From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 18 16:48:26 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F060716A4CE for ; Fri, 18 Jun 2004 16:48:26 +0000 (GMT) Received: from www.wcborstel.nl (wcborstel.demon.nl [82.161.134.53]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 092BB43D55 for ; Fri, 18 Jun 2004 16:48:26 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jorn@wcborstel.nl) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (unknown [192.168.2.110]) by www.wcborstel.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 69755809D; Fri, 18 Jun 2004 18:47:03 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <40D31C71.5090400@wcborstel.nl> Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 18:46:41 +0200 From: Jorn Argelo User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 (Windows/20040502) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Martin McCormick References: <200406181113.i5IBDh1E035926@dc.cis.okstate.edu> In-Reply-To: <200406181113.i5IBDh1E035926@dc.cis.okstate.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sendmail for Large Sites X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 16:48:27 -0000 Martin McCormick wrote: > How well does the administration of Sendmail scale up to sites >serving as many as 25,000 users? > > On my traineeship we used two sendmail servers (a mail in and a mail out, both connected to an anti virus machine and then send to an Exchange server, where the actual mail gathered), and it worked just fine. This was used for about 2000-3000 users. These machines were running Solaris 8 though, but that doesn't really matter. When you used "top", the machines only had a server load of 1.85 or something. Some peeks up to 2.00, but not extreme high values. These were running on an UltraSPARC II or III (can't recall clearly, but they were quite old). Ironicly enough, the two Solaris machines always worked without giving a kick, and the Exchange enviroment was always a problem. So in other words, these machines were merely gateways, but all the mails from all the locations all over Europe passed trough those two machines. I'm not really sure if you're planning to use a POP or IMAP daemon (not sure either if you can fetch mail from a mailserver using LDAP) on those machines as well, but if that's the case you'll need some heavier machines. Do note that Sendmail recenly comes to the news with some major security exploits, so perhaps Postfix or Qmail is a better option. Cheers, Jorn