Mailcow on Kubernetes

pranavdhopey

Hi everyone,

We are exploring the possibility of deploying a Mailcow setup on Kubernetes. While attempting this internally, we’ve made several adjustments to the Dockerfiles and configurations for individual Mailcow components to make them compatible with K8s. However, we’ve encountered multiple challenges and stability issues during this process.

Before going further, we wanted to check:

Has anyone in the community successfully deployed Mailcow on Kubernetes?
Are there any community-supported approaches, Helm charts, or proof-of-concepts (PoCs) available?
If Kubernetes is not recommended or feasible, is deploying Mailcow on Docker Swarm a viable alternative?

We would greatly appreciate any guidance, references, or shared experiences.

Thanks in advance!

pkernstock

It’s not designed for Kubernetes, as it e.g. uses local iptables for firewall bans (for fail2ban functionality), etc.

pranavdhopey

Thank you @pkernstock for your response, it was really helpful.

I also wanted to check on a related scenario:

We are considering moving the Redis and MySQL containers out of the Mailcow stack and replacing them with managed services. Would this be advisable in your opinion?
Since all the Mailcow components are tightly interconnected, introducing managed Redis and MySQL might require significant changes across other containers to ensure proper communication.
Has anyone in the community tried this approach? If yes, how complex was the process, and were there any major challenges or limitations encountered?

Any insights or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated.