Hello everyone

I've been requested to estimate the hardware needed for construction an
smtp relay server.
No need for Antivirus / SpamAssasin checking.

The expected traffic is 50Kb messages to ~60,000 recipients.

I've tried to google for benchmark / Capacity planing formulas with no
results.

Any advice would be very welcome and appreciated.


Thank you,
Maxim.

hq4ever@gmail.com wrote:

> No need for Antivirus / SpamAssasin checking.
>
> The expected traffic is 50Kb messages to ~60,000 recipients.

You should provide more detail - e.g. are those recipients local or
remote, and if remote, do you want to estimate the overall delivery time
or the time it takes to queue them?
In what time frame are those messages handed over to postfix? Is it one
single message to all those recipients?

If the recipients are remote, the bottle neck is most likely the
internet connection, not some server software.


Just my 0,02 EUR ;-)

-hannes

Hannes Erven wrote:
> hq4ever@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > No need for Antivirus / SpamAssasin checking.
> >
> > The expected traffic is 50Kb messages to ~60,000 recipients.
>
> You should provide more detail - e.g. are those recipients local or
> remote, and if remote, do you want to estimate the overall delivery time
> or the time it takes to queue them?

Yes, of curse.

The recipients are remote.

This is separate message delivery to each recipients in a time frame of
6hr.
Expected rate is 200msg / Min.
I would like to estimate as you say the "overall delivery time".

> In what time frame are those messages handed over to postfix? Is it one
> single message to all those recipients?
>

The sending application sends the messages at a constant rate of
~100msg/Sec and then stops until the next day transaction.

> If the recipients are remote, the bottle neck is most likely the
> internet connection, not some server software.
>

Network bandwidth should be sufficient as the server sites in the ISP's
server farm.

Thank you.

>
> Just my 0,02 EUR ;-)

If I only had those 0.02 EUR each time some one offered...

>
> -hannes

-- Maxim Vexler.

hq4ever@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello everyone
>
> I've been requested to estimate the hardware needed for construction an
> smtp relay server.
> No need for Antivirus / SpamAssasin checking.
>
> The expected traffic is 50Kb messages to ~60,000 recipients.
>
> I've tried to google for benchmark / Capacity planing formulas with no
> results.
>
> Any advice would be very welcome and appreciated.
>
>
> Thank you,
> Maxim.

If you are relaying email, a critical factor is the ability
of the remote sites to receive email. It they're slow or on a slow
network, that impacts your ability to deliver.

You could estimate a time it takes to delivery an average message,
multiply that by the total number of messages, and divide it into
the number of concurrent Postfix processes, you could get a ballpark delivery
time for all the messages. Don't forget the time it takes for the relay
to accept the incoming messages.

For example, assumptions:
50,000 messages
Average receive time: 2 seconds
Average send time: 10 seconds
Number of Postfix processes: 300

50,000 x 2 sec. = 100,000 sec. for receipt
50,000 x 10 sec. = 500,000 sec. for delivery
-------
600,000 sec. total

600,000 sec. / 300 process = 2,000 sec

2,000 sec / (60x60) = 5.6 hours


This is blue sky stuff for 1 modern x86 system. I'd want
a minimum of 2 Postfix servers. The hardware type depends
on your computing budget and business enviroment: high end
corporate data center, versus a couple of desktops stuffed in
a closet. Costly caching SCSI disk arrays are faster.
--
Greg

> I've been requested to estimate the hardware needed for construction an
> smtp relay server.
> No need for Antivirus / SpamAssasin checking.
>
> The expected traffic is 50Kb messages to ~60,000 recipients.
> I've tried to google for benchmark / Capacity planing formulas with no
> results.
> Any advice would be very welcome and appreciated.

Maxim,

Designing a system like that requires several sets of data
or workload profiles to get a grip on your needs. Also, redundancy,
failover, and reliability can play a critical role in your design.
Several companies, including ours, does this type of work all the time.
Hope that s,

-Phil Carinhas
pac(at)fortuitous(dot)com
--
Fortuitous Technologies Inc - http://fortuitous.com
Performance Engineering, Capacity Planning & Design