performance testing new server, results

[Chris Yuzik]

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned in a previous thread or two, we're almost ready to roll 
out our new mail server. To stress test it, I have essentially captured 
several hours worth of live queue files from the current production 
server, both spam and ham. To be even more mean to the new box, I have 
disabled spamassassin caching. Finally, (and I feel like a bit of a mad 
scientist), I simply copied all of those queue files (about 4500) into 
/var/spool/mqueue.in. Mwahahaha.

The server is chewing through them in batches of 30, with the 
recommended of 5 children per CPU (we have dual 3 GHz Xeons in this box) 
there are 10 children. With all the features turned on, including 
fuzzyocr (cranked up), bayes and clamav, but spamassassin caching off, 
it seems to be averaging about 140 seconds per batch of 30. Server load 
is averaging 2.56 over last 15 minutes. So in past 20 minutes, it's 
handled about 2500 messages.

Does this performance seem about right? Or should it be significantly 
better?

Thanks,
Chris