How to install Zimbra 9 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Marcos Saiz

October 26, 2026 03:36
Updated

Zimbra is a collaborative email service that lets us manage emails, contacts, calendars, and chat collaboratively. Zimbra is available in an open-source version (Open Source) and a paid version (Network Edition). In this tutorial we will install Zimbra Open Source. Some of the options included in the paid version are:

Integration with MS Exchange
Zimbra Mobile (ActiveSync) Zimbra Mobile (ActiveSync)
Outlook Sync (MAPI) Outlook Sync (MAPI)

Zimbra recommends using a server with at least 8GB of RAM; in this tutorial we will use an Ubuntu server with 8GB, 4 Cores, and 50GB of disk space.

Preliminary Steps

We need to open the file /etc/hosts Once it is open, for the IP 127.0.1.1 we need to enter the full name with the domain followed by the machine name. It is important that this be a real name, such as the one Clouding provides by default.

127.0.1.1 54914be8-515a-4146-9631-920f478ca149.clouding.host 54914be8-515a-4146-9631-920f478ca149
93.189.93.136 ubuntu.repos.clouding.io
127.0.0.1 localhost

Then we will go to the file /etc/hostname and enter the machine name, for example in our case 54914be8-515a-4146-9631-920f478ca149.

Now we need to restart the server, for example with reboot.

Zimbra Installation

We will go to the Zimbra downloads website, fill in our details and download the latest version, connect to the server and run:

# apt-get install libreoffice libreoffice-l10n-* fonts-vlgothic
# wget https://files.zimbra.com/downloads/10.1.0_BETA/zcs-NETWORK-10.1.0_BETA_4848.UBUNTU24_64.20260106140815.tgz
# tar -xzf zcs*
# cd zcs-NETWORK-10.1.0_GA.UBUNTU20_64.20210920031140/
# ./install.sh

The Zimbra installation wizard will start. We will follow all the steps shown in the screenshots below, taking care to assign a password for the admin user.

We will need to accept the terms and conditions.