Lotus Protector – The story beginns (12/28/2009)

ust a short update – I thought I could use a few days of not-so-busy-time to see what the new Lotus Protector 2.5 is all about. Since it can be downloaded as a VMWare image and thrown on a simple VMWare server, this is an ideal device for me – or at least this is the premise I started this under.

Download – unfortunately the VMWare image is only available as a self-extracting WINDOWS .exe file – since my VMWare servers are all Red Hat or CentOS I had to download that file to my PX, unpack it and then copy the files onto the Linux server. My request to Lotus (if you guys are reading) create a [xx.tar.gz] file for us Linux users please!
Especially since the first download of the 1.8 GB file would not unpack, it always failed on my at 46% so I had to download it a second time – then it worked. I personally don’t like self-extracting files, they can be a mess and are REALLY susceptible to that one bad bit in a download …

Other than that, man is this easy. Throw the VMWare image into the folders your server knows about, add it and … PRESTO! I have been testing it since yesterday and it looks pretty solid. Configuration is rather easy, I did also download the documentation : Adminsitrator Guide Version 2.5 and Getting Started Guide Version 2.5 which you will both need to read to get it up and running. The configuration was so easy, I thought I must have done it wrong and skipped things as I am used to so much more to do from working with devices like IronPort etc. turns out – it is pretty easy. I am going to throw it into the mail stream later today and see how it does. I also run Symantec AV/Anti-spam on my servers so I am curious to see if they catch anything that Protector might miss.

The next step is then the integration with Domino 8.5.1 and the mail files. Flipping on a policy adds the quarantine and rules etc. for each mail user into their navigation bar on the left. I personally use eProductivity’s mail template for my personal mail file, but i will see how it does and also check with some bogus accounts and my prime testers – my kids (I like to call them my little lab-hamsters … lol).

I’ll share the outcome of my mail testing sometime by the end of the week or maybe next week, depending on how things go.

Victor

PS: Lotus Protector is free for 2 MONTHS – full functionality. If you want to test it, it is a free download and you pay nothing for 2 MONTHS. Did I stress the fact that you get full functionality for 2 MONTHS yet? If this works the way I hope it will, I can drop my Symantec premium Anti-Spam license which is quite costly. That would be NICE!