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Hello, I want to install the Zimbra mail server but I would like know what are the resources needed.
I have 800 users and all going to work with webmail so I think it's more expensive than use by any email client.
I wish something about memory, Disk type and Proc.
I don't want an big performance but it have work well.
thanks
Don't get beatup or ignored.
Often times obvious questions go unanswered or a RTFM comment or similar.
Anyhow, my friend, I was once not knowing.
So, don't be afraid to look around at the documentation, its a gold mine.
Anyway, these links below should assist
Documentation for the open source Zimbra Collaboration Suite; email, contacts, and group calendaring
http://files.zimbra.com/website/docs...ents_8.0.0.pdf
I was looking at this my self and based on some logical conclusions of client = load = resources required and recommendations from large scale deployments I came up with the following:Quote:
Originally Posted by maiconlp
Ram:
8-16GB / This will reduce I/O on your disks and allow for marginal expansion of client base. (20-100Mb per client)
Storage:
due to the intense I/O activity of a mail server I wouldn't suggest implementing RAID 5, but with my experience of using other mail servers I would at least look at having separate raid configuration for purely mail store 500gb - 2tb and insure you have some mailbox restrictions.
CPU:
any server edition supporting Duel + cores (quad core etc)
RAID5 is deprecated - do not use RAID5 anymore, your stripes not gonna survive a rebuild n todays drive capacity
RAID 6 is garbage
RAID10 is the only realworld solution
RAM is cheap and more is lawys better, 32 should be a minimum.
use virtualisation, zimbra on a baremettal is a bit unflexible
HDD, depending on your budged consider SSD drives at least for a part of the installation
for example you can set index and store to different drives.
so that leave you a lot of options.
no ssds,
only zimbra bins on ssds (helps a lot) but data nad index on rotation
or bin and index on ssd and so on
if you have NE edition you can also set an storage for older mails with a policy as an archive, here we could use the rotational raid
while actual data is on ssd
of course ssds in a raid10 too :))
Yes i know, many would say hey heavy write load on a mailserver bad for ssds - well not really - in fact even under heavy load their lifetime is still better than rotational under same conditions.
in additons, goolge made an study about drivefailere in their datacenters, turns out that regular SATA drives are even more relyable as SAS drives. and were talking here big representative numbers.
but be careful, you can just take a desktop satadrives in a raid, use dedicated raid drives like WD black label.
SSD you can take whatever you want, samsung 830 are cheap and fine, plextors are better but more expensive.
still if its only a few hundred user a 6 drive ssd raid 10 array would give you 360GB data lets say 300 gig for users, so around 400mb /each user average for around 600€ diskcosts (plus controller and enclosure)
which is pretty cheap for the befenfits.
problem i see very often is that server bought with massive space never needed because the application on it uses all cpu resources but only a little hdd resources.
so it woudl make total sense tossing those rotators.
Raidcontroller use only hardwareraid please :) i prefer LSI(3ware) but thats another topic
Finanote, zimbra is hungry, the docs are nice but not really true, really zimbra eats resources like no other and little more gives your users a better expierence.
Why iam so pro SSD is simple, not only the massive benefit of fast IO and access times (not talking about datatransfer) it outperforms any SAS drive regarding IO by a relativly similar price.
but even better and for me important is the cooling factor.
even in a datacenter this is often an issue with more than 6 drives. ssd makes live pretty easy, no cooling needed there at all, no additional head, less energy consumption.
if i ahve to change one or 2 drives a year in a 24 array so be it, most of em got a 3-5 year waranty even for consumer so what...
EDIT: just another note, many will argue, use only enterprise ssds, or only SAS, well lets talk real world, beside google study, only benefit SAS over SATA is better IO and some additional protocolls,
but its simple if youre small - it doesnt matter - those factors really kicks in on a bigger scale, chances for a single server benefit are small.
in addition comapred to the pricetag in a larger scale it would make more sense to make 2 ISCSI 10gbit storageunits in a cluster with regular satas than 1 unit with sas drives (talking here above 20 drives)
talking about capacity/price
and a clustered sata san is still mroe relyable than a sas non cluster san, if you got 3-4 machines in the cluster it doenst matter at all anymore both will be relyable and chances of total failure are smaller than
an terrorist attack in your server room (or meteor or whatever) ,.. you know where iam going too? simple calculation of chance of failure. the IO difference in such big arrays is also not really that factor anymore
but if it really is, ssd would be the way togo anyway then and scaling is often cheaper then enterprise products and have often more benefit too, so better scale up to 16 drives cheap ones than 8 expensives
SAS is not worth the pricetag but thats just my opinion