FreeBSD 7.0, MS, MW, ClamAV, 8gb with 64bit or 4 gb with 32bit

[Ronny T. Lampert]

 > We are upgrading a old system that are to be changed, because of bad
 > performance with the SAS 5i controller installed in it.

5i sounds alot like the old HP/Compaq SmartArrays?
Yes, they are pretty bad. Don't ever think that those were real RAID 
controllers...

 > While we are changing it, we could use the old one, for some other
 > task, and buy a new better one, as this would probebly get to slow in
 > 1-2 years.
 >
 > We are thinking of buying:
 > Dell poweredge 2950
 > 4 or 8gb ram
 > Raid10 with 300gb 15000rpm SAS harddrives

Just make sure you have a hardware RAID write cache with at least 512MB.
Those controllers can take some serious beating.
The newer HP SmartArray P600/P800 SAS aren't too bad, although still 
limited to 512MB, so set the read/write ratio to 25/75 or so.

I've also had good experiences with the MegaRAIDs (they can have bigger 
caches) and the ICP Vortex controllers (now bought by Intel).

 > With one of theese 2 processors ...the fastest is the cheapest ... but
 > are there any difference since its cheaper ? ( thinking about the diff
 > with the E and X in the name and the speed)
 > Quad Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) E5440, 2X6MB Cache, 2.8GHz, 1333MHz FSB
 > Quad Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) X5450, 2X6MB Cache, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB

As one other poster said, take the more energy efficient one.
It will pay off in cooling and energy costs.

 > We are going to install FreeBSD 7.0
 > Any on the list running a system with 8 GB memory, tmpfs, and 64bit ?

I've seen problems with clamav being slower on 64bit/Linux. It was 
around the factor 1.5 slower than on 32bit, so I quickly reverted back 
to 32bit.

 > Any problems ? Or will 4 GB be enough and then on 32bit, but still
 > using tmpfs ?
 > How big should the tmpfs be ?

I calculate as follows:
1 Mailscanner instance = 110MB RSS (32bit)
Usually 2 instances per CPU/Core = around 1GB gone at 8 instances

As for tmpfs:
I'm running it with 1GB on Linux (4GB total RAM).
I found that using tmpfs is giving a small speedup of around 1/4 because 
  in my setup the data never really has to wait for the disk, but is 
only present in the caches.

So the worst case is: tmpfs full with 1GB ->
2GB tied up for MailScanner. Leaves 2GB for kernel and caching which 
should be enough.

Make sure you use "noatime" for your mailspool.


 > Are there any other suggestions to this setup ? Anything that could be
 > changed ? bigger, smaller ....

You should always have a 2nd server with the same spam filtering setup 
as your first!
It doesn't have to be a juicy machine, just make a RAID1 for reliability 
-- but as soon as you've got 2 MX entries spammers will hit the one with 
the least priority harder.
That's why you should use RBLs on the MTA level.

I'm running a triple redundancy setup over 2 continents and it gives me 
real freedom to do maintainance whenever I want which is VERY VERY 
convenient.


Cheers,
Ronny