Linux Mail Server Advice Question

I work for a company that has a pretty high turn over rate.

What i would like to do is setup a linux mail server, so i can give everyone company email. So far everyone that works in the corporate office has it but field people do not. The reason for this is the high turn over rate. It would be an absolute nightmare to try and administer addresses.

So what i really need is something that can support roughly 600 users, and something that can connect to microsoft sql, and check an employee's status before they login. I've personally used linux as at a purely hobbyist level. I run all the Microsoft Web Servers including the web mail server. I'm a coldfusion developer so my web mail is based on coldfusion, and MSSQL.

So I have a SQL database administrator on hand as well as a network admin, and a few developers.


What i need to know is what software do i need to setup something up like this? Any suggestions on hardware requirements and is it all open source or is on a per user basis.

Funds aren't unlimited on but i can have some room to play around. If you ask why i didn't just get an exchange server it's because it's ungodly expensive with the amount of users we have.

Even though this is a linux forum, I'm going to recommend you use Microsoft Exchange. Then you'll have your active directory, which is awesome if I do say so myself, so you'll add the user there and create the mailbox. Then when the person quits just disable their account, which disables the mailbox as well. It might be expensive, but it is the answer to all your needs. 600 people will be fine with exchange, my old job we had around 250 people and were able to justify the cost of an exchange server--and this was with a municipal government in a small town so we had a fairly limited budget too.

If you are limited to MS SQL then obviously your choice should involve Exchange.

//closed.