Before you run **mailcow: dockerized**, there are a few requirements that you should check:
!!! warning
Do **not** try to install mailcow on a Synology/QNAP device (any NAS), OpenVZ, LXC or other container platforms. KVM, ESX, Hyper-V and other full virtualization platforms are supported.
!!! info
- mailcow: dockerized requires [some ports](#default-ports) to be open for incoming connections, so make sure that your firewall is not blocking these.
- Make sure that no other application is interfering with mailcow's configuration, such as another mail service
- A correct DNS setup is crucial to every good mailserver setup, so please make sure you got at least the [basics](../prerequisite/prerequisite-dns.en.md#the-minimal-dns-configuration) covered before you begin!
- Make sure that your system has a correct date and [time setup](#date-and-time). This is crucial for various components like two factor TOTP authentication.
We are aware that a pure MTA can run on 128 MiB RAM. mailcow is a full-grown and ready-to-use groupware with many extras making life easier. mailcow comes with a webserver, webmailer, ActiveSync (MS), antivirus, antispam, indexing (Solr), document scanner (Oletools), SQL (MariaDB), Cache (Redis), MDA, MTA, various web services etc.
A single SOGo worker **can** acquire ~350 MiB RAM before it gets purged. The more ActiveSync connections you plan to use, the more RAM you will need. A default configuration spawns 20 workers.
There are several problems with running mailcow on a firewalld/ufw enabled system. <br>
You should disable it (if possible) and move your ruleset to the DOCKER-USER chain, which is not cleared by a Docker service restart, instead. <br>
See [this (blog.donnex.net)](https://blog.donnex.net/docker-and-iptables-filtering/) or [this (unrouted.io)](https://unrouted.io/2017/08/15/docker-firewall/) guide for information about how to use iptables-persistent with the DOCKER-USER chain.<br>
As mailcow runs dockerized, INPUT rules have no effect on restricting access to mailcow. <br>
If this command returns any results please remove or stop the application running on that port. You may also adjust mailcows ports via the `mailcow.conf` configuration file.
### Default Ports
If you have a firewall in front of mailcow, please make sure that these ports are open for incoming connections:
| Service | Protocol | Port | Container | Variable |
To bind a service to an IP address, you can prepend the IP like this: `SMTP_PORT=1.2.3.4:25`
**Important**: You cannot use IP:PORT bindings in HTTP_PORT and HTTPS_PORT. Please use `HTTP_PORT=1234` and `HTTP_BIND=1.2.3.4` instead.
### Important for Hetzner firewalls
Quoting https://github.com/chermsen via https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized/issues/497#issuecomment-469847380 (THANK YOU!):
For all who are struggling with the Hetzner firewall:
Port 53 unimportant for the firewall configuration in this case. According to the documentation unbound uses the port range 1024-65535 for outgoing requests.
Since the Hetzner Robot Firewall is a static firewall (each incoming packet is checked isolated) - the following rules must be applied:
**For TCP**
```
SRC-IP: ---
DST IP: ---
SRC Port: ---
DST Port: 1024-65535
Protocol: tcp
TCP flags: ack
Action: Accept
```
**For UDP**
```
SRC-IP: ---
DST IP: ---
SRC Port: ---
DST Port: 1024-65535
Protocol: udp
Action: Accept
```
If you want to apply a more restrictive port range you have to change the config of unbound first (after installation):
Especially relevant for OpenStack users: Check your MTU and set it accordingly in docker-compose.yml. See **4.1** in [our installation docs](../i_u_m/i_u_m_install.en.md).
