On Thu, 2010-06-17 at 09:52 -0400, Jean-Paul natola wrote: > Hi all, > > > > I'm trying get an idea of the hardware required for a new server, I currently > use exim in th efollowing config > > PIV 1.3 > > 1gig ram > > 40 gig IDE drive > > I use exim with spamassassin and clamav as a gateway to sanitze email that > is then handed off to my exachange server. > > > > Recently the 3 domains that are hosted have become increasingly popular > targets fopr spam. > > > > We only have ~75 users/boxes but have been getting hammered. > > > > we get about 7000 legit emails per day > Jean Paul,
I have spent some time working with Barracuda 'spam' firewalls which have this (or a lower) specification and they can easily handle quite a lot of work (hundreds of domains, thousands of messages). Inside they are just a Linux box running a couple of MTA's, clamav, amavis-new, apache and spamassassin. Some are only 512k and cope very well. The trick is to reject as much bad mail as possible at the rcpt-to stage. That is, drop bad IP addresses based on lists like Spamhaus & Barracuda. Reject mail with missing or mismatched PTR records. Drop bad 'helo' like your own hostname or IP. Reject any spoofing of the 'mail from'. Only mail getting past these checks should be offered to Spamassassin to scan IMHO. Some folk have Spamassassin set up to do all the network tests and it can be a slow old bottleneck like that. Also use sensible rate control and consider using the IP Tables rate control feature for bad connecting clients. Undoubtably you can get great performance using a quad core a ziggabytes of memory - but a little sensible optimisation can go a very long way to keeping cheap hardware very productive. Hope that helps in some way. Ron -- ## List details at http://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/
