I want to migrate over to Zimbra and I am testing it out right now on a small machine to see how it all works. But I need to face the hardware issue.
I have about 1800 accounts and I expect that at some point the number of accounts could get up to 5000-6000. (Note: Approx 1/3 - 1/2 of these would just be POP3 accts.) I have searched the forums here and found some discussion of this but the people who posted their server specs only mentioned 6-20-50 users.
Anybody know what the server requirements would be to handle the load of 2000-6000 accounts?
Thanks in advance!
Server requirements for 2000-6000 accounts
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andreychek
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Server requirements for 2000-6000 accounts
[quote user="elyse"]Anybody know what the server requirements would be to handle the load of 2000-6000 accounts?[/QUOTE]
Well, while I don't think I'm qualified to answer that question (other than to say you'll probably want a bunch of RAM
, those who are qualified are probably going to need to know:
* Mail volume -- it's one thing to know how many users, but it's another to know how much mail they're pulling in
* How often are they checking mail... every 5 minutes? 15? When there's 6000 users, that sort of thing makes a difference
* SSL connections, plain text, or either (SSL connections have a wonderful security benefit, but take more resources)?
I'll offer that you may want to consider a distributed setup, getting that working from the beginning may help things down the road.
With multiple servers, and perhaps a single network storage unit, you could have, say, one server per 2000 users (I'm making the numbers up, you'll need to figure out what ratio is best for you still, meaning you'd have 3 live servers when you hit 6000 users. But, you could also keep a fourth standby server to take over if one somehow blew up.
Using network storage, the above setup wouldn't be very complex at all.
Have a good one,
-Eric
Well, while I don't think I'm qualified to answer that question (other than to say you'll probably want a bunch of RAM
, those who are qualified are probably going to need to know:* Mail volume -- it's one thing to know how many users, but it's another to know how much mail they're pulling in
* How often are they checking mail... every 5 minutes? 15? When there's 6000 users, that sort of thing makes a difference
* SSL connections, plain text, or either (SSL connections have a wonderful security benefit, but take more resources)?
I'll offer that you may want to consider a distributed setup, getting that working from the beginning may help things down the road.
With multiple servers, and perhaps a single network storage unit, you could have, say, one server per 2000 users (I'm making the numbers up, you'll need to figure out what ratio is best for you still
, meaning you'd have 3 live servers when you hit 6000 users. But, you could also keep a fourth standby server to take over if one somehow blew up.Using network storage, the above setup wouldn't be very complex at all.
Have a good one,
-Eric
Server requirements for 2000-6000 accounts
Dear Eric, Thanks a lot for the tip. I've rephrased my question here for anyone who has the experience.
I have about 1800 accounts and I expect that at some point the number of accounts could get up to 5000-6000. (Note: Approx 1/3 - 1/2 of these would just be POP3 accts.) I have searched the forums here and found some discussion of this but the people who posted their server specs only mentioned 6-20-50 users.
"* Mail volume -- it's one thing to know how many users, but it's another to know how much mail they're pulling in"
-- Each account will vary a lot but they probably average about 30-50 email per day. (I have some people that get 800 in a day during crazy times but the above is probably a pretty accurate average.)
"* How often are they checking mail... every 5 minutes? 15? When there's 6000 users, that sort of thing makes a difference"
Most will check their mail every few hours actually. But I am sure some will set it to check every 10-20 mins automatically. (These will most likely be the 1/3-1/2 of the accounts which are using a POP3 client.)
"* SSL connections, plain text, or either (SSL connections have a wonderful security benefit, but take more resources)?"
The web connections will most likely all be SSL.
Further, right now we do have a distributed arrangement. However, I was hoping to only need to get two machines -- for load balancing and redundancy. I will have all of my spam filtering done on another server which I already have. So the functions of the Zimbra server(s) will be mainly the web, IMAP and POP mail services (along with the SMTP obviously). I do not expect a lot of calendar action either.
With this data, does anybody know what the server requirements would be to handle the load of 2000-6000 accounts?
Again, thanks to anyone who can provide the data.
best, elyse
I have about 1800 accounts and I expect that at some point the number of accounts could get up to 5000-6000. (Note: Approx 1/3 - 1/2 of these would just be POP3 accts.) I have searched the forums here and found some discussion of this but the people who posted their server specs only mentioned 6-20-50 users.
"* Mail volume -- it's one thing to know how many users, but it's another to know how much mail they're pulling in"
-- Each account will vary a lot but they probably average about 30-50 email per day. (I have some people that get 800 in a day during crazy times but the above is probably a pretty accurate average.)
"* How often are they checking mail... every 5 minutes? 15? When there's 6000 users, that sort of thing makes a difference
"Most will check their mail every few hours actually. But I am sure some will set it to check every 10-20 mins automatically. (These will most likely be the 1/3-1/2 of the accounts which are using a POP3 client.)
"* SSL connections, plain text, or either (SSL connections have a wonderful security benefit, but take more resources)?"
The web connections will most likely all be SSL.
Further, right now we do have a distributed arrangement. However, I was hoping to only need to get two machines -- for load balancing and redundancy. I will have all of my spam filtering done on another server which I already have. So the functions of the Zimbra server(s) will be mainly the web, IMAP and POP mail services (along with the SMTP obviously). I do not expect a lot of calendar action either.
With this data, does anybody know what the server requirements would be to handle the load of 2000-6000 accounts?
Again, thanks to anyone who can provide the data.
best, elyse