Reliability is fundamental so I'll buy from a vendor: if something (hardware) goes wrong you can call them to solve and stop.
Talking about storage, I'll use SCSI drives and a RAID1 hardware controller. Ram more than processor is fundamental so try to keep always a slot free for future upgrades and don't buy ram from vendor but buy it yourself : it's cheap! You should deploy what you know more, since , especially with so many users, if something goes wrong you have to be fast and effective. An inhouse mail server could help to backup mails. You could use imap [give a try to dovecot, is AMAZING!] and let users access throught the best imap client, thunderbird [m$ told it :D http://blogs.msdn.com/omars/archive/2004/02/19/76061.aspx]. File Server and mail server on the mail server? Well if the hardware is well tuned [check this 3d about xfs tune, with tips on raid1 hw http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-397320-highlight-xfs+danneggiato.html it's in italian but robotranlators can help you ;) ] and the amount of data is note HUGE you could do it. Number and the size of files matter either on the fileserver side etheir on the attachments. Use maildir to improve performances and avoid mailboxes corruption. Talking about backup you can deploy different kind of type. If all the files are on the server you can use another server as backup or use tapes . If some files are on the clients, amanda coul help you in backing up everything you have . These are just some tips : good luck! -- [email protected] mailing list
