New Server Specs?

--[ UxBoD ]-- uxbod at splatnix.net
Sat Apr 7 08:18:37 IST 2007


DL365s are really nice unless you prefer Intel ;)

On Fri, 6 Apr 2007 08:34:03 +0100
"Paul Hutchings" <paul.hutchings at mira.co.uk> wrote:

> Appreciate the detailed reply Greg.
> 
> For various reasons (non technical) it looks like Sun are off the menu
> so we're back to HP.
> 
> At present I'm looking at 2 boxes.  The DL320 G5 and the DL140 G3.
> 
> Both work out at identical prices.
> 
> The difference being the DL320 would have a 3050 Xeon and 1gb of RAM
> and the DL140 would have a 5110 Xeon and 2gb of RAM.
> 
> I'm leaning towards the DL140 simply because it has more RAM for the
> money, and I believe it's more of a "proper" server i.e. server
> optimized chip/chipset (and has a second CPU socket) whilst the DL320
> appears to almost be a desktop CPU put into a rackmount?
> 
> Disk wise I think a pair of 80gb SATA's should be sufficient.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
> [mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of Greg
> Matthews
> Sent: 04 April 2007 14:10
> To: MailScanner discussion
> Subject: Re: New Server Specs?
> 
> Paul Hutchings wrote:
> > Thanks all.
> > 
> > I'm not desparate to do this on the cheap, but obviously I don't
> > want
> to
> > be asking for company money for something that is massive, massive
> > overkill even allowing for future growth/changes etc.
> > 
> > Currently I'm running on an old Poweredge with a single 2.4ghz Xeon
> CPU
> > (single core with hyperthreading) with 1gb of RAM and a single 80gb
> ATA
> > drive (we want something that will be under warranty)
> > 
> > I'm running Spamassassin on incoming mail and ClamAV on all mail
> > with
> no
> > OCR checks though this may be something I'll do in the future via
> > FuzzyOCR.
> > 
> > I'm no expert on Linux benchmarking but uptime shows "load average:
> > 1.23, 1.43, 1.20".
> 
> looks like you are not stretching this box too much. With
> hyperthreading
> 
> turned on, a load average of 2 would be a good indication that the 
> processor was never twiddling its metaphorical thumbs. That said, 
> network services are notoriously "bursty" so you need to plan for
> times of high load.
> 
> Consider software raid over hardware raid as it can often be faster
> and provided you take backups, your raid config is archived for
> disaster recovery. Also nice to have a good size disk area so that
> both spam and ham can be stored in the short term for
> learning/reporting. Useful too if you are relaying for other
> sites/domains and need to queue up mail when their servers are down.
> Of course, mail doesnt actually take up much space so you dont need a
> huge array of disks. We have about 5000 active mailboxes and I'd be
> happy with a 50GB mirror for short term archive/quarantine but I'd
> probably over-spec by a factor of two.
> 
> As mentioned previously, buy lots of memory. A dual processor box
> will happily chew up 3-4GB of ram. Dual/quad core is /probably/ ok
> given that
> 
> your processes are likely to be IO bound which should make up for
> memory
> 
> controller latencies. Why not ask Sun for a loan of a T1000 machine
> with
> 
> 8 cores and 32 threads? I think they are still doing a no-obligation 
> "try and buy" scheme for these. The list would probably be v.
> interested
> 
> in your results.
> 
> > 
> > I was looking at HP originally and then I looked at Sun and noticed
> > their X2100 appear to be very good VFM (and are SLES approved which
> > suggests I should be able to install OpenSuse "out the box").
> > 
> 
> judging by your existing spec and LA, an X2100 will probably be fine, 
> I'd be tempted to up the spec to a dual processor X2200 to really 
> future-proof yourself. Again, Sun will lend you one for 60 days if
> you want to try it.
> 
> GREG
> 
> > Paul Hutchings
> > Network Administrator, MIRA Ltd.
> > Tel: 44 (0)24 7635 5378, Fax: 44 (0)24 7635 8378
> > mailto:paul.hutchings at mira.co.uk
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
> > [mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of
> > Steve Freegard
> > Sent: 04 April 2007 11:44
> > To: MailScanner discussion
> > Subject: Re: New Server Specs?
> > 
> > Paul Hutchings wrote:
> >> My question is, broadly speaking which would be best to have more
> >> of,
> 
> >> CPU, ram, or disk subsystem?
> >> I'm looking at the cheapest HP/Sun/Dell servers which tend to be
> >> SATA
> 
> >> disks and slower dual-core CPUs but with plenty of memory slots.
> > 
> > As Martin mentioned - memory is one key piece, you need to have 1Gb
> per 
> > CPU core, then set Max Children to 5 * CPU Cores for optimum 
> > performance.  Any form of swapping/paging will quickly kill
> performance 
> > of MailScanner/SpamAssassin.
> > 
> > I also always recommend buying a *decent* RAID controller with 
> > battery-backed write-back cache as fast disk access is a requirement
> to 
> > cope with busy periods and future growth and.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Steve.
> 
> 


-- 
--[ UxBoD ]--
// PGP Key: "curl -s http://www.splatnix.net/uxbod.asc | gpg --import"
// Fingerprint: 543A E778 7F2D 98F1 3E50 9C1F F190 93E0 E8E8 0CF8
// Keyserver: www.keyserver.net Key-ID: 0xE8E80CF8
// Phone: +44 845 869 2749
// SIP Phone: uxbod at sip.splatnix.net

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.



More information about the MailScanner mailing list