In short, yes, there are Terrabyte solutions, they start in the several
hundred thousand range, and go up according to what you need. Many
companies that do that sort of volume use load balancers (layer 7
usually), and several machines clustered together. I don't see any
reason qmail couldn't handle that volume of users, but you're talking
about some serious equipment costs, at least in the very high hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
The short answer to the question about what would happen if 2.5 million
users hit your PIII server at once. In a word: *poof*
Check out:
http://www.f5.com
(f5 Load balancers are cool, Foundry also makes some good gear, I forget
the URL)
http://www.nthgencomp.com/
(Terabyte arrays)
http://www.sun.com/
(Servers that won't blow up under that load and Terabyte arrays)
Hope that helps.
Rob
Tim Hassan wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have used Qmail for over 3 years now and I love it. Now I have came across
> one project, building a Mail server to handle around 5-6 million users with
> a 10 meg mailbox each (I use vpopmail www.inter7.com for the pop server and
> virtual domain part). Now multiplying 10MB x 5000000 users = 50million megs,
> which is about 50,000 gigs. Is their such a thing as a 50 terrabyte hard
> drive? Well, my users are all in one domain, so I cannot split the domains
> across several HDD's. Secondly, what if 2 1/2 million users simultaneously
> hit the server, would the server handle it? with a quad p-III Xeon 1ghz and
> 4 GB or ram and a OC connection.
> Well, how does hotmail or yahoo do it? I am sure they load blanace across
> multiple servers, but how?
> I know all about load balancing with dns, etc. across multiple web servers
> for example, but with mail, a specific user has to login to the same box
> that hosts his mailbox everytime, and mail arriving from outside world to
> this user has to arrive to the same box also.
> If anyone out there has gone through something like this, I would appreciate
> it a lot if you hint me with a clue :)
>
> P.S. Please cc me your reply, as I am not subscribed to the list.
>
> Best Regards,
> Tim
--
Rob Hines Jr.
System Administrator
