Thanks, I'm processing this one... > Let me disagree with you a bit :-) > On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 12:41 +0200, deadhead wrote: >> Reliability is fundamental so I'll buy from a vendor: if something >> (hardware) goes wrong you can call them to solve and stop. > That's why you want a small local shop. They have a direct interest in > helping you - large suppliers usually don't care about people with one or > two boxen. > Also in my experience building yourself gives much better results. > >> Talking about storage, I'll use SCSI drives and a RAID1 hardware >> controller. > Nonsense ;-) > Linux software raid is as fast and easier to manage. Also SCSI is > expensive - for the price of two scsi disks and a controller I can get > a 6-disk software RAID5 that will most likely outperform it and has > about 10x the space. > For most uses el cheapo SATA will be better (but SCSI / SAS / > FibreChannel has its place) > >> 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! > ... and get as much as you can. > The step from 1G to 4G is quite nice, especially on servers. > >> You should deploy what you know more, since , especially with so many >> users, if something goes wrong you have to be fast and effective. > So obvious and still often forgotten. > >> 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. > Split the disks - 2 for mail, 4 for fileserving or whatever. > That way there won't be much crosstalk between the applications (think > fileserving making mail crawl) > One more reason to get many cheap SATA disks ... > > That's, obviously, just my opinion :-) but it has served me well. > > Patrick > -- > Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move >
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