Set up my Local Cloud Servers for Spam Experts

Prerequisites

In order to have the Spam Experts Local Cloud software deployed on your servers, you need to ensure the following steps have been covered:

  1. Trial (Optional) - Register for a Local Cloud trial, or skip this to go straight to a full production account
  2. Register - Create a Spam Experts account at https://my.spamexperts.com/register.php to
    • This step is mandatory if you haven’t registered already by setting up a Local Cloud trial (step 1)
  3. Place an order for the Local Cloud filtering service - Go to Client Area > Order then Request a Quote. A billing ticket will be submitted to our sales team
    • Please contact sales to ensure your billing request has been processed
  4. Fill in the Local Cloud Signup Form - Download the Local Cloud Signup form, fill in all the necessary information and return it to us
    • Preferably send it directly to your Account Manager who will give you all the contact details and necessary information
  5. Proceed with the installation steps as detailed below

Setup Requirements

Hardware Requirements

The minimum requirements for Local Cloud are as follows:

  • Two CPU Cores
  • CPU >= 1.8 GHz
  • 16GB RAM
  • Total /boot partition disk space: 487 MB
  • 145GB: minimum total size of the root partition.
    • When choosing the disk size for the quarantine/logging role (see Clustering), take into account that the larger the available disk space the more days you can store quarantine/logging data
    • This data can optionally be stored on a secondary mountpoint
  • Storage type in order of preference:
    • SSD
    • SAS
    • SATA
  • RAID1 or better is recommended against disk failure. RAID5, RAID6 or RAID10 are preferred
  • Disk write speed minimum of 50 MB/s

Network requirements

  • A non-firewalled internet connection (or all required ports opened - see Firewall Usage)
  • Each servername must resolve to one IPv4 (the primary server IP), and optionally in addition 1 IPv6 address (the primary server IPv6)
  • The primary IP of each server must have the reverse DNS set to the server hostname
  • All communication should be possible over the external IPs (in case of NAT), also communication between the servers in a Spam Experts setup
  • Server hostnames must not be used as MX record hostnames, as they will be visible in the email headers and cannot be changed without a reinstallation
    • Instead, you can use separate MX record hostnames to easily control the mail flow
  • Network Address Translation (NAT)
    • Our solution is fully compatible with a NAT system when properly configured. If you have any questions, please contact our support team

Software Requirements

  • Debian Linux (version 11) minimal installation with OpenSSH-Server, 64-bit
  • No modifications to the default Debian 11 configuration
  • Installation on a single partition (no separate partitions for /home, /boot etc). Only separate partition for swap
  • There is no custom software installed
  • A non-firewalled internet connection or required ports opened - see Firewall Usage.

    We run a firewall locally on the systems, and fully protect all services. The security is fully managed by Spam Experts, and we welcome any security audit after the setup of the environment has completed.

  • No modification (in case of virtualization) of /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, /etc/resolv.conf after our setup - see Virtualization 
    • Spam Experts will take full care of the software management on the cluster

      • Customers should not change the configuration of the OS / software (except for the networking settings)

  • Round Robin DNS setup is recommended - see Local Cloud MX Records
  • SSH is remotely accessible with the root user on port 22 (this will be secured by Spam Experts as part of the setup)

Add SSH Keys for Passwordless SSH Connection

After the Debian setup is completed, you need to add SSH Keys for the Spam Experts Setup Operators in order to connect via SSH to your Spam Experts server without a password.

To enable this, just run the following command in a terminal:

wget https://download.seinternal.com/install/init.sh && bash ./init.sh

We need direct SSH access on port 22 as we cannot manage any firewall restrictions on your end. That would imply providing our source IPs and we cannot do this because in case of any changes the network will break.

Installation of the solution

Once everything is ready to go, the Spam Experts installation team will install the servers. During this time, it is important that the servers are online and reachable. Do not shut them down or reboot them during the installation, since this may prolong the installation.

The installation can take up to 7 working days. Once this is done, you will be provided with login details.

Installation complete, now what?

Once the installation is complete, and you have been provided with the login credentials, you can start using the solution.

Manually installing Debian

For details on completing the Debian installation, see the Debian Installation Guide.

You can find the download links from the Debian site.