Re: (OT) Setting up a mail server

A million per month? Well that's not so heavy! A million an HOUR would be something to worry about. The hardware issues are not huge, however I would suggest 15k RPM SCSI disks in a RAID array. CPU power is not going to drive you here. The best thing is to get a REALLY well set up email server. In the past I have put machines into service using the "Full-Q" QMAIL package from Inter 7 in Chicago. Installations are excellent and support is brilliant.

I have a machine that is handling about 50,000 per hour using a Full-Q installation on a pair of P-3's @ 760MHz with 1gb RAM and 6 36gb 10k RPM SCSI drives. Another machine handles similar volume with a single P4 @ about 2GHz, 1gb RAM and the same drive array. Because of your HTML size you will get reduced throughput, but your targets wont be hard to reach.

jdtoronto

Comment on Re: (OT) Setting up a mail server

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Re^2: (OT) Setting up a mail server by webchalkboard (Scribe) on May 30, 2006 at 17:16 UTC
Cool thanks for your input, I suppose our needs are relatively small at the moment, but obviously want to have room to up the output from the system in time. Don't want to spam anyone though, nothing more annoying than that! Also we are UK based, so i'm guessing that we should really get ourselves a UK based server to avoid looking like a spammer. This Full-Q installation, is that the software being used or hardware? We already have a mail sending solution which uses sendmail, so I guess we really just neem a suitably setup server to send the mails. Thank for your help though. Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. - Confucius Cool Art	[reply]
Re^3: (OT) Setting up a mail server by jdtoronto (Prior) on May 30, 2006 at 17:26 UTC
The full-Q is basically a well thought out installation of Q-Mail with a lot of admin and monitoring tools. I have done Q-Mail installation myself and got them going reasonable well but the folk at Inter-7 seem to have a bit of a knack. It is just the software. They will want you to present them with a server with a full Linux installation. Server location choice is a ticklish issue - but only for spammers, for you it is straightforward. Being in the UK will make the whole process easier and get the mail through faster. I have tried lower cost options, I am in Canada and I used to host in the US. But I can't get to machines easilly and I find it far more convenient to have the machine 5km down the road than across a border or even worse, an ocean. Good luck jdtoronto	[reply]