Batch sizes?

[Jeff A. Earickson]

Y'all,
   Like I said in my tuning note on the list the other day, my system
is much better off with 25 per batch, at least I get a steady trickle
of email thru, rather than long waits.

--- Jeff Earickson

On Wed, 21 May 2003, Tim Bishop wrote:

> Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 12:22:29 +0100
> From: Tim Bishop <tim-lists at BISHNET.NET>
> Reply-To: MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: Batch sizes?
>
> On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 12:00:12PM +0100, Julian Field wrote:
> > At 22:39 20/05/2003, you wrote:
> > >What do people think is a sensible batch size?
> > >
> > >I notice the default is 100 - but my feeling is this is a little too
> > >high if you're doing spamassassin and RBL checks. My system took a fair
> > >while to process that many in one go this morning - they also got mostly
> > >taken by the first MailScanner process, leaving the others mostly idle.
> > >
> > >So is it better to do doing small but quick batches? or is it better
> > >to do larger but longer batches? The latter results in quite a delay on
> > >the mail... whilst at least the former gives a reassuring trickle :-)
> >
> > Remember that the batch size is also limited by the number of messages in
> > the queue. So if MailScanner is keeping up with your mail traffic, the
> > batches will be very small. It does not sit around waiting for the batch to
> > fill up before doing anything.
>
> Sure. I was specifically thinking about when a huge burst comes through
> at once.
>
> I'm testing this on my laptop, and pulling mail to it from my work
> server. So every morning there's a huge burst - which helps simulate a
> sudden load on a real mail server.
>
> Before pulling mail this morning I dropped the batch size right down to
> 10, and it seemed to do a must better job. So when I go live on my main
> mail server I suspect I'll opt for a size around 20-30, rather than 100.
>
> Cheers,
> Tim.
>