Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 15:00:52 -0500 From: "Troy Settle" <troy@psknet.com> To: <freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Maximum recommended user limits on mail server Message-ID: <003401c2f176$e8ca9260$aa8ffea9@abyss> In-Reply-To: <3E7E0837.1080408@mac.com>
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Well said Chuck, but I don't know if I agree with the 50 hour vs. 50 minute argument. Anyone who has 2 days of downtime per year needs to find a new line of work. I won't argue, however, that downtime on a properly configured Sun would be a fraction of a properly configured i386 box (I'm not too familiar with sun, but isn't there a model with hot-swap everything, including processor modules?). My current storage solution (FreeBSD 4-STABLE on a Celeron 600, 512MB, RAID5 [amr 466, 16MB, LVD, 40Mbit/s, SCA]) has seen less than 5 hours of downtime in the last 30 months. My SMTP/AV host has seen less than 2 hours of downtime in the last 18 months. Nearly all of that downtime was planned, and occurred in the wee hours of the morning. Personally, I can't see needing a Sun for quite some time. I know that my current solution would handle at least 20k accounts without much issue at all. The only concern I currently have, is that the hardware is coming up on 3 years old and should probably be replaced sooner than later. -- Troy Settle Pulaski Networks http://www.psknet.com 540.994.4254 ~ 866.477.5638 Pulaski Chamber 2002 Small Business Of The Year > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG > [mailto:owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG] On Behalf Of Chuck Swiger > Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2003 2:17 PM > To: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG > Subject: Re: Maximum recommended user limits on mail server > > > 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 > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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