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On 1 Aug 2006, at 05:08, Dennis McLeod wrote: |
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> I'm curious what hardware you build on. Do you buy Dell, HP, build |
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> your |
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> own, or do something else? |
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I'd go with a Dell SC1425. Get them to put in 2 80Gb SATA drives and |
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buy an Adaptec RAID card so you can RAID1 them for a bit of data |
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security. Sure, you could build it cheaper if you really tried, but |
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is it worth it? They only cost ~£600 for what you'll need. |
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Where you'll really save money is by buying RAM from Crucial instead |
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of Dell. For what Dell charge for an extra 512Mb you can get 2Gb from |
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Crucial. |
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> What level of hardware would you use for an email only server with |
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> this |
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> number of accounts? |
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SC1425, 512Mb RAM, 2 RAID1 80Gb SATA drives. |
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Actually, I use a Xen VM with 512Mb RAM sitting on top of an SC1425 |
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with 2Gb RAM and 2 RAID1 SATA drives which uses a hub-and-spoke mail |
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delivery model to push mail to the servers which host the domains, |
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but the idea is the same :) |
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Xen allows me to have separate SMTP, MX, NS etc servers within one |
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physical host, each with a dedicated RAM allocation. Virtualisation |
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is a great word to chuck at management and if you do a little reading |
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you can get a CPU that'll let you run unmodified Windows VMs on top |
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of your Xen install which can be handy in a mixed environment. |
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> What if you added print and file services? |
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Stick in a bit more RAM and a second processor and you'll be fine. |
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Ideally you want a second server for file services, and printers |
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which have their own network interface but money might not stretch |
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that far. |
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> What do you use for backup? |
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A separate server with RAID5 and huge hard drives, only accessible |
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from a dedicated network -- not the same one that everyone else is |
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connected to! Because it'll only be accessed when the backups are |
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happening, these drives are bought for size rather than speed to save |
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money. |
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Use rsnapshot. It's easy to setup and only saves the change deltas so |
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takes up much less space. |
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Have you thought about completely outsourcing your mail system |
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instead of keeping it with the website provider? It's probably be |
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cheaper and easier in the long run. |
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Cheers, |
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Craig |
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-- |
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