Re: [Exim] OT: Sizing a virus checking engine

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Author: Mike Richardson
Date:  
To: John Brooks
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] OT: Sizing a virus checking engine
> We handle approx 250,000 emails a day and I've tested (and slaughtered) the
> virus checking on a Sun ultra 10, 1 Gb memory and 1 300Mhz cpu.


We handle about the same volume of email and we are using 3 machines
each dual Xeon 2.4G with 2G mem and 4 striped/mirrored Ultra 160
disks.

For just mail transport they are serious overkill, for virus scanning
(sophie/sophos) their steady state load av is about 0.2 and they
cope very happily. May still seem like overkill but I'm less concerned
about the average viral load and more concerned about the potential
for massive viral floods.

For spam scanning they are pushed quite heavily. Typical load av for
4+ and mail processing times have gone from roughly 0.1s to 10s per
mail.

The AV load is insignificant compared to the SA load. We have another
hub waiting to come into action soon but I'd still prefer to see
the specs of these machines doubled to give a healthy headroom to
take care of peaks, downed hubs, downed campus machines (i.e. hubs
queuing lots of mail) returning, etc etc.

Mike

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