--On July 20, 2006 2:41:26 PM -0500 Phil Brutsche <phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Vincent Fox wrote:
So lt looks like we are migrating our University to a murder setup.
We are about 50,000+ users, with currently a number of mailstores
(UWash) and users directly addressing them.
We are looking towards adding new hardware for an MUPDATE box and
some frontends. Anyone have recommendations on these? Sparc/Solaris
versus X86/Linux? single-CPU versus duals? storage?
I poked around in the mailing lists, didn't find anything really
current. And we all know how our users email usage has gone up in the
last couple of years.
For the servers themselves I would go Linux on x86 using the hardware
vendor of your choice. The back-ends would probably be better off with
dual CPUs, but keep in mind that those will be *dual-core* dual-CPU
systems. Go with an AMD Opteron or Intel 5100-series Xeon if you can,
they'll give you better performance than the older stuff.
It goes without saying that the disks should be SCSI/SAS, but the
direct-attached SCSI vs SAN debate depends on how much ucdavis is
willing to spend.
IMO if you go with an iSCSI SAN you should definitely get a second
physical CPU in each backend - without an iSCSI accelerator card like
the Adaptec 7211C it's a CPU hog if you have heavy I/O, and accelerator
cards that work outside of Windows are pretty rare.
I don't imagine the front-ends would do a whole lot of heavy lifting, so
a single CPU will be fine, but a dual-core CPU would be great if you're
going to enable SSL.
Depends on how you handle incoming mail....For us incoming mail gets a lot
of Virus and SPAM checking done to it, and our incoming servers (right now)
are shared with the frontends, so that uses quite a bit of CPU.
OS-wise I would go with RedHat Enterprise or Novell's SuSE Enterprise,
but if you are more of a *BSD guy that will work as well.
--
Phil Brutsche
phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
----
Cyrus Home Page: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus
Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyruswiki.andrew.cmu.edu
List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html
--
"Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors
into trouble of all kinds."
-- Samuel Butler
----
Cyrus Home Page: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus
Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyruswiki.andrew.cmu.edu
List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html
