large email server

David Hill wrote:
> Hello -
> I am planning on building a large FreeBSD email server that needs to support
> 50,000 accounts and 200GB data with RAID 5. This server will mostly be for
> users pop3'ing their email. We use other FreeBSD servers for SMTP only.
>
> Questions:
> Serial ATA, IDE, or SCSI harddrives? What RAID controller to go with?
> - We are thinking 3ware if we go IDE, Mylex if we go SCSI.

I was always a scsi fan, particularly for this sort of thing. Have been
using PERC quite a bit recently, and they are nice. Just make sure your
raid controllers use battery backed cache ram.

> What SMTP/POP3 setup?
> - mbox or maildir format?

Maildir. Don't use mbox, because if you ever need to split out your
spool over nfs, it will break in more horrible ways than you can imagine.

> - we were thinking postfix w/ maildir format and cyrus pop3

Postfix will do the job admirably.

Take a look at:

http://kirb.insanegenius.net/postfix.html

The important points are: 1) use courier - it's got builtin pop3s and
imap(s) and 2) use a sql database for the authentication system.

In particularly don't use the passwd file (the -s option in freebsd's
pwd_mkdb command is there because of yours truly attempting to do things
the wrong way in the name of backwards compatibility, sigh, but that was
many years ago...).

Nick
 >> Stay informed about: large email server 

David Hill wrote:
> Hello -
> I am planning on building a large FreeBSD email server that needs to support
> 50,000 accounts and 200GB data with RAID 5. This server will mostly be for
> users pop3'ing their email. We use other FreeBSD servers for SMTP only.
>
> Questions:
> Serial ATA, IDE, or SCSI harddrives? What RAID controller to go with?
> - We are thinking 3ware if we go IDE, Mylex if we go SCSI.
> What SMTP/POP3 setup?
> - mbox or maildir format?
> - we were thinking postfix w/ maildir format and cyrus pop3
>
> Any recommendations or suggestions?
>
> Thanks much!
> David
>
>
>
For mail go with Xmail. Checkout http://www.xmailserver.org
 >> Stay informed about: large email server 

Hi David,

I am not sure if FreeBSD supports any SATA controllers yet so I would be a
little cautious with using them (you might want to just buy a sil3112 SATA
controller for about $40 AUD and see if any version of FreeBSD recognises
it). For HDD's if you can get SATA running I would seriously consider using
something like the WD Raptor drives which are a 36G 10K RPM SATA drive with
a 5 year warranty, I believe their target market is SCSI for a lower cost.
The only problem with them is that they are 36G, however they are releasing
70G ones soon or already have (not sure if they are out yet). You would
need to get an appropriate RAID card, if memory serves me correctly Adaptec
has a 4 port SATA RAID card and you can get hotswap drive bays for the cards
also.

Personally for the format of the mail I would go maildir, its a lot more
resiliant to errors than mbox. Postfix with courier pop3 or even IMAP would
be my choice here.

HTH

Matt.


"David Hill" wrote in message

> Hello -
> I am planning on building a large FreeBSD email server that needs to
support
> 50,000 accounts and 200GB data with RAID 5. This server will mostly be
for
> users pop3'ing their email. We use other FreeBSD servers for SMTP only.
>
> Questions:
> Serial ATA, IDE, or SCSI harddrives? What RAID controller to go with?
> - We are thinking 3ware if we go IDE, Mylex if we go SCSI.
> What SMTP/POP3 setup?
> - mbox or maildir format?
> - we were thinking postfix w/ maildir format and cyrus pop3
>
> Any recommendations or suggestions?
>
> Thanks much!
> David
>
>
>
 >> Stay informed about: large email server 

David Hill wrote:

>Hello -
>I am planning on building a large FreeBSD email server that needs to support
>50,000 accounts and 200GB data with RAID 5. This server will mostly be for
>users pop3'ing their email. We use other FreeBSD servers for SMTP only.
>
I've seen the various suggestions so far, but no one has mentioned
Cyrus. Is it a bad choice?
--
Jim Crigler
 >> Stay informed about: large email server 

James B Crigler wrote:
> David Hill wrote:

>>Hello -
>>I am planning on building a large FreeBSD email server that needs to support
>>50,000 accounts and 200GB data with RAID 5. This server will mostly be for
>>users pop3'ing their email. We use other FreeBSD servers for SMTP only.
>>
> I've seen the various suggestions so far, but no one has mentioned
> Cyrus. Is it a bad choice?

Most things run on FreeBSD is a good choice


> --
> Jim Crigler


--
Peter Håkanson
IPSec Sverige ( At Gothenburg Riverside )
Sorry about my e-mail address, but i'm trying to keep spam out,
remove "icke-reklam" if you feel for mailing me. Thanx.
 >> Stay informed about: large email server