Re: [gentoo-server] Corporate Mail server HARDWARE question

[Patrick Lauer]

Let me disagree with you a bit :-)
On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 12:41 +0200, deadhead wrote:
> Reliability is fundamental so I'll buy from a vendor: if something
> (hardware) goes wrong you can call them to solve and stop.
That's why you want a small local shop. They have a direct interest in helping you - large suppliers usually don't care about people with one or two boxen.
Also in my experience building yourself gives much better results.

> Talking about storage, I'll use SCSI drives and a RAID1 hardware
> controller.
Nonsense ;-)
Linux software raid is as fast and easier to manage. Also SCSI is
expensive - for the price of two  scsi disks and a controller I can get
a 6-disk software RAID5 that will most likely outperform it and has
about 10x the space. 
For most uses el cheapo SATA will be better (but SCSI / SAS /
FibreChannel has its place)

> Ram more than processor is fundamental so try to keep always
> a slot free for future upgrades and don't buy ram from vendor but buy it
> yourself : it's cheap!
... and get as much as you can.
The step from 1G to 4G is quite nice, especially on servers.

> You should deploy what you know more, since , especially with so many
> users, if something goes wrong you have to be fast and effective.
So obvious and still often forgotten.

> An inhouse mail server could help to backup mails. You could use imap
> [give a try to dovecot, is AMAZING!] and let users access throught the
> best imap client, thunderbird [m$ told it :D
> http://blogs.msdn.com/omars/archive/2004/02/19/76061.aspx].
>
> File Server and mail server on the mail server? Well if the hardware is
> well tuned [check this 3d about xfs tune, with tips on raid1 hw
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-397320-highlight-xfs+danneggiato.html
> it's in italian but robotranlators can help you ;) ] and the amount of
> data is note HUGE you could do it. Number and the size of files matter
> either on the fileserver side etheir on the attachments. Use maildir to
> improve performances and avoid mailboxes corruption.
Split the disks - 2 for mail, 4 for fileserving or whatever.
That way there won't be much crosstalk between the applications (think
fileserving making mail crawl)
One more reason to get many cheap SATA disks ...

That's, obviously, just my opinion :-) but it has served me well.

Patrick
-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move