Rob Hines Jr. wrote:
> In short, yes, there are Terrabyte solutions, they start in the several
> hundred thousand range, and go up according to what you need. Many
> companies that do that sort of volume use load balancers (layer 7
> usually), and several machines clustered together. I don't see any
> reason qmail couldn't handle that volume of users, but you're talking
> about some serious equipment costs, at least in the very high hundreds
> of thousands of dollars.
>
> The short answer to the question about what would happen if 2.5 million
> users hit your PIII server at once. In a word: *poof*
>
> Check out:
>
> http://www.f5.com
> (f5 Load balancers are cool, Foundry also makes some good gear, I forget
> the URL)
>
> http://www.nthgencomp.com/
> (Terabyte arrays)
>
> http://www.sun.com/
> (Servers that won't blow up under that load and Terabyte arrays)
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Rob
>
> Tim Hassan wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have used Qmail for over 3 years now and I love it. Now I have came across
>> one project, building a Mail server to handle around 5-6 million users with
>> a 10 meg mailbox each (I use vpopmail www.inter7.com for the pop server and
>> virtual domain part). Now multiplying 10MB x 5000000 users = 50million megs,
>> which is about 50,000 gigs. Is their such a thing as a 50 terrabyte hard
>> drive? Well, my users are all in one domain, so I cannot split the domains
>> across several HDD's. Secondly, what if 2 1/2 million users simultaneously
>> hit the server, would the server handle it? with a quad p-III Xeon 1ghz and
>> 4 GB or ram and a OC connection.
>> Well, how does hotmail or yahoo do it? I am sure they load blanace across
>> multiple servers, but how?
>> I know all about load balancing with dns, etc. across multiple web servers
>> for example, but with mail, a specific user has to login to the same box
>> that hosts his mailbox everytime, and mail arriving from outside world to
>> this user has to arrive to the same box also.
>> If anyone out there has gone through something like this, I would appreciate
>> it a lot if you hint me with a clue :)
>>
>> P.S. Please cc me your reply, as I am not subscribed to the list.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Tim
>
www.foundrynetworks.net, I am using the serveriron XL 16
