From owner-freebsd-questions Sat May 11 10: 1:29 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from raiden.jasnetworks.net (raiden.jasnetworks.net [65.194.248.251]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EA38437B400 for ; Sat, 11 May 2002 10:01:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from works (works.jasnetworks.net [192.168.0.2]) by raiden.jasnetworks.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g4BH8QK31864 for ; Sat, 11 May 2002 13:08:27 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from raiden23@netzero.net) Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20020511125817.009dc100@pop.netzero.net> X-Sender: raiden23@pop.netzero.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 13:08:21 -0400 To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: Lord Raiden Subject: Large numbers of users Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Just a little forethought to something that "might" (and the keyword here is "might") happen in the near future with us. Well actually it's gonna be up to me to solve this should it happen. In the race to consolidate things, one that I regrettably had to go through this winter and pray I never have to do again, companies want more out of less. Therefore, if things should shift and we're required to host a mail cluster that has over, oh say 200,000 users, how would I effectively host a mail cluster if the limit of users is 65k per machine? Is there a way to setup mail services that doesn't require me to have any actual user accounts on the machine, yet still provide mail services? So say when you finished setting up the server, the only 4 accounts that FreeBSD would see would be Root and 3 different administrator accounts. All the info for all the other mail users would be pulled from a different user password database which would be connected with the mail program only. I know this exists and I'm definitely behind the ball on doing this since to pass 5000 users on any server we have is a small miracle. But I'm trying to think ahead. So what solutions are there out there for providing mail services for user groups greater than 65k users? I'm not really worried about the file servers since I don't see them surpassing 500 users per machine anyways because of department breakdowns and such, but I do see the mail services easily passing the 65k mark at some point. So I'm trying to think ahead here a bit. Any suggestions anyone has on handling large numbers of users most efficiently is welcome. Again, this is a ways down the road, but I'd rather be learning and planning now, rather than plugging holes and fighting fires later. Thanks again everyone. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message