From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Apr 12 16:13:56 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.ocs.drexel.edu (mail.irt.drexel.edu [129.25.3.58]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0CD2537B916 for ; Wed, 12 Apr 2000 16:13:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from st96yb9t@drexel.edu) Received: from [10.0.0.11] (adsl-151-197-17-59.bellatlantic.net) by mail.ocs.drexel.edu (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.3.5.1999.03.02.17.58.p5) with ESMTP id <0FSX0086BF6LBU@mail.ocs.drexel.edu> for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Wed, 12 Apr 2000 19:13:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 19:16:07 -0400 From: Yoshihiro Ota Subject: Re: high volume mail server hardware suggestions In-reply-to: <000b01bfa4cb$62fa4b30$c71930d0@hoorj> To: Michael Dungan Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-id: <0FSX0086CF6MBU@mail.ocs.drexel.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Macintosh Eudora Pro Version 3.1.1-Jr1 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii References: <200004122154.RAA11001@blackhelicopters.org> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I've never done such a reserch. Hoever, as far as I have seen performance with the top command (I really like to see it and have done it for years), proc power is not fully used when I/O or swapping occer. If you want to use full power of CPU, you need lots of memory first. Otherwise, you can waste your CPU power with swapping. Sending e-mail doesn't require I/O, so CPU power and lots of memory are needed. Receiving e-mail needs I/O, and RAID helps to increase the performance of I/O. I think if about 80% to 90% CPU power is used, that's the time when you may consider adding more CPUs. Until that, I think you need more memory than CPUs. (This is my openion; some one has another openion). The ftp.freebsd.org server has 4GB of memory and RAID system, but I forget how many CPUs. Hiro At 6:06 PM -0400 4/12/00, Michael Dungan wrote: > So you would say that memory is more important than proc power? My boss > wants to know whether we should purchase dual or quad proc boxen. (We would > be purchasing more dual boxen if we went this route.) Are they any online > case studies on this? I'm no e-mail admin, but I'm the one stuck setting > this all up. > > Thanks, > > Mike > > > > My suggestions (keeping in mind that other people will disagree with me): > > > > 1) SCSI, hardware RAID > > 2) /usr/ports/mail/postfix > > 3) lots and lots and lots of memory > > > > You can handle tens of thousands of users with this setup. > > > > > Does anyone have any suggestions for hardware for running high volume > e-mail > > > servers with FreeBSD? Should I use a few "large" servers, or several > smaller > > > ones? > > > > > > thanks, > > > > > > Mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message