[imp] Permformance issue

[Terry Poperszky]

Mad, was. But bit my tongue and tried to not start a flame war. Actually
Eric a request for more information to help diagnose a problems is very
helpful, let explain what my issue is.

I am in the midst of converting a network that was entirely MS based to a
mixed OS (Linux/MS) environment. MS Exchange is top on my hit list at the
moment, but I have to provide suitable replacement services before I can
replace it. Horde/Imp (Using IMAP) is the probable replacement for Outlook
Web Access, but it simply isn't as quick as Web Outlook. I am looking to see
whether that is inherent in the program, or is a function of my
installation/infrastructure.

My base network configuration revolves around three boxes (MySQL, SendMail,
Apache/php)) all boxes are in running SuSE 8.0, have at least 800 Mhz
processors, plenty of disk space and sufficient memory. They are connected
via 100Mb FDX with their own ports on a central switch. I am not showing
anything on the wire that would/should cause poor performance.




Terry Poperszky MCSE, CCNA
Network Manager
SOS Staffing Services 
801-257-5706
Terry.Poperszky@SosStaffing.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Rostetter [mailto:eric.rostetter@physics.utexas.edu] 
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 7:59 PM
To: Terry Poperszky
Cc: 'Eric Rostetter'; imp@lists.horde.org
Subject: RE: [imp] Permformance issue

Quoting Terry Poperszky <Terry.Poperszky@SosStaffing.com>:

> Particularly unhelpful response, purposely obtuse. 

And this answer won't be any better...

> All things being equal and assuming that you do not purposely degrade the
> performance of one installation of over another is there a reason (i.e.
> performance) to install horde/imp on the mail server rather than a remote
> machine in the same facility. 

Maybe.

Okay, so you're mad.  Not a valid answer?  Well, not a valid question
either.

Splitting the machines might add network latency.  So it might be slower
than a single machine...  But maybe the first machine has really slow cpu 
speed, and that slowness is slower than the network latency?  Then splitting
them might be faster.  Unless the second one mounted the disks over NFS,
and the first was from a nice fast local raid controller.  Now the NFS
latency
might outweight the slow cpu but fast disk machine.  Unless of course the
first one was really short on memory, in which case splitting it might avoid
thrashing and make it faster.  Unless of course...  Well, you get the idea.

In other words, I stand by my first answer.

If you care to provide more details, we might be able to offer some limited
advice.  But without knowledge of the setup, there is no way say which setup
would be faster (or slower).

There are good reasons for splitting the load between machines.  But how
would you do that? Mail on one and web on the other?  Web and mail on one
but database on another?  Mail and web on one, but ldap server on another?
What is your expected load?  Hundreds of users? (Then you probably don't
need to split)  Thousands of users? (Then maybe you should split)  What
is acceptible response time?  Do you have sufficient memory/cpu/disk/etc
in the machine to run all the needed software?

Without specific info, there is no way to give a legit answer to your
question.


-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

"TAD (Technology Attachment Disorder) is an unshakable, impractical devotion
to a brand, platform, product line, or programming language. It's relatively
harmless among the rank and file, but when management is afflicted the
damage
can be measured in dollars. It's also contagious -- someone with sufficient
political clout can infect an entire organization."

--"Enterprise Strategies" columnist Tom Yager.