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Specs for mail server
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Specs for mail server

jeffjeff Member
edited April 2013 in General

I have been interested in setting up a mail server since Google discontinued its free 10 user apps account. I noticed Semoweb is having a promo for a 10TB bw VPS. How many users could I support with 512MB of RAM (burst to 768mb)? I also have a VPS with 1024mb of RAM with 1TB of bw. Would the later be a better balance of mem and bw? I understand there are variables, but which would be the better VPS to get started with?

Comments

  • MunMun Member

    All depends on what you are sending and how much. I generally only use ~ 1 gig a month.

  • It's not about "how many users will it support", but rather, how many emails per second.
    512mb is plain overkill for sure.

    The bandie consumption depends on the emails themselves, DUH. Same for the disk space.

  • jeffjeff Member

    I am trying to figure out how many mailboxes I could support on a server with 512mb.

  • As many as you want as long as you don't hit your disk limit.

  • jeffjeff Member

    @skirtTight said: As many as you want as long as you don't hit your disk limit.

    So I will run out of disk first? I should be looking at disk space as the first resource to be used up.

  • skirtTightskirtTight Member
    edited April 2013

    Yeah pretty much, in a way.

    Most emails are between 5kb and 50kb, so.....

    image

  • flyfly Member

    have you taken a look at microsoft's hosted email?

  • jeffjeff Member

    @fly said: have you taken a look at microsoft's hosted email?

    Yes I have, but my interests are with providing a service and not sending clients to Google or Microsoft. Also interested in setting up mail servers in countries with better privacy laws such as Iceland.

  • is it easy to install your own mailserver with web gui? no panel i mean. 128 ovz ok?

  • jeffjeff Member

    @jcaleb said: is it easy to install your own mailserver with web gui? no panel i mean. 128 ovz ok?

    Take a peak at this tutorial

  • That tutorial @jeff :(

    Let me know if you get it to work. Definitely interested in other privacy focused locations.

  • jeffjeff Member

    @pubcrawler said: Let me know if you get it to work. Definitely interested in other privacy focused locations.

    Trying to justify the economics by comparing mail plans from namecheap, Google and MS. Iceland seems destine for this. See https://immi.is/index.php/66-immi-progress-report-delivered-at-icelandic-parliament

  • Well that covers whistleblowers per se... Have to sanity check data retention and seizure and warrants stuff... What will and won't be covered, exemptions, foreign compliance, etc.

    Iceland kicks butt, they told the bad bankers about the debt thrown upon them no and started arresting and deporting them. Turns out what? 90% of the debt wasn't even legitimate/legal.... I have lots of respect for the people of Iceland. It is a land of promise in a sea of choppy cold waters.

  • As skirtTight mentioned, it will probably come down to how many emails per second you have to deal with. Also, will you incorporate virus scanning or spam detection? If so, the limiting factor will probably be your CPU power. I currently run a small mail server with IMAP support (no webmail access). I used Exim, Courier-IMAP, Spam Assassin, and MySQL for the backend (i.e. emails are stored on disk, but mail account settings are read from MySQL). I don't have any virus scanning set up for incoming emails. As an informal estimate, it looks like the whole setup uses about 220MB of RAM.

  • jeffjeff Member
    edited April 2013

    How many entities would pay a premium, not to have forced data retention, not be held libel?

    @goins2010 thanks!

    Here is a nice PDF on forming a company in Iceland.

  • Depends on pricing @jeff.

    I have a bunch of domains with 1-3 accounts each. I tend to use email accounts them crinkle them up when spam and related crap find me and move onto another :) Then again, I also slurp all my mail down and leave nothing on the server either. So data retention in my use shouldn't be happening... Not even oh crap oopsie, just in case retention.

    The monetary cap really is going to be in line with what others charge on Cpanel and other big hosted email services. Maybe a slight 10-20% premium is some really compelling feature. Would love to see PGP crypto integrated into webmail or something similar.

    I mean, even at rates others charge, able to run business doing email. Know my consumption of resources is very low, but I buy rather large packages as buffer so as not to run into a false ceiling.

  • Single homed mailing on a LEB = Please do yourself and your clients a favor and stop.

    If you want to do this right, build a mailing cluster. There's a reason any serious company doing emails usually at least has two or more inbound relays.

  • True @Wintereise. It can be done on LEB... Still involves a cluster though.

  • jeffjeff Member

    @Wintereise said: Single homed mailing on a LEB = Please do yourself and your clients a favor and stop.

    If you want to do this right, build a mailing cluster. There's a reason any serious company doing emails usually at least has two or more inbound relays.

    I am not suggesting doing business on a LEB, but looking at it from a POV what it would take resource wise. The immediate goal is to setup two LEBs, see if I take to mail server admin and then figure out costs from my experience.

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