MailScanner load

DAve dave.list at pixelhammer.com
Thu Aug 17 04:26:50 IST 2006


Scott Silva wrote:
> DAve spake the following on 8/16/2006 2:19 PM:
>> Scott Silva wrote:
>>> Steve Campbell spake the following on 8/16/2006 1:20 PM:
>>>> Decided to make an intelligent statement this time:
>>>>
>>>> One thing I did find to lower my load average, though, was MimeDefang in
>>>> a look-ahead environment.
>>>>
>>>> Before installing MimeDefang,  I was receiving about 25K messages a day
>>>> per server. Most of those were secondary MX relays, that is, mail sent
>>>> to the secondary MX by spammers, and then relayed to the primary MX or
>>>> mail store. I just use the look-ahead function in MD, nothing else. The
>>>> load average was slowly climbing into the 8+ range and higher as a norm.
>>>> After the install, my message count dropped to around 10K a day, and the
>>>> load average dropped to around 2-3 as a norm. It still shoots up once in
>>>> a while, but nothing like before MD.
>>>>
>>>> Obviously, running MD will add overhead, but the drop of about 60%
>>>> emails needing to be scanned more than made up for that. I then was
>>>> better able to detect more hosts/IP to add to my MTA access file, which
>>>> made things even better.
>>>>
>>>> Another thing to mention is that before and after, mail ran smoothly. It
>>>> just took a little bit longer before installing MD as there were always
>>>> more processes (sendmail) trying to deliver DSN mail and the likes.
>>>>
>>>> This is not an answer for all systems - it's just that I use my MXs in a
>>>> bazaar way (I think). My primary MX for one domain is a secondary MX for
>>>> another domain. The primaries hold the mailboxes for their domain.
>>>>
>>>> No smiley face statements here.
>>>>
>>> That is how I have been doing it. My PHB's will only spring for a
>>> single T-1
>>> line to each site, so to get some decent fallback I had to do it that
>>> way.
>>> Doesn't make much sense to put your secondary on the same end of a
>>> failure.
>>> I was looking at milter-ahead until it stopped being free.
>>> I have been looking for a clear howto for MD to do just what you have.
>>> Do you
>>> have a good example or link to one?
>>> I don't want MD to do anything except the look-ahead.
>> It's only $115 USD, far cheaper than the cost of the hardware it would
>> take to reduce the load the same amount.
>>
>> We currently use the old-free version. But as soon as we need the
>> accessdb configurations we will purchase the new version.
>>
>> DAve
>>
> I think I have the old free version around. You need it and the libsnert from
> the same time, correct?
> 
> 

Yes, we run libsnert-1.40 and milter-ahead-0.8 on two mail gateways. 
Running now at 100k to 120+k refused connections a day with zero 
problems. We don't have any rules in accessdb and we didn't change 
anything except the cache timeout. Overquota mailboxes can bite you when 
the client empties their mailbox and mail is still refused all day. We 
expire the cache quite rapidly now with no ill effects.

Once we upgrade the gateways we will purchase the full version as I will 
have need of some of the paid for features. Money worth spending IMO, 
it's been trouble free.

DAve

-- 
Three years now I've asked Google why they don't have a
logo change for Memorial Day. Why do they choose to do logos
for other non-international holidays, but nothing for
Veterans?

Maybe they forgot who made that choice possible.


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