Server Spec for MailScanner

[Peter Bonivart]

Pete wrote:
> For 6k - 9k emails per day, running Clamav and etrust would something
> like a Proliant ML370 2 x P3 800/1GB RAM and scsi HDD running either
> suse or red hat 9 (my FreeBSd skills are not sufficient for this yet) be
> enough horsepower? Alternately our vendor has a single Ml310 P2.8 /1GB
> Ram and scsi. will mailScanner benefit more from dual CPU or faster CPU
> considering the load i described above? Or would I be better off spend
> more on RAM? 1 GB seems like plenty of RAM to me, but then again i
> havent processed 9k emails before, and some of you have, so hopefully
> some one could advised on which hardware will benefit MS more?

I think the 2.8 would be faster (assuming the rest of the system is the
same) since the clock speed difference is too much between these two
systems, if it was closer I would go with the dual CPU. For your volume,
1 GB RAM will be enough. Unused RAM will not benefit you at all. Count
around 30 MB per MS child and you will see that you will have plenty
left for mounting the incoming work directory as a RAM drive.

> Additionally we may have access to an additional scanner license - would
> i be better off running 3 x virus scanners, clam, etrust and
> sophos/f-prot, or just run 2, clam and sophos/f-prot, especially
> considering my hardware limitations?

In my experience, SA seems to use the system harder than the virus
scanners, it's very CPU and net intensive. I only run one scanner (have
more layers of protection later) but since the unpacking is done only
once I can't imagine you losing that much adding a third scanner so if
you can afford it, go for it.

> Is there a massive difference in hardware requirement between processing
> 6k or 9k emails per day?

I think both those number would be considered low.

--
/Peter Bonivart

--Unix lovers do it in the Sun

Sun Fire V210, Solaris 9, Sendmail 8.12.10, MailScanner 4.25-14,
SpamAssassin 2.63 + DCC 1.2.30, ClamAV 0.67 + GMP 4.1.2