From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 1 16:10:12 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org 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 009DB16A420 for ; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 16:10:12 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from pi.codefab.com (pi.codefab.com [199.103.21.227]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D3FB843D45 for ; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 16:10:10 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pi.codefab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A8D65CC7; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 11:10:10 -0500 (EST) Received: from pi.codefab.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (pi.codefab.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 31718-07; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 11:10:08 -0500 (EST) Received: from [192.168.1.3] (pool-68-161-67-226.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.67.226]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pi.codefab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1310F5CC1; Wed, 1 Feb 2006 11:10:07 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <43E0DD60.8060208@mac.com> Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 11:10:08 -0500 From: Chuck Swiger Organization: The Courts of Chaos User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lisa Casey References: <014001c62743$f11bf070$d51a2cd0@lisac> In-Reply-To: <014001c62743$f11bf070$d51a2cd0@lisac> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.94.0.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at codefab.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Getting a new server X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:10:12 -0000 Lisa Casey wrote: > My company (a medium sized ISP) has decided to replace one of our mail > servers. We need more CPU power, memory, etc. My boss is talking about > getting 2 good size hard drives with a raid card to mirror these. I was > planning to install FreeBSD 5.3 (because that's the latest distro I have > CD's for) unless anyone has a good reason why not. 5.4 is out, but you can easily install from your FreeBSD 5.3 CD's and upgrade. 6.0 is also worth taking a look at, if you have time to test it and make sure it works with the software you want to run. Most people are wise to be cautious about adopting a .0 release, but 6.0 is solid. > I'll be installing Sendmail, mimedefang/spamassassin (somewhat CPU > intensive), bind (for a caching name server), Qpopper, procmail. We > currently have 500 - 600 mail accounts on the current server, and plan > to move these to the new server plus use the new one for growth (I don't > know how quickly new mail accounts will be added, but say 20 to 50 > accounts per month. > > What would you folks reccomend as far as hardware goes? Hard drive size, > CPU type, amount of RAM, etc.? If you're buying new hardware, pretty much anything has enough CPU to handle the reader side; the spamfiltering and virus scanning will be more CPU-intensive. Dual-3GHz Xeon's with 2GB of RAM? Your normal candidates, Dell, HP, IBM, all have reasonably similar models (PowerEdge 28x0, HP DL370/380, etc) which will do just fine for this sort of thing. If at all possible, it would be nice to seperate your MX box which does SMTP, virus scanning, and spam-filtering, and have another machine which is a reader box which runs your IMAP/POP daemons and has the filestorage to handle your mailboxes. As to storage: 100 MB per user * 1000 users == 100 GB of space If you want to give your users more room, buy more disk, but you should be looking into RAID-1 or RAID-10 configuration, preferably also using maildir rather than mbox style mailboxes. -- -Chuck