Server Spec for MailScanner

[Randal, Phil]

We're running it on a Dell Poweredge 2650, 2.4GHz P4 Xeon, hyperthreading
on, Fedora Core 1, 1GB RAM, hardware mirrored SCSI disks.  Running
spamassassin 2.63, loads of RBLS (in spamassassin), additional rules, razor,
pyzor, dcc, and ClamAV and McAfee uvscan.  Monitoring it with MailWatch and
mailscanner-mrtg.  All emails are scanned (incoming and outgoing).  Box is
also running squid for around 900 users.  Load average hovers between 0.5
and 1 when it is busy.  Around 10,000 - 14,000 emails flow through every
day.  So I'd say your proposed hardware is good enough.

In the last 10 1/2 hours we've blocked 645 viruses (22% of our mail flow).

Cheers,

Phil

---------------------------------------------
Phil Randal
Network Engineer
Herefordshire Council
Hereford, UK

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
> Behalf Of Pete
> Sent: 06 March 2004 22:55
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Server Spec for MailScanner
>
>
> I think i have successfully lobbied for a 'new' replacement server for
> MailScanner at work.
> we originally installed to prove it would work and re used ancient
> hardware we had lying around, 2xp200 NEC server, the newer releases of
> MS have meant this machine not longer cuts it, even for our
> 3k messages
> for day.
>
> So, we buy second had compaq proliant servers from a local
> vendor, with
> original 3 yr compaq onsite warranty.
>
> Additionally i am lobbying to re route our new parent
> companies mail via
> our mail scanner, so our volume may double/triple. they currently have
> NO protection, just 2 exchange 2000 servers in the DMZ with NAV,
> needless to say they have many days of no email at all.
>
> 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?
>
> 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?
>
> Is there a massive difference in hardware requirement between
> processing
> 6k or 9k emails per day?
>
> thanks in advance to anyone who can offer suggestions
>