Test drive on home server possible?

[Tmanagement]

Hi all,

I am thinking about a test drive with zimbra on a home server. My question is if users have experiences with my specifications or can say something useful about it.

around 10 users
upload 830kbit/s
server:
semperon 2300+
512mb ram
linux (not sure which distribution yet)

I know that the official specs. are far more than what I have but reading this forum I have seen people that appear to do quit well with less so hopefully some users with experiences can comment on it.

Can you have a responsive Zimbra experience with these specs. ?

[phoenix]

The hardware is OK except for the memory, you'll get a more responsive system with more RAM. You can reduce the number of installed zimbra services but, of course, you lose functionality. You may get a reasonabley responsive system but it depends on the usage patterns of your usres. Check the wiki article on Performance Tuning, you may get away with those change or you may not, don't forget it's not a configuration we recommend and it was written for an older release.

[Tmanagement]

Thanks for your comment and since no one else is replying on it I will give it a shot and see what happens. In case the respons time is to slow, RAM will be the first thing I will upgrade.

[fernandoflorez]

I recommend at least 256 mb of extra ram.

[dwmtractor]

Originally Posted by Tmanagement

Thanks for your comment and since no one else is replying on it I will give it a shot and see what happens. In case the respons time is to slow, RAM will be the first thing I will upgrade.

I started my server with only 512 MB of RAM and ran it that way for several weeks with only three to five users. I found that about a meg to a meg and a half of swap was being used whenever anything major was happening on the server, but it ran fine and nothing crashed.

However, when I upgraded to 2 GB of RAM the difference was stunning. Web client loaded much faster (not as fast as I would wish it, but a whole lot better) and even though I now have 30 users and 500-600 messages per day (avg. 75k/message) I have never seen it even hit the swap file for more than a few seconds.

The paradox here is that, at the low end of the user base (<10 accounts and low volume), RAM has more effect on the experience of even the single user than it does on the ability to handle more users. Put another way, you really want more RAM even for only one user. . .but that's for performance, not stability.

So your configuration will work, but spend an extra few bucks on RAM and you'll be surprised how much faster it'll run.

[Tmanagement]

Thanks dwmtractor for your reply. I found your post in which you explained how zimbra worked with your low specs server which was helpfull. I probably will spent money on more RAM. However, at the moment I am thinking about how I will proceed with the installation since setting up a server/mail server is completely new to me.

Perhaps you also have an idea on my other post since you seem to have some experience with Zimbra already?
Forward mail to external mail server and from external mail server back to zimbra