Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:17:11 -0500 From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> To: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Maximum recommended user limits on mail server Message-ID: <3E7E0837.1080408@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10303190835230.26390-100000@misery.sdf.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10303190835230.26390-100000@misery.sdf.com>
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Tom Samplonius wrote: > On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Bill Vermillion wrote: [ ... ] >> He's thinking he needs to go with 'big iron' such as SUN. > Well, if he wants to waste money.... 10 to 15K accounts is not a lot > accounts. Plus, "Sun big iron" comes with such slow processors. For > instance, the 2.4Ghz Xeon is going to be faster than any single Sun > processor. You'll need a quad Ultrasparc to keep up with a basic dual > Xeon (like Dell Poweredge 2650). # of disk spindles and the I/O system matter a lot more than CPU power does for the user aspects of what mail servers do; ie, the box(es) with filestorage holding user's mailboxes, the place which runs your IMAP/POP services, etc. You'd want CPU power more for virus scanning and spam-testing; a Dell PE would do just fine as the SMTP relay box, which processes all mail in and out of the mbox-storage/MUA system(s). A Sun E450 with twenty disks across five SCSI channels (66MHz/64bit PCI) can make the difference between fifty hours of downtime per year with Intel gear versus 50 minutes with the Sun. If ~50 hours of downtime per year costs more than $30K, getting the Sun is probably worth it. That's not to say that Sun is the only solution, but you do want something which can handle up to 1.6+ Gbs of disk bandwidth plus however much for network traffic as well. If this mail server is local to a company's office, and they're doing multimedia, you might need more than 100Mbs ethernet. An E450, or maybe a 280R + a D1000 storage setup would fit the bill nicely. Or perhaps a Apple Xserve plus their new fibre RAID storage box? :-) I'd wait for SATA drives, MB's, and such to evolve for another generation and see how they're doing then, before I'd switch from SCA-2 [80-pin hot-pluggable SCSI-3 format] as a preferred format. And you should be looking to do RAID-1,0 (or -10, or -0+1), not RAID-5. And you should be looking for disks that have at least a 3-year warrantee. -- -Chuck To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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