[Mimedefang] sizing of box

[Ole Michaelsen]

I started a thread in comp.mail.sendmail about the sizing of a
Mimedefang/SpamAssassin box, and got some good answers from various
people.

Since then I've been thinking some more, checking the current amount of
email running through our systems, and come up with some numbers I'd
like your comments on, please.

140k emails pr 24 hours with the majority during the normal business
hours (that's 5 per second in 8 hours). 

Setup 1: Mimedefang/SpamAssassin on dedicated box, ie no sendmail, nothing but
MD/SA.

1 Sun Fire V120 Server with 1 650 MHz UltraSPARC-IIi CPU, 512-kB
External Cache, 1 GB RAM, 2 36 GB 10k UltraSCSI disks

On my much slower test box I handled 1 MB messages in less that 500
milliseconds. Even if it takes a second to handle each mail, this system
still only needs to have 5 slaves running constantly to process 5
incoming mails per second. 

Setup 2: MD/SA on same box as sendmail, named and xntpd.

1 Sun Fire 280R Server, with 2 900-MHz/8-MB E-Cache UltraSPARC III CPUs,
1-GB Memory, 2 36-GB 10000 RPM FC-AL disks, 1 DVD-ROM, 2 560-Watt
PSUs.

In reality the extra load will not be great, since the machine is supposed
to be an internal mailhub - which will only deliver to machines which
guaranteed will accept the mail - i.e. there should not be 200+ sendmail
processes running and similar number of mails in the queues. On the
other hand it's always good to prepare for the worst...

What do you think? In the archive for this mailinglist I found examples
of the configurations other people use - 4-ways E450s and AIX-boxes were
among the mentioned, so the above SF280 configuration is maybe not that
much overkill as it looks like at first glance, or?

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Ole Michaelsen, Darmstadt, Germany
http://www.fys.ku.dk/~omic