When to use Multi vs Single?

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ilsa
Posts: 25
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2014 12:28 am

When to use Multi vs Single?

Post by ilsa »

Hi all,

I'm currently making plans to upgrade our zimbra server and was planning on doing a full reimplementation (for reasons I don't want to get into) with 8.8.10 NE. One of the obvious immediate questions I have is... should I go multi or single?

I realize I can start with single and move to multi later, but I'd rather avoid unnecessary future hassle by making a smart decision now. The problem is that I can't find so much as a single crumb of advice on what the decision criteria should be. How many mailboxes per mailstore is recommended? Are we talking hundreds? Thousands? Is there any other criteria I should be considering?

I looked at the documentation and they simply said I should talk to Zimbra sales for this information, which seems ridiculous to me.

Right now I'm planning on a single server install in a VM with 8GB ram, 4 vCPUs backed by an iSCSI store running over 10GB ethernet. Our company currently only has a couple hundred employees but I want to be ahead of the curve if/when we start expanding.

Any advice would be appreciated.
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axslingr
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ZCS/ZD Version: 8.8.15.GA.3869.UBUNTU18.64 UBUNTU18

Re: When to use Multi vs Single?

Post by axslingr »

I'd keep it simple and start with a single server, then add more mailbox servers as you need them. If anything, I might stick a mta/proxy in front those mailbox servers.

Lance
andrey.ivanov
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Re: When to use Multi vs Single?

Post by andrey.ivanov »

Hi,

i think up to 1000 users you may safely keep 1 server without any tuning at all.

I can give you our numbers. We use also single-server deployment with :
10 000 users
number and max size of mailboxes : ~50 about 20-30Gb, ~1000 about 5Gb, all others limited to 1Gb
/opt/zimbra/store [on-disk message storage] - 8Tb occupied
/opt/zimbra/index [apache lucene/solr index sotrage] - 400Gb occupied
/opt/zimbra/db [mariadb database] - 110Gb occupied
~1000 Zimbra connectors for Outlook
~100 telephones on activesync
~50 parallel connections on chat
on the average we have about 3000 parallel sessions (IMAP, web, ZCO, activesync)

The server is a VM that has 8 vCPUs, 64Gb of memory, the storage of vSphere cluster is on SAN. Stable and maintained for 5 years with upgrades from Zimbra 8.0 up to 8.8.10_P4, no performance problems.
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ccelis5215
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Location: Caracas - Venezuela
ZCS/ZD Version: 8.8.15.GA.3869.UBUNTU18.64 P12

Re: When to use Multi vs Single?

Post by ccelis5215 »

axslingr wrote:I'd keep it simple and start with a single server, then add more mailbox servers as you need them. If anything, I might stick a mta/proxy in front those mailbox servers.

Lance
Have to agree with this advice, keep it simple and after, if neccesary add servers as needed,

ccelis
ilsa
Posts: 25
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2014 12:28 am

Re: When to use Multi vs Single?

Post by ilsa »

Thank you all! That's very helpful.
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