Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] opinions & know-how requested: how to create a mail cluster

[daniel]

On August 5, 2005 06:03 pm, Raymond Lillard wrote:
> daniel wrote:
> >   [SMTP]   [SMTP]    [SMTP]   [SMTP]
> >     |         |        |         |
> >     +---------+----+---+---------+
> >                    |
> >               [SMTP+POP3]
>
> I am assuming (from the 4 smtp servers) that you have at least
> several hundred users, who receive lots of email.  That being
> said, surely you must be using LDAP.  As to the MTA, well pick
> your poison.  I'm a Sendmail guy, but that's just me.
>
> My first thought is that your first line of defense should be
> a bank of smtp servers that know nothing of your internal users.
> The first line of defense should be focused on virus detection,
> adherence to SMTP protocols and RFCs, greet-pause, listing
> (black, white and grey) and my personal favorite, the tar-pit.
>
> Only mail that gets past the first line of defense gets to a
> SMTP server that knows or cares about user account names.
> And another thing, if your company is as large as it should
> be to justify 4 outside STMP servers, why would you be using
> pop?  Use IMAP (and probably Maildirs) so mail can be backed
> up to tape and not scattered across hundreds of workstations.
>
> Just my first thoughts, based on no actual knowledge of your
> environment.

Thanks for all of your suggestions, LDAP has been recommended to already, 
though it came with the warning "it's an ugly beast" so I'm not really 
thrilled with the idea of adopting it.

Actually, our company is rather small (<40 people).  I've been asked to learn 
how to do this to replicate a setup that's already been done but we're trying 
to replace.  Initially though, the 4 server setup is meant just to block spam 
and I was told that the numbers of email spam are so crazy that we needed 
this setup.  Am I right in assuming that from your comments that you don't 
feel this should be the case for a company of this size?

-- 
adversity introduces a man to himself.
  - alonzo mourning
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