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Course Outline

Introduction to Stalwart

  • Understanding what Stalwart is and its purpose
  • Architecture based on a single Rust binary
  • Comparison with traditional mail stacks
  • Licensing: AGPL-3.0 and Enterprise editions

Installation and Initial Setup

  • System requirements and platform support
  • Installation via Docker and Docker Compose
  • Bare-metal installation on Linux from binary
  • Selecting the database backend
  • Bootstrap mode and setup wizard

Core Protocols and DNS Configuration

  • SMTP configuration for inbound and outbound mail
  • IMAP4 and JMAP for mail access
  • POP3 support for legacy clients
  • DNS records: MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC
  • Automated DKIM key rotation

Security and Authentication Mechanisms

  • TLS with ACME certificate provisioning
  • DANE and MTA-STS for transport security
  • Authentication backends: internal, LDAP, OIDC, SQL
  • OAuth 2.0 and two-factor authentication
  • Access control lists (ACLs) and permissions management
  • Rate limiting and automated IP blocking

Spam and Phishing Protection Strategies

  • Built-in spam filter architecture
  • AI and LLM-driven classification techniques
  • Statistical Bayesian classifier
  • DNS blocklists and Pyzor integration
  • Greylisting and spam trap implementations
  • Protection against phishing and homographic attacks

Storage and Search Backends

  • Storage options: RocksDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite
  • Cloud blob storage with S3 and Azure support
  • Caching mechanisms using Redis
  • Full-text search: built-in capabilities versus external engines

Collaboration Services

  • CalDAV and JMAP Calendars
  • CardDAV and JMAP Contacts
  • WebDAV file storage solutions
  • Sharing features with ACLs and JMAP Sharing

Multi-Tenancy and User Management

  • Domain and tenant isolation techniques
  • User accounts and groups management
  • Mailing lists and aliases setup
  • Subaddressing and catch-all addresses configuration
  • Disk quotas per user and tenant allocation

Administration and Monitoring Practices

  • WebUI dashboard for statistics and monitoring
  • CLI tools for scripting and automation
  • SMTP queue management strategies
  • OpenTelemetry and Prometheus metrics integration
  • Webhooks for event-driven automation

Clustering and High Availability Setup

  • Peer-to-peer cluster coordination mechanisms
  • Clustering implementations with Kafka and Redis
  • Read replicas and sharded storage architectures
  • Kubernetes deployment strategies
  • Fault tolerance design principles

Advanced Configuration Options

  • Sieve scripting language usage
  • MTA hooks and milter integration
  • Routing rules and virtual queues setup
  • Envelope rewriting techniques

Migration and Integration Paths

  • Migrating from Postfix and Dovecot environments
  • Migration strategies for Exchange users
  • Autoconfig and Autodiscover implementations
  • Automated DNS management solutions
  • API-driven declarative deployment approaches

Requirements

  • Proficiency in working on the Linux command line
  • Fundamental understanding of DNS concepts
  • Knowledge of email fundamentals is advantageous but not mandatory

Target Audience

  • System administrators
  • DevOps and platform engineers
  • IT infrastructure specialists
  • Individuals managing or planning a self-hosted email deployment
 21 Hours

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