Re: [exim] High Perf server

On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 04:43:46PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> Don't forget that SMTP requires implementations to make commitments
> about how reliably they can process message transactions.

I wrote about a queue that does things with less disk transfers, not
less reliably. Commercial MTAs have demonstrated they can work with less
than one disk transfer per message, but of course they are not for free
and not as flexible, but that is not related to their more intelligent
queue management.

> Also rememer that not properly balancing other resource requirements
> over other equally capable subsystems is a separate problem, and not one
> that should ever require any fundamental changes to a good
> general-purpose MTA in any way whatsoever.

Ok, so you think the queue is not the largest bottleneck? That may well
be true in your environment. In mine, it is. LDAP queries are not
a problem.

It is easy to say "Exim is good, Exim is fine, if you think fundamental
changes are needed, it's you doing something wrong". Exim *is* a good
MTA, otherwise I wouldn't use it. But equally true, there *is* room
for improvement, and that has nothing to do with me not being able to
manage my systems.

So, why do I want to improve things, if everything works fine? Because
I am in a growing market. Although hardware solves that problem, it is
not for free. Not running a system balanced to get the most out of it
is not economic. I talking about a cluster of >100 machines here.

But I take it, disk transfers are not a problem for anybody else here.

Michael