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Load Balancing

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Load Balancing
I'm thinking about purchasing Gossamer Mail. Here are a few questions I would like answered:

1) How many servers can each license allow me to install GM on? Is it limited by the domain or by server?

2) What are some of the ways to accomplish load balancing? Are all user mails stored in a database? If so I guesss I can just use DNS wildcards. Is this right?

3) Is the POP server source code made available to me when I buy it?

4) How can I integrate anti-virus filters into the program?

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Skeptical: May 4, 2002, 7:50 AM
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Re: [Skeptical] Load Balancing In reply to
Hi,

1. A single license covers only one installation of the program. The number of domains refers to the multi domain support in the software (i.e., accepting email from @domain1.com and @domain2.com).

2. There are many different ways to separate functionality per machine. You can use a dedicated machine for the mail server, a dedicated machine for the mysql database, etc. For high volume, we typically recommend putting mod_perl and the mail server on one one machine, sql server on another machine, and one or more load balancers running squid/apache on a third machine (this is assuming a very busy site with 100,000+ users).

3. Yes, you get full source code available.

4. We recommend doing this on the mail server level. If you get any commercial server mail scanner, it is typically quite easy to integrate it into the mail server (so it gets virus scanned before Gossamer Mail even sees it).

Let me know if you have any other questions,

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: [Alex] Load Balancing In reply to
In Reply To:
2. There are many different ways to separate functionality per machine. You can use a dedicated machine for the mail server, a dedicated machine for the mysql database, etc. For high volume, we typically recommend putting mod_perl and the mail server on one one machine, sql server on another machine, and one or more load balancers running squid/apache on a third machine (this is assuming a very busy site with 100,000+ users).

Does GM and GM Professional both work with mod_perl as well as GM Enterprise? How much of the code is the same?

In Reply To:
3. Yes, you get full source code available.

Is the POP server compiled code or is it a script? I'm interested in the Linux version btw. Also, if it's compiled, is it based on some sort of program already out there?

In Reply To:
4. We recommend doing this on the mail server level. If you get any commercial server mail scanner, it is typically quite easy to integrate it into the mail server (so it gets virus scanned before Gossamer Mail even sees it).

Can you recommend some server mail scanners? I will be running Linux and it's vital that I get some antivirus scanner to use.

Lastly, are the database authentication modules included when I purchase GM or do I have to manually modify the code? And if I want to say migrate from mysql to oracle in the future how hard would that be?
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Re: [Skeptical] Load Balancing In reply to
Hi,

Yes, all versions work with mod_perl. The code base and functionality is the same, it's just the number of domains supported that is different.

The POP server can run as a daemon, or via inetd/xinetd, and is a perl script.

As for virus scanners, we have a customer using:

http://www.commandsoftware.com/enterprise/linux.html

and it works quite well.

All the plugins listed with the exception of the banner management ones, and the pop server, are free plugins, and you can download them straight from your admin panel.

Moving from MySQL to Oracle is definately an option, however it would require someone experienced in Oracle (Oracle typically requires an experienced DBA to manage and maintain it).

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: [Skeptical] Load Balancing In reply to
We've been running Sophos AntiVirus very successfully on our corporate network for the last three or four years. I haven't tried to integrate this with GMail, but we've found it to be a very fast and efficient anti virus scanner for your linux box.

- wil