, tools and scripts can easily recognize and process Zimbra message representation on disk.
• Provides OS capabilities such as search, solidity and security.
• Zimbra caches data itself and also utilizes the OS caching.

Metadata SQL store

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite comes with a database for managing mailbox meta-data. The benefits of using a relational database are:

• It leads to efficient search and reliable updates for highly structured meta-data.
• Relational databases provide very efficient caching for both reads and writes which ensures no data is lost at the time of an outage.
• Provides flexibility and investment protection where ZCS mailbox server can be quickly moved to other relational databases..

Search

Search feature ensures that users can access whatever information they are looking for instantaneously. All the meta-data that may be associated with a message can be searched as individual criteria. Zimbra provides a simple grammar for searches and offers an advanced search option as well. The advantages of this search are access to full mailboxes, faster disk/CPU for increased performance and no redundant computation.

Saved searches

Once carried out, searches can also be saved. The saved searches can be used typically to provide “views” or “virtual folders” of your inbox or full mailbox.

Cross-mailbox search

All the Zimbra search capabilities are available to administrators that can be used across specified mailboxes.

Lucene Index

Lucene is a search engine from Apache that generates a complete section index for all words in a particular message and its attachments. This results in optimized searches.