Hello all,
I am looking at building my first Linux email system. I very much would like to use Linux over windows/exchange for all the obvious reasons. The Servers need to host @1400 pop3 accounts. I was wondering if any of you could tell me if it is possible to cluster multiple mail servers for redundancy/performance. What distro / mail server software do you all recommend?
Ron
Hello all,
I am looking at building my first Linux email system. I very much would like to use Linux over windows/exchange for all the obvious reasons. The Servers need to host @1400 pop3 accounts. I was wondering if any of you could tell me if it is possible to cluster multiple mail servers for redundancy/performance. What distro / mail server software do you all recommend?
Ron
I switched to sendmail four years ago and never regretted my decision to do so. Admitedly there have been a couple of security issues in that time but doing the patches saves the heartache. I have looked at failover solutions but can't really comment on clustering because I've never done it up to now. Sendmail hasn't skipped a beat in that time so I never persued it any further. The previous windows solution needed a poke every week to keep it running and I must have saved hours of the 'is the email server running?' questions to more than make up for doing the switch.
Have fun which ever solution you pick but I can recommend Sendmail no worries.
Bry
On Mar 1, 2004, at 11:33 PM, Ron Henderson wrote:
I am looking at building my first Linux email system. I very much would like to use Linux over windows/exchange for all the obvious reasons. The Servers need to host @1400 pop3 accounts. I was wondering if any of you could tell me if it is possible to cluster multiple mail servers for redundancy/performance. What distro / mail server software do you all recommend?
If you're not already familiar with *nix MTA's, I suggest you look into Postfix. It's a drop-in replacement for Sendmail, with a much better security record. Postfix is a modular design (unlike Sendmail's monolithic design) with a simple configuration style (unlike Sendmail's m4/cf). For your retrieval duties, consider using a POP/IMAP server like UW's or Courier IMAP. I prefer the latter due to the better security history, but you'll also want to consider which mail storage format you prefer. UW uses mbox, Courier uses maildir. Postfix supports writing to both.
If you're concerned about load, first make sure your hardware is fully optimized. Hardware RAID with SCSI and an advanced filesystem (XFS is preferred) is a good step, at least for your mail store. You needn't be concerned with HA projects at the host level, unless you want to try a simple load balancer like python director (for failover and connection balancing).
If you can afford the time and a few bucks to read O'Reilly's Postfix book, it'll be worth your while. Then, when you're comfortable with the basics, google for "high volume mail server" and fill in the gaps.
HTH.
-- Jason Dixon, RHCE DixonGroup Consulting http://www.dixongroup.net
On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Ron Henderson wrote:
Hello all,
I am looking at building my first Linux email system. I verymuch would like to use Linux over windows/exchange for all the obvious reasons. The Servers need to host @1400 pop3 accounts. I was wondering if any of you could tell me if it is possible to cluster multiple mail servers for redundancy/performance. What distro / mail server software do you all recommend?
Ron
While it isn't a mail server list I suggest you check out the MailScanner list. The folks there are professional and friendly. Most are mail sysadmins and some administer some pretty large systems (+100k emails/day). They can also tell you the best way to set up an HA system.
BTW, I highly recommend MailScanner. If you're going to be running an email server then you need to scan for virii and spam. MailScanner runs on top of your MTA (sendmail needs no configuring) and will call whatever virus scanners you have installed. Most serious folks have several installed. It also works seamlessly with SpamAssassin.
On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 06:40, Gerry Doris wrote:
BTW, I highly recommend MailScanner. If you're going to be running an email server then you need to scan for virii and spam. MailScanner runs on top of your MTA (sendmail needs no configuring) and will call whatever virus scanners you have installed. Most serious folks have several installed. It also works seamlessly with SpamAssassin.
--
But, not if he's going with Postfix.. I'm making the change on 4 mail servers from Sendmail to Postfix (1 down, 3 to go), and am using amavisd-new for the Postfix installs.. It does pretty much the same thing as MailScanner..
Check out Xmail, http://www.xmailserver.org http://www.xmailserver.org/ been running one for years currently with 26 domains and just over 1800 accounts.
Hello all,
I am looking at building my first Linux email system. I very much would like to use Linux over windows/exchange for all the obvious reasons. The Servers need to host @1400 pop3 accounts. I was wondering if any of you could tell me if it is possible to cluster multiple mail servers for redundancy/performance. What distro / mail server software do you all recommend?
Ron
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Bryan Hepworth -
Gerry Doris -
Homer -
Jason Dixon -
Jeffrey L. Conley -
Ron Henderson