Best recommended hardware

[Shurik]

Hi, I am planning on deploying 3.1.4 for a small business of 20 users.
Most users have about 100 mb of email at any given time, except for 1 user that has a 5GB inbox. I am looking for the best performance. What would be your suggestions? I have to use DELL hardware 'cos we have an account w. them. Has anyone ever had a user with a huge inbox like i do? if yes, where there any issues?
I currently have zimbra installed on a regular dell desktop runnig FC4 and only 2 active users w. half the recommended hardware.. it seems a little choppy due to lack of RAM. I saw the docs recommending 2GBs.. Will that be enough? or should I make it 4?
Any advice much appreciated.

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[gmsmith]

Originally Posted by Shurik

Hi, I am planning on deploying 3.1.4 for a small business of 20 users.
Most users have about 100 mb of email at any given time, except for 1 user that has a 5GB inbox. I am looking for the best performance. What would be your suggestions? I have to use DELL hardware 'cos we have an account w. them. Has anyone ever had a user with a huge inbox like i do? if yes, where there any issues?
I currently have zimbra installed on a regular dell desktop runnig FC4 and only 2 active users w. half the recommended hardware.. it seems a little choppy due to lack of RAM. I saw the docs recommending 2GBs.. Will that be enough? or should I make it 4?
Any advice much appreciated.

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20 users is a small install (no offense), so I wouldn't worry about anything crazy. I would just make sure you have a bunch of ram. Ram is cheap...get lots. As for the user with a 5 gig inbox, smack them...and then when they recover, smack them again.

Seriously 5 gigs for an inbox...serious user education is required there.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by gmsmith

Seriously 5 gigs for an inbox...serious user education is required there.

Greg - Sorry I have to disagree Lots of us have gig's of mail. While many don't need that much it's nice to have access and instant search of years of mail. For me the days for finding the right archive PST or having to run Google Desktop just to search my mail is gone.

[gmsmith]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Greg - Sorry I have to disagree Lots of us have gig's of mail. While many don't need that much it's nice to have access and instant search of years of mail. For me the days for finding the right archive PST or having to run Google Desktop just to search my mail is gone.

Kevin, no worries, but do you keep 5 gigs in your INBOX? I have tons of mail, but I file it making the initial load in most mail servers much quicker (I don't know how Zimbra would respond to 5 gig in a sub folder). 5 gig in a Kerio inbox would just kill a server...

[KevinH]

I think my INBOX is around 1.5GB, it's a couple hundred thousand messages. Zimbra is pretty well optimized for large folders and extremely large mailboxes. So your right anyone with experience on other messaging systems would think this is crazy, but @ Zimbra it's a primary design requirement.

[gmsmith]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I think my INBOX is around 1.5GB, it's a couple hundred thousand messages. Zimbra is pretty well optimized for large folders and extremely large mailboxes. So your right anyone with experience on other messaging systems would think this is crazy, but @ Zimbra it's a primary design requirement.

Yet another great thing about Zimbra

[dijichi2]

i have 3.1.4 implemented on several boxes below the min spec. they all run great except i would say beware of the default tomcat setup eats ram - if you have less than 2gb you will notice that the swap gets eaten quickly and degraded performance - either get 2gb ram or search on these forums for how to decrease the tomcat footprint.

i have noticed 3.2 is much more responsive from the web ui and runs really fast, and that is on a box that is waaay under the official spec, with >2gb mailboxes.