[imp] question about hardware configuration of a webmail server

[Eric J Rostetter]

Quoting Herve Ballans <ballans@lps.u-psud.fr>:

> This server deliver mail for 250 peoples, principally some researcher,
> so they are often in travel at the outside.
> I want to dedicate a server for the webmail service wich compose by a
> Linux RedHat 7.2 distribution, Horde 2, IMP3, PHP4, Apache and MySQL
> 
> My question is about the hardware configuration of this server.
> Wich type of PC must I buy to have a good QoS for 250 peoples ?
> power processor ?

I'd say two processor machine, 450 Mhz or greater, (I run dual 600Mhz P3's)
You could get away with a single, but if this is for production, and it has
to run fast *always* then I'd say get two.  Probably my bias here.

> RAM ?

The more the better.  I run it on 512 MB.  Memory is cheap, so load up.

> disks (IDE, SCSI) ?

Depends. To me, the email is important, and I run the sendmail/spool on the same
machine.  So I use a scsi raid system.   But truth is you could get buy with
almost anything here (IDE, SCSI, or RAID) as long as you buy good, fast drives
(at least 7200 RPM, at least ATA/100 or SCSI-2FW, etc).  Don't buy slow drives
and you should be fine.  I'm biased towards raid, but the best advice is 
simply buy the best (and/or as many as) you can afford.

> I think it's depends on the number of simultaneous consultation...

Yes.  Total number of users doesn't matter, it's the number of users hitting
it at once, plus the number of messages sent/received.

Eric Jon Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1081

Office:    RLM 7.126
Telephone: 512-471-5821
Email:	   eric.rostetter@physics.utexas.edu

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