Len,
First off, wow. Thanks for addressing my issues point-by-point. It helped
me understand it a lot better than before.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Len Conrad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 12:15 AM
Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] Multiple domain names
>
> >*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 receive 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]?
>
Yeah, that is what I meant, sorry for the confusion.
> >who is not the same as [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> this means domain1.com and domain2.com will need separate virtual
> mailhost directory structures so foobar@ user can exist in each @mailhost.
>
*Gulp*
> >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
>
But still, it would be nice if I could actually do it.
> >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.
Yes, I have tried it. I exported all the domain names from the SQL 7
database into a flat text file, dumped all the spaces, then performed a
search and replace to change all carriage return + line feeds into a single
space. This gave me one continuous line of domain names separated by a
space. I then opened the file in notepad, copied the contents to the
clipboard. I pasted it back to the file to make sure that there wasn't a
clipboard limitation. Once I was sure of that, I pasted it into the host
aliases box. I noticed that it had only gotten into my c* domains, so I
copied what was in the box, took it into TextPad, then got a character
count. It came out to exactly 30,000 characters.
>hmmm, do you get the
> idea the NT/W2K + IMail GUI interface designers didn't have your
> situation in mind? vbg
>
What?! You don't mean to tell me that not everyone has 10,000 domain names
and is trying to set up IMail for them all, do you? You know, with the
prices of domain names going down now, I thought anyone could afford the,
oh, say US$100,000 at US$10 per domain.
> >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.
>
D'oh! I was afraid of that.
> 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 separate IP for each website
I was more or less kidding about that. I don't think I could convince
anyone to lease me ten-thousand IP addresses for the kind of budget I'm
running on, if I could get someone to lease me that many at all.
> 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.
We have had terrible luck with any Tulip, although our 3COM's have worked
for the last two years without any problems.
> 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?
>
Oh yes. That is my favorite thing to do, right next to slamming my face in
the door repeatedly.
> >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.
The PTB don't want to go with a Unix solution.
> 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.
>
That could work.
> >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.
I am not sure I understand RAID 100% correctly. In order to do RAID 0 + 1,
how many drives do you need to have it work? I was told that six was the
minimum. We have three 36 GB drives in the machine with a 32 MB cache. I
was under the impression that if you wanted redundancy with only three
drives, then RAID 5 was the only way you could go. Please let me know if I
am wrong.
> 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?
Well, at first, probably most of them won't have any accounts on them, but
as time goes on, some are still going to have only one or two, while others
could _potentially_, not definitely, have hundreds if not thousands of
users. I just don't
know.
> 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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Again, thanks for your help!
Jared Tullis
Systems Engineer, OnLine Web Marketing, Inc.
http://www.olwm.com/
"What is the value of a website if no one can find it?"
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