>*We have over ten-thousand domain names (domain1.com, domain2.com, etc) with
>more being added every day.
>*The powers-that-be(PTB, not to be confused with PHB all you Dilbert fans)
>would like to be able to send and recieve mail for each domain via web
>messaging.
fair enough
>*They would like to be able to log in to web messaging on
>mail.masterdomain.com (IMail server) and log in as [EMAIL PROTECTED],
but that's not fair, a "double log in"?? once you're logged in,
you're logged in.
Do you mean browse to login screen of mail.masterdomain.com and then
login as [EMAIL PROTECTED]?
>who is not the same as [EMAIL PROTECTED]
this means domain1.com and domain2.com will need separate virtual
mailhost directory structurs so foobar@ user can exist in each @mailhost.
>I thought maybe I could get away with just telling the PTB that once the
>foobar user name is taken, then it is taken across every domain
truly a getaway, if all the mailhosts point to the same top directory
>and then setting up through the administrator all 10,000 domain names as host
>aliases. That would work, but the host aliases box only allows for 30,000
>characters.
hmm, did you read that or have you actually tried? 30K into a data
entry field of a few dozen characters wide. hmmm, do you get the
idea the NT/W2K + Imail GUI interface designers didn't have your
situation in mind? vbg
>So if I have to come up with a different solution then I might
>as well try to include the duplicate foobar requests also.
>
>Has anyone ever done something like this on this scale?
having separate mailhost directories and duplicate foobar accounts is
quite common, but for 10K on one Imail server? I've not heard anybody
talk about that many virtual domains on Imail.
One of my clients is thinking in those terms for Imail, but he hasn't
decided on a mail server and web mail application yet, for the very
issues I'm raising here. I suggest you contact Ipswitch directly and
get their official position on 10K virtual domains.
>I guess that I could get a seperate IP for each website
That's going to be harder to get 10K ip's spread across necessarily
as many phyisical NIC's as you can shoehorn into the box. You'll
probably have to run W2K to have MS's best gamble with such a level
of scaleability. A box with 6 PCI slots sharing 10K ip's is 1500+
ip's per NIC.
Not all mfr's nic's and nic drivers can handle 1500+ ip's. I stay
away from SMC and 3C0M on principle, they've been sucky going back 15
years. Intel NIC is my recommendation. The also make dual nic cards
and Adaptec and Tulip make quad nic cards, maybe D-link has quad
cards. But you better ask each one if their driver sofware and nic
can handle 1500+ ip's per card.
There is pb of managing a database of 1500 items with a linear list
interface in an MS GUI for tcp/ip settings and it's worse in Imail
for managing a linear list of 10K virtual domains. Have you ever
tried to scroll through a GUI list of 10K items? or even 1000?
>and configure it that way, but I think 10,000 is just a little out
>of my league.
afaics, Imail and NT/W2K GUI isn't going to be comfortable to work
with for that number, if it's even technically possible at all. 10K
is maybe out of MS GUI and Imail's league, too. be careful on that
point. You have a database issue managed with a linear list GUI. hmmmm
You will have a much better chance of scalling to 10K with multiple
Imail boxes to spread the job. Or maybe go to a Unix solution where
10K virtual domains is managed better.
In an Imail solution with multiple Imail boxes, to have a unique URL
to login to, you will need "server side HTTP redirect" on one machine
(which itelf has to have its own database of 10K domains and all
their mail accounts and Imail domains' URL's) to redirect the
logger-onner to the correct Imail box where his account is ultimately hosted.
>For what it's worth, I have set up the mail server on a dual 800 MHz PIII
>machine with RAID 5
oops, this is a very bad choice of RAID level for the very high rates
of mail queue and mailbox access. RAID 0 + 1 is much faster and just
as reliable, due to the 100's of 1000's, millions?, of small
read/write operations in mail queue, log file, and mailbox
access. Imail writing a log line to the end of a 30+ megabyte
non-indexed linear file is going to be suffering. Unfortunately,
Imail doesn't allow seprating SMTP logging and POP3/IMAP logging to
separate log files.
You also want to have two separate RAID 0+1 controllers and disk
sets. One is dedicated to \spool (mail queue + logging) and the other
to mailbox storage. And you want to have 128 megs of on-board disk
cache on each controller.
>on a 102 GB array (so really about 66 GB of actual
>storage space) and 512 MB of RAM running Windows 2000 and IMail 6.05
>(registered, Unlimited Users). I am writing a custom component in VB
>through VisualDLL (IMail won't work with the ActiveX DLLs that VB produces,
>I don't think) to build my ODBCUSER.DLL to interact with our SQL 7 database.
If you're good enough to do that, then you're good enough to write
your own database front end to the registry so you develop a
query-based database manager for the registry entries of the ip
addresses and for the Imail virtual mailhosts.
Also, there is fella in here with his own commercial ODBC driver for
Imail that you better look at. Don't have his name handy. You're
pushing the MS and Imail envelope and you're going to need all the
help you can get.
And you will probably need additional boxes to do the actual SMTP i/o
to internet so you mailbox/web messaging servers are freed to handle
the users in real-time.
There was one guy in here this week from Zuid Afrika with 750K
account on one "Imail system" but in fact it was 18 Imail boxes, for
only 40K users/imail box. I don't know how many mail domains he had per box.
Another user had a quad Xeon box with 250K users and 25 gb of
traffic/day. I don't think he said how many mail hosts he had but he
did have Imail dump all its outgoing on a Sun box and he did not do
web messaging.
So the kind of scale you're talking about is do-able with Imail but
the system design has to be thought out very carefully.
Removing DNS lookups and outgoing mail delivery from such big Imail
boxes would spread the load and leave Imail more available for user
service. Design a solution for multiple boxes from day one for
scaleability, even if you start with only one box.
If you're target market is primarily the "web mail access" market
rather than POP3/IMAP access, you must think multiple web mail
servers to handle 100's of 1000's of web mail users. or maybe you
have just 10K "vanity" domains with 1 or 2 accounts per domain?
Len
http://BIND8NT.MEIway.com: ISC BIND 8.2.2 p5 & 8.2.3 T6B for NT4 & W2K
http://IMGate.MEIway.com: Build free, hi-perf, anti-spam mail gateways
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