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At 12:27 PM +0100 2004/02/02, Brad Knowles wrote:
In fact, if you use one of the battery-backed RAM disks (solid-state disks, actually) which are supported by Linux and FreeBSD (among others), you can get up to 4GB (or more) of reliable storage that will be lightning fast, and you will have the best of all possible worlds.
I've been looking at the requirements and potential performance
you can get with Lyris ListManager, MailEngine, etc.... See <http://www.lyris.com/lm_help/7.8/Memory_And_Bandwidth_Recom.html> and <http://www.lyris.com/products/mailengine/requirements.html> for the respective requirements, and <http://www.lyris.com/products/listmanager/extreme.html> for an idea of what kind of performance they can offer.
Then look at their prices at
<http://www.lyris.com/products/mailengine/prices.html>. For 500,000 messages per hour with comprehensive support, that's a software-only cost of more than $24,000 (one million messages an hour would cost over $48,000). Using SSDs and the right configuration, I can do a higher level of performance for less money, hardware and software included. Indeed, mailman would be a key part of that system.
If you want to pay commercial prices, you can get higher levels
of performance and capabilities. But if you're not willing to pay those kinds of prices, you have to make some compromises.
You may rarely get what you pay for, but you almost always pay
for what you get -- sometimes much more than you should.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be>
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.
GCS/IT d+(-) s:+(++)>: a C++(+++)$ UMBSHI++++$ P+>++ L+ !E-(---) W+++(--) N+ !w--- O- M++ V PS++(+++) PE- Y+(++) PGP>+++ t+(+++) 5++(+++) X++(+++) R+(+++) tv+(+++) b+(++++) DI+(++++) D+(++) G+(++++) e++>++++ h--- r---(+++)* z(+++)