specs & platform for new server

[Sylvain Phaneuf]

Thanks Martin and all the others. We are now leaning on your side: two
smaller boxes. Load balancing, resilience and no more down-time sound
good. And if we have two boxes, we don't see the need for RAID or
redundant power supplies, etc. And we only need next day on-site service
& support, don't we? Two boxes for the price of one looks like a great
idea. The only downside is two boxes to configure instead of one.

Sylvain


>>> martinh at SOLID-STATE-LOGIC.COM 18/11/2004 10:39:57 >>>
Sylvain

loads of capacity, there.that machine should be able to process well
over 1 million per day.

maybe you could get a couple of single processor machines so you can
load balance and have redundancy should one fail.

my 800mhz celeron with 512MB 133mhz sdram and a 100mhx IDE drive tops
outat about 15,000 records per day...so a 2.8 ghx PIV with HT and 2GB
of
ram should be more than enough and you get get those for around 1000
uk
pounds from dell rack mounted...



--
Martin Hepworth
Snr Systems Administrator
Solid State Logic
Tel: +44 (0)1865 842300


Sylvain Phaneuf wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Our 20 months old server is being a bit overworked and we are going
to
> buy a new box.
>
> Could the experts out there help us a bit with suggestions. We would
> like to know where to throw our money at. More memory, multuiple
> processors?
>
> We will use the box only as a mail gateway running MailScanner,
> SpamAssassin, Sendmail, Sophos, MRTG and very little else. We don't
need
> to run any RBL checks as our ISP does it for us. We currently get
> approx. 35,000 messages per day, and we expect that will increase to
> possibly 50,000 in the next year or two. Currently we get somewhere
> between 1 and 1.5 GB of mail per day.
>
> We don't want to spend more than 2,500 - 3,000 pounds if possible.
We
> are thinking of:
> Dual Xeon 3.2 GHz with 1 MB L2 cache
> 2 GB DDR2 RAM (400 MHz DIMMS)
> RAID 1
> Intel Gigabit NIC
>
> Finally, we are thinking of running the new box with SLSE (we are
using
> RH at the moment). Any problem with SuSE?
>
> I will really appreciate your input. MialScanner is great, we love
it,
> our users love us!
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Sylvain
>
>
>
> ===========================================================
> Sylvain Phaneuf --- Systems Manager   | phone : +44 (0)1865 221323
> Clinical School Information Management Services Unit  (IMSU)
> Medical Sciences Division
> University of Oxford                                  |   email :
> sylvain.phaneuf at imsu.ox.ac.uk
> Room 3A25B John Radcliffe Hospital      |   fax :  +44 (0) 1865
221322
> Oxford   OX3 9DU   England
> ===========================================================
>
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