Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 09:14:44 -0500 From: "Dave [Hawk-Systems]" <dave@hawk-systems.com> To: "Tom Samplonius" <tom@sdf.com>, "Scott Gerhardt" <scott@g-it.ca> Cc: <nbari@unixmexico.com>, <freebsd-isp@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: qmail + 1 million users Message-ID: <DBEIKNMKGOBGNDHAAKGNOEDGDEAB.dave@hawk-systems.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10211050030410.5111-100000@misery.sdf.com>
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>> Hmm, 1,000,000 users with 2MB quota each will require 2TB of disk space >> minimum! You will need an external fiber channel or similar storage array. > > It has been a long time since I've seen a mail server with enough >storage to handle each mailbox at 100% capacity. Most people check their >mail regularly, and have empty boxes. In fact, on one mail server I've >seen, the total daily delivered volume of e-mail (7GB) exceeds the total >free space (5GB), but yet it never fills up, as most of are checking their >e-mail constantly, so the number of e-mails in and out is roughly the >same. That said, the volume of users he is talking putting on two 73GB drives... the potential for running into storage problems is high. ON a smaller scale, we have a server with 500 users, also using webmail interface (so some mail retention factors on the server) with each user set at 100mb limit per mailbox... all served off a 20gb partition for the maildirectories... currently the storage requirement is around 350mb. Another server with approximately 1300 users currently requires just under 1GB of storage. Alot will depend on HIS usage... a free or hotmail type service will result in a significant number of accounts that collect mail and are never emptied, thus he better have the maildir on a seperate parittion that won't crash and burn when he taps out the storage he has allocated to the maildirs. To the question though, the suggestions so far I am in agreement with... throw more ram at the swapfile problem, multiple smaller scsi disks will allow faster rw at raid1. If you are not wanting to totally overhaul the system, placing your swap (and systems files) on seperate disks than your mail storage may help by reducing accesses to the same drive(s)... depends on your raid config. Definately look into the cost of installing gateway SMTP servers as recommended, and equip them with spam filtering. That will probably knock off 30% or more of your volume, and give you a valueadd(if users are paying) at the same time. We just started looking at postini as as alternative for what we are currently running... havn't sifted through the effect on bandwidth yet to provide recommendation though. Cheers, Dave To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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