[wplug] Thoughts & Considerations for email server

[Nathan Marcus]

I also side with Edward on the SquirrelMail comment... it can get
quite stale working with it on a frequent basis.  And RAID 5, well,
also I vote with an alternative.

But even though its "only" 100 MB storage per account, that is
acceptable to start with in my opinion.

On 8/18/07, Edward Walter <ewalter at walterama.com> wrote:
> I ran a similar setup with courier, postfix, and SquirrelMail for a
> number of years (approx 4) on my network at home.  I used maildirs as
> the data store and occasionally ran into weird issues where mailboxes
> would seem to go stale (content wouldn't refresh in aa timely manner).
> I attributed this to mailbox size (number of messages) and the
> underlying hardware (old crappy hardware RAID 5 controller).  Setting up
> imapproxy made this a little better but never completely solved it.
>
> If I were going to do this again, I'd probably select Cyrus IMAP instead
> (I believe it scales better).
>
> Your users will probably come to hate SquirrelMail.  It's good for quick
> access when your traveling.  I wouldn't use it for everyday email access.
>
> For your RAID setup, with 4 disks, I would look at RAID 10 or RAID 6
> instead of RAID 5.  With RAID 10, you'll get better performance than
> RAID 5.  With RAID 6, you can lose 2 disks and still be functional (same
> with RAID 10 if the disks aren't part of the same mirror pair).  There
> are a couple of issues with RAID 5.  First, the likelihood of losing a
> second disk is higher when rebuilding the array.  Second, with large
> disks, the rebuild time is longer (obviously) so the risk of a
> catastrophic failure is higher.  RAID 6 addresses this by maintaining 2
> parity bits (instead of one).
>
> One other observation;  you're planning to provide 700 GB of space for
> 7,000 users.  That works out to roughly 100 MB per user.  You're
> providing less storage than the free email services and (arguably) a
> lower quality interface for accessing mail.  I'm not trying to be
> critical but why do you expect this project to succeed?  It seems setup
> to fail (from a resource perspective).
>
> -Ed Walter
>
>
>
> Kevin Squire wrote:
> > I just got word late Friday that my "little" server for student email
> > will now be used for both student and parent email.  ($BIG_COMPANY just
> > tried to extort $70,000 from use to renew for the 2007-2008 year - CFO
> > not happy about it).
> >
> > This is the first launch of (1) us offering student email and (2) us
> > hosting our own email server.  Since it is my responsibility, I am now a
> > bit more nervous then before.  We just upped the accounts from ~4,000 to
> > ~7,000.
> >
> > All the "bosses" know that I have never done anything at this scale, and
> > they know that this year will most likely be a "test run".  I have put
> > all my cards on the table, so I am not worried about my job, but I still
> > want to make it as successful as possible.  This is really the first
> > large scale deployment of OSS software, and I would really like to bring
> > more in in the future.
> >
> > Below I will list the hardware and software - I would love to hear any
> > feedback from those with some experience.  Any horror stories, any
> > tips/tricks, any thoughts/feelings about the setup, etc.  Any info would
> > be appreciated.
> >
> > Server is a HP ProLiant ML310 G4 with
> >   - Dual-Core 3050 2.13 GHz
> >   - 4GB ram
> >   - 4 HDs in a RAID 5 array - totaling ~700GB storage
> >
> > Software is
> >   - Debian Stable
> >   - Postfix/Courier with MySQL back-end
> >   - SquirrelMail web interface (this yr we will only support webUI, we
> > will not support other mail agents)
> >   - imapproxy for proformance issues
> >   - maildrop for quota and filtering
> >   - amavis for clamAV and SpamAssassin
> >   - Probably a few other things I can't think of right now.
> >
> >
> > Using a basic ISP style setup.  I used this write-up as a basic guide -
> > http://workaround.org/articles/ispmail-sarge/ - did not follow it
> > exactly, but pretty close.
> >
> > Again, I thank you for your time and your input.
> >
> >
>
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