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Zentyal announces Zentyal Server 3.2, major new Linux Small Business Server release

Zentyal, developer of easy IT solutions for small business, today announced Zentyal Server 3.2, a major new release of the Zentyal Linux small business server. Zentyal aims at providing small and medium businesses a native Microsoft-compatible, all-in-one IT backoffice that can be set up in less than 30 minutes and is both easy to use and affordable, adapting painlessly to the business needs as they evolve.

“Zentyal is one of the few vendors worldwide to integrate the complex Samba technologies – that guarantee native interoperability with Microsoft Active Directory – together with over 30 other leading open source technologies into an easy-to-use server solution within the reach of small and medium businesses” said Julien Kerihuel, CTO of Zentyal, and continued “At a moment when leading manufacturers are pushing SMBs to the cloud independently of their needs, security concerns and connectivity issues, Zentyal Server offers a drop-in alternative to the existing solutions and gives SMBs the chance to choose their network infrastructure”.

The single most important improvement Zentyal Server 3.2 introduces is greater integration of the Samba technology, meaning that it is now possible to introduce Zentyal Server transparently on a Windows environment, migrate network services and users easily to Zentyal and then turn off unnecessary or unsupported Windows servers without causing any inconvenience to the users. Zentyal Server 3.2 also supports Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and Organizational Units (OUs) for the most important modules.

Furthermore, Zentyal Server 3.2 offers greater security by securing mobile communications to the private company resources out of the box without having to install any additional software on the mobile or remote devices. Moreover it comes with a new Intrusion Prevention module, that not only detects and alerts on the potential intruders trying to gain access to the corporate network, but also prevents and blocks potentially malicious software and connections. In addition, significant improvements have been made in the graphical user interface (GUI) of Zentyal Server to make it much faster and even easier to use.

The Zentyal Summit 2013, to be held on the 3rd and 4th of October in Zaragoza, Spain, offers an excellent opportunity to learn more from the Zentyal Server 3.2 release. The event, to be held under the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Go Hybrid‘ will focus specially on how to seamlessly replace Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange based solutions and what alternatives allow SMBs to keep their local IT infrastructure, while adapting cloud-solutions according to their needs. The event is free of charge and will be transmitted on-line, but registration is compulsory.

Technical features

Zentyal Server 3.2 offers greater Samba integration, featuring support for Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and Organizational Units (OUs) in the Samba, Proxy, Mail and Zarafa modules. It also comes with improved security guaranteeing safe mobile communications due to the integration of L2TP support in the IPsec module and new Intrusion Prevention module based on Suricata. Significant usability improvements – such as migration from JavaScript Prototype framework to jQuery, Single Click Support to enable modules and dependencies, Headless mode, etc. – have taken place as well, making Zentyal Server GUI much faster and easier to use.

New features and improvements include:

  • New base distribution: Ubuntu 12.04.03 Long Term Support, featuring a new Linux 3.8 kernel and providing the last updates for all the packages and services managed by Zentyal
  • Unified style and usability across the GUI, featuring Drag and Drop support to move table rows, Single Click Support to enable modules and their dependencies and icons
  • Integration of the latest Samba 4.1 release
  • Completely new Users and Computers interface based on a Tree view, including support for multiple Organizational Units for Samba, Proxy, Mail and Zarafa modules
  • New mode that allows to authenticate against an external Active Directory server
  • Initial GPO support for login/logout scripts
  • New IPS module
  • L2TP support in the IPsec module
  • Faster Zentyal administration interface
  • New headless (remote administration only) installation in the expert mode
  • Faster boot due to better management of daemons
  • Easy upgrade from an existing Zentyal Server 3.0 installation

Availability

Zentyal Server 3.2 is released under the GPLv2 license and is freely available for download at:
http://www.zentyal.com/download/

The Zentyal Server source code is available at:
https://github.com/Zentyal/zentyal/

Additional information

The detailed Zentyal 3.2 release announcement is available at:
http://trac.zentyal.org/wiki/Document/Announcement/3.2

The full change log from Zentyal 3.0 to 3.2 is available at:
http://trac.zentyal.org/wiki/Document/Changelog/3.2

The official Zentyal 3.2 documentation is available in English and Spanish at:
http://doc.zentyal.org

Featured Zentyal 3.2 screenshots are available at:
http://www.zentyal.org/server/#server-screenshots

Program and registration for ‘Zentyal Summit 2013 – Keep Calm and Go Hybrid’:
http://summit.zentyal.com

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