Re: To build open source based scalable, stable webmail server

[Chris Hastie]

On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Erol Ozcan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote

Hi!

 I am looking for a scalable, stable and cost effective webmail
server solutions. The server system

I've no idea how well it will scale to the sort of size you're asking about, but have you looked at IMP? <http://www.horde.org/imp>

- should be cost effective and based on open source softwares as
possible ( could be commercial )

Open source

- should be scalable up to 200,000 users, but 150,000 a must

Don't know

- account creation or deletion should not exceed 2 seconds

Account creation isn't a function of IMP as such. How quickly can you create an account on the LDAP server or other user backend.

- could be support concurent 100 subscribers for webmail browsing on
the system without any performance problems

Any web system with 100 people hitting it concurrently will show performance loss. The question is whether it's a significant performance loss. Given decent hardware, a PHP accelerator and possibly the use of IMAPProxy I suspect it will be acceptable.

- should not be create real system user for mail or other purposes.

Well your web server and mail servers will have to run as something, but beyond that, depending on your choice of IMAP server you could achieve this - Cyrus for example.

Account information stored LDAP or other databases.

Yes

- does not needed pop3 support

Has it, but you don't have to use it.

- could ( i think should ) be cluster or similiar system ( load
balance, round robin dns..., MUPDATE )

Splitting web server from IMAP server from outgoing SMTP server from LDAP/MySQL user backend would be trivial, and probably essential with the sort of size you're talking about. Beyond that is down to your imagination and ingenuity really.

- Webmail system should be support basic webmail functionality like
read, compose, mail, delete, folders, address book, able to view
attachments...

Yes

- users quota limit could be 1 MB or even 256 MB since webmail system is used only for special
mail traffic ( MMS content ).

What ever you set them to. Again, this is a function of the IMAP server at the back rather than of IMP (effectively an IMAP client)

- user accounts on the current Suse eMail server could be migratable to the new server. ( I think
i needed write scripts )

No idea since I've no idea how things are organised on the Suse eMail server. But I do know of at least one organisation that runs IMP on a Suse eMail server with Cyrus as the IMAP server and LDAP for user accounts.

<http://www.suse.de/uk/company/press/press_releases/archive03/nottingham_
city_council.html>


--
Chris Hastie