Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 20:04:00 +0200 From: Andre Oppermann <oppermann@pipeline.ch> To: GVB <gvb@tns.net> Cc: freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Mail server... Message-ID: <35C89E8F.EB696A97@pipeline.ch> References: <199808051615.JAA16304@merchant.tns.net>
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GVB wrote: > > Question, I have setup FreeBSD systems with sendmail and qpopper for use as > small mail servers for small ISP's and such, but have never dealt with REAL > hardware, and REAL loads. I am faced now wiht the following situation. I > need to build a mail server that will accecpt mail for over 50,000 users, > and theoretically about 500 users MAX at a time would be popping their Neat. > email. I dont know the limitations of sendmail or qpopper and I dont know > what kind of load this is going to be putting on a system. Can someone make > some recomendations for me as far as hardware goes, and the software used. Of course, see below. > >From what I understand, sendmail will work for this kind of load, but Sendmail can't cope well with such loads (especially if it's queue gets bigger and bigger and some remote sites are down). I'd suggest qmail or Vmailer for that task. I recommend qmail because it's on the market for three years now and rock solid, it's reliability is also outstanding. It guarantees that you wont loose any message once it entered your system even in case of a crash (except physical harddisk failure). Qmail has also very good anti-SPAM patches. Another argument for qmail is it's maildir mailbox structure, it does one file for every message and this works without any locking hassles that are needed for sendmail mboxes. Vmailer is still in beta and I wouldn't run it on such a site for the first time. We are doing a qmail-LDAP integration to ease the management of user accounts. In my current test suite the LDAP lookups take only 2-3% of the performance. The qmail homepage is here: http://www.qmail.org To get the 'big picture' of how qmail works (done by me, I have to fix some typos): http://www.nrg4u.com > qpopper isnt a wide choice for this much traffic? I will need HUGE amounts > of hard drive space so any recomendations on RAID controllers and such is I would suggest something like this: 1x NetApp Filer for maildir storage (does RAID5 and backup) 1x FreeBSD box for POP3, mounts the Filer storage (PII-3xx/256MB/BootHD) 1x FreeBSD box for incoming SMTP, mounts the Filer storage (PII-3xx/128MB/SCSI HD 4-8G for incoming queue, must be fast) 1x FreeBSD box for outgoing SMTP, has it's own queue storage (PII-3xx/128MB/SCSI HD 4-8G for outgoing queue, must be fast) This configuration would be capable to handle a number of messages in the mid two digit million range. Keep in mind: qmail is extremly I/O intensive, CPU is rarely used. > also appriciated. Also, does FreeBSD take advantage of dual processers? Is FreeBSD won't take advantage of two processors until release 3.0 which due in october. > this going to be PC hardware that will be able to handle this load or am I > talking some other hardware? Thanks.. PC hardware is capable of handling such a load. -- Andre Oppermann CEO / Geschaeftsfuehrer Internet Business Solutions Ltd. (AG) Hardstrasse 235, 8005 Zurich, Switzerland Fon +41 1 277 75 75 / Fax +41 1 277 75 77 http://www.pipeline.ch ibs@pipeline.ch To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message
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