SmarterMail System Requirements? (SM16/SM17)

Question asked by Dave Camenisch - 8/11/2018 at 1:28 AM

Answered

The release notes for SM16.x says:
IMPORTANT: SmarterMail 16.x requires installation on Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit or higher...

My Smarter Mails 16 (16.3.x) installation still runs on a Windows Server 2008 R2 (64bit) with no problems. Now I'm a little irritated by the statement above!?! Why should SM16 require Win Server 2012?

Will SM17 have other system requirements than SM16? Or will it still run under Windows Server 2008 R2?

5 Replies

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echoDreamz Replied

8/11/2018 at 4:30 PM

Since SM 16 relies heavily on SignalR, which uses WebSockets, it requires at least IIS 8 (Server 2012). However, I believe SignalR may have a fall back to forever frames, ajax request polling or server-sent events, so while it is running, you are not going to get the most out of SM 16 since your web server does not support WebSockets.

echoDreamz Replied

8/11/2018 at 4:38 PM

This is just one reason I can think of, I dont know of any other limitations etc. since I am not an SM developer, I just know the requirement of SignalR uses WebSockets. Have to wait for an SM dev to chime in as to other reasons why they have this requirement. There may be other components that are running along with SignalR that may want the newer IIS.

Employee Replied

8/14/2018 at 10:50 AM

Employee Post Marked As Answer

Hi Dave,

SmarterMail 16.x and 17.x share the same system requirements. Both of these versions may work just fine on a Windows 2008 R2. However, we highly recommend Windows Server 2012 R2 or higher for two main reasons:

The end-of-life mainstream support for Windows Server 2008 R2 ended back on January 13, 2015, and on January 14, 2020, Microsoft will end all support for Windows Server 2008 R2.

More importantly, the lack of web sockets in IIS 7.0/7.5 prevent SmarterMail from utilizing SignalR, which is what allows the server to send real-time communication to client-side web applications. Without it, your users may experience delays within the web interface since they would be leveraging Long Polling rather than SignalR. Users may also experience issues with items refreshing within their web interface, chat messages coming through in a delayed fashion, Inbox failing to update, notes not refreshing upon save, etc.

Long polling will be the fallback solution if web sockets are not in use, but the best experience would be on Windows 2012 R2 or higher.

I hope this helps!