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Re: Very huge email service



On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, WOL - Andreas Plesner Jacobsen wrote:
>On Tue, Nov 23, 1999 at 01:33:17AM -0300, Baltazar Quinterno wrote:
>
>I know I'm gonna be bashed to hell for my statements on this.

;)

>> Does anyone had to configure mail servers to serve 30 millon users,
>> with smtp and pop3, if so can you give any clue , because i dont know
>> from where to start.
>
>If I had to build this as a central system I wouldn't use Linux for the
>storage systems, I'd probably look into Hitachi or similar disksystems
>with a SPARC running Solaris (or several of them running in tandem)
>and some Veritas volume management.

Last time I worked with a serious Sun machine it could only do 59MB/s
sustained disk throughput.  This was an E6500 with Fiber Channel SCSI talking
to an A5000 disk array containing UltraSCSI drives.  It had Veritas File
System and Volume Manager.  I am certain that Linux could do better with less
hardware.

>Another solution would be a bunch of Network Appliance boxen, with
>their own microkernel and NFS.

NetApps work.

>These systems would be the backbone of the system.
>
>As frontends I'd probably use some kind of x86's or Alphas running
>Debian, probably with qmail or postfix using their local disks for
>temporary spool areas.

Local disk using software mirroring for spool...

>Between these I would run a Gigabit Ethernet, using one of the fast
>giga switches (No names mentioned, no names forgotten ;)

Do we even have any fast Giga network cards?

I expect that with the state of technology the thing to do would be to have a
number of front end boxes on Fast Ethernet and have 10 of them if you need
the gigabit throughput...

>All this would be a costly solution, but I think it will be able
>to scale properly.

The system we're talking about will cost less than $1 per user.  When a
government is paying it shouldn't be a problem.

>Another solution, which has already been proposed is a geographical
>split of the machines.


-- 
Electronic information tampers with your soul.


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