[Techtalk] mail server poll

[H. Peter Anvin]

Carla Schroder wrote:
 >
> Do you put your email server on a dedicated box, all by its lonesome, or 
> combine with other servers?
> 
> On a customer/work installation, what is your preference?
> 

I think to answer that question, you have to answer another one first: 
at what size installation?

Things are obviously very different if you have 20 people on a site (in 
which case you probably only have one or a couple of servers to begin 
with) and if you have 2000.

My recommendation, however, would be to separate out the mail server 
onto its own boxes as one of the first services to be separated out, 
although *after* file service (NFS/SMB).  File service should be the 
very first thing separated out onto its own box.  In fact, for a 
small-to-medium size company, I would start looking at Network Appliance 
and its competitors very early for the file service -- they require a 
lot less babysitting than any other file server I know of, but I do 
*not* recommend them for large sites -- they are hard to manage when the 
total storage exceeds the capacity of 2-3 large netapps.

	-hpa