[Mailman-Users] Hardware Requirements

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:12:27 -0600 
Tim Crouch <tcrouch at du.edu> wrote:

> I am looking for suggestions on a hardware purchase.  I am setting up
> a new mailing list server for our University. It will host up to 500
> lists ranging from 2 subscribers to 3000 with an average of under 200.
> We will archive no more than 1 year's worth of messages.  

You're missing the prime statistics:

  Number of messages broadcast by the list server.

and:

  Responsiveness and locality of target MXes.

> Obviously disk size will be number one on the priority, but I am
> looking for what you would run this on.  OS will be RH Linux 7.3 the
> hardware will be from Dell.  I am leaning towards the following:

> Dell PowerEdge 350 1u rack server 850MHz Celeron, 128KB L2 512 MB
> SDRAM 20 Gig IDE boot drive 120 GIG IDE data (for archiving, data, &
> web) RH Linux 7.3

Guessing at your numbers I'd be a tempted to:

  a) Add more RAM.  Number of queue runners for your MTA
  b) drop the CPU speed if it will save any money, though I suspect
     that's as low as you can buy these days.
  c) go SCSI with /var/spool/MTA, /var/log, and /var/www on different
     spindles.
  e) don't use Sendmail (the RH default).  I'd generically tend towards
     Postfix, though Exim would also be recommendable.
  f) Head for Mailman v2.1 sooner rather than later.  You might
     especially want to look into v2.1's plugin layer for subscriber
     lists.

I don't know Dell's line or if they do anything like that.  

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.