Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:34:48 -0400 From: Jim Durham <jimd@nepinc.com> To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Mail Server recommendations Message-ID: <200504281334.48362.jimd@nepinc.com> In-Reply-To: <20050428144619.GA8412@energistic.com> References: <200504281032.33822.jimd@nepinc.com> <20050428144619.GA8412@energistic.com>
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On Thursday 28 April 2005 10:46 am, Steve Ames wrote: > Which version of FreeBSD are you running? Sorry...that's what happens when you get interrupted 4 times while trying to post 8-) ! I'm running 4.10. I have a couple 5.x boxes, but I haven't moved the production servers to 5.x yet. > Are you using 5.X to > take full advantage of both processors? To get the 'quantum' > upgrade a single faster machine is the way to go. Have you > done any profiling to see where the current bottleneck is? Is > it I/O, CPU cycles, network? Load average was as high as 125. Lots of virus scanning and spam scanning processes. > n many cases it would make sense > to put in another box to distribute the network/CPU load but > that comes with increased storage complexity (getting all > machines to write to a common filesystem)... but given that > spamassassin and clamav are CPU and memory intensive I'd think > that was a solid tradeoff. For the cost of buying one BIG > machine you could get 2-3 of the size you have now and > distribute the load. That's an option I was considering. Like you say, sharing mailboxes for POP can be interesting. One thing that I have considered also is having a 'plain vanilla' sendmail installation that folks POP from and do all the scanning on a set of load-balanced machines and then they just relay it to the POP machine. Something like that... > > On Thu, Apr 28, 2005 at 10:32:33AM -0400, Jim Durham wrote: > > Hi, > > > > We currently have a dual-1.8 Xeon box with 2gb ram and > > Raid-1 160mhz SCSI's running sendmail/procmail/spamassassin > > and clamav. > > > > Our place is growing, adding users and so, we need a bigger, > > faster box. > > > > Question: Currently the box mentioned is a Dell PowerEdge > > 2650. We like to deal with Dell, but it's not absolutely > > "written in stone" that I do so. I bought a 2650 because we > > got one to run a Windows server and I booted FreeBSD on it > > to see what it would make of the PERC3 Raid and all that and > > it was just fine. The 2650 just 'loves' FreeBSD, so we > > bought one and its worked well, but we need more performance > > now. What bigger, faster box would make a significant jump > > in speed and capacity runs FreeBSD well? > > > > I can get a 2850 with 3gb processors, 320mhz SCSIs and add > > more RAM, but I'm not sure that would give us a quantum-leap > > in performance. > > Thanks for the input... -- Jim Durham
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