Hardware Capacity question

[gvillaran]

My Zimbra hardware is a HP ML370 with two Xeon 3.0 processors, 4GB of memory and a RAID 10 with a total space of 72GB, u think is alright for 350 users?

[Jbrabander]

More RAM is always good if you can get it in your machine. And 72GB doesn't seem like much for that many users. At maximum that's only a couple hundred MB each.

[Klug]

Add to this that the "key" is not the number of users but the number of emails (incoming mainly) and the number of _active_ users (logged in at the same time).

[gvillaran]

The exact number of users were 410.

110 users with 300mb quota
300 users with 100mb quota (saleforce)

we receive aprox. 2000 emails a day, and send 1000

we have an aprox 140 users online at the same time.

[dwmtractor]

You're describing a minimal mail store (if everybody runs full to quota) of 66GB on a 72GB disk array. That leaves you with only 6GB for operating system and Zimbra install (which shouldn't take more than a gig or two I would think), but if you do any active backup, downloading new packages to install/upgrade, or any other temp files you'll be running out of space awfully quickly. I wouldn't want to have my disks that close to capacity when disks are no more costly than they are.

On the other hardware, your CPUs are more than enough, but I concur with jbrander that extra RAM would probably make you happy. You'll likely do fine on 4 but it'll be faster and more responsive with the multiple users if you take it to 8GB.

[gvillaran]

Ok, thank you very much, i probably add 2 more disks and 4GB more memory then, at the moment the tests r going good.

[Jbrabander]

And you can pretty well guarantee that you'll get people that will insist on having a larger quota.

[LMStone]

And re storage requirements, what about /opt/zimbra/backup? If you keep the default 30 days of backups, and you have high daily email volumes, /opt/zimbra/backup can be 2x - 4x the size of the remainder of /opt/zimbra.

The 370 is a BIG server, and for that number of users I'd be inclined to use four 146GB SAS disks for /opt in a RAID10 array and a pair of 72GB disks (RAID1) for /.

I would also up the RAM to 8 or 12 GB, which will really speed up the user interface over 4GB for that number of users.

12GB of RAM will also give you enough RAM to put Amavisd's temp directory on a RAM disk, which speeds things up considerably.

You may also find you can save some $$$ by changing the chassis from a 370 to a DL380/385; those boxes hold up to eight disks giving you a spare pair of slots for more storage later if needed.

Hope that helps,
Mark

[gvillaran]

noted

thanks