Hello,

We are considering setting up CGPro in cluster mode and would like to know
what are the best components needed for that setup.
We have a license of 100K users but only about 60% of the accounts would
have daily activities.  Also we have three Ironports to filter out any spams
and virues before delivering the clean messages to the CGPro.
We are looking to have 0x2 backends connected to an EMC SAN.
To load balance between the two servers and to provide continuous service in
case one server goes down, we will use a loadbalancer.

The questions I have are:
- which OS is the most stable for CGPro cluster?  I've been told that it's
FreeBSD.
- what 64-bit hardware and how much RAM and CPU would be best?
- which should be doing the Cluster File System, is Veritas OK?

Thank you.
John

Hello;

IMAP, POP, IM, AirSync?  Load will vary radically depending on the services, like AirSync can have open sockets on the front ends, and some OS's need to be tweaked and ran in 64bit to get maximum density. Meaning a 32bit Linux might only achieve say +/- 8k sockets, while running it in 64bit with 16GB of memory you can take that up to 90k sockets.

IMAP also put's significant load on the system compared to POP. Ver5.3 has some mechanisms for moving certain files that get touched all the time, over to faster storage, like an SSD, for optimal performance.

 >Also we have three Ironports to filter out any spams and virues before delivering the clean messages to the >CGPro.

OK,t hat will take a lot of load off.

I can tell you what we recommend in the "daily practice" is a 3x3 cluster minimum as you do not have a point of failure when you do updates, which is the time HW normally fails (when you take it off line). We recommend NetApp and EMC, and Sun storage all the time. We always recommend NFS heads, and most all of our clusters run NFS. Keep in mind we do not use file locking, so the performance on NFS is fantastic, and there is no need for software or fibre controllers on each box.

You might start a OS "religion war discussion" here. But I can tell you today most all of our clusters are Linux or Solaris, and most of the solaris has moved to the Intel variant. Keep in mind if you are to use codecs at some point, the IPP libraries are only available on Linux, and I think OSX.

The Sun 4140 and the HP Proliant DL360 are boxes we recommend all the time recently. Both can be configured with a SSD. I believe you can squeeze the OS there, and mount the NFS to further reduce moving parts (failures).

While CFS's do work, they are more trouble than they are worth. We always recommend NFS with as many spindles of drives as you can afford. Use the savings on dropping the CFS to buy another cabinet of drives, and or consider using an SSD to mount the info files I spoke about above to maximize IOPS and performance.

Regards,

Jon

Jon Doyle
Vice President
CommuniGate Systems
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On 2010-01-06, at 15:09 , Jon Doyle wrote:

Yeah, although we hate NetApp Inc we sure love our NetApps. :)

What method/device of load balancing are you typically using with 3x3 clusters?

Thanks,

A.

--
Adam Sherman
CTO, Versature Corp.
Tel: +1.877.498.3772 x113

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Just asking....why do you dislike NetApp?

We have a couple old netapps.  They work great.  Never had a problem dealing with NetaApp support.  Got a new IBM storage unit
[netapp labeled as IBM] that makes us deal with IBM support on a regular basis.  Talking with IBM support is about as pleasant as
walking on rusty nails so you can drink a nice cold can of crushed glass.  Every time is a battle.

Adam Sherman wrote, at 1/8/2010 9:11 AM:

--
Jeff Wark
TBayTel Internet
807-625-3041

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On 2010-01-08, at 10:09 , Jeff Wark wrote:

Good to know about IBM support.

I've found that trying to work with used equipment with NetApp is extremely unpleasant. We love ZeroWait.

A.

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Adam Sherman
CTO, Versature Corp.
Tel: +1.877.498.3772 x113

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Perhaps the scenario is similar then.  Used NetApp equipment may get the same treatment through NetApp as NetApp equipment gets
through IBM.  They don't consider it their own.

I should probably qualify the IBM support a bit more.  The hardware support is pretty decent when it comes to replacing parts etc.
It is the hoops that you have to jump through first that make it so painful.  Support for our "IBM NetApp" only comes after several
serial numbers have been given [sometimes serial numbers from faceplates that could easily be moved to another unit].  Quite often
this verification process is so long it exceeds the actual tech support call [sometimes short as in < 5 min].  It is especially bad
on our blades running VMware since they have to verify that we have support on a specific blade.

*begin-rant*
My impression is that IBM support is like American Health Insurance is portrayed on Sicko [by Michael Moore].  Just keep denying
support until the person gives up.  If they're still they're after a couple hours, give in and give them support.  We've been on
support for almost an hour to get an answer to what ended up being something trivial for them to solve.  If they just gave us the
support because we have an account with them, it would have saved an hour of their employees time and an hour of our employees time.
*end-rant*

So, for the identical hardware [except for the faceplate], I wish we went straight to NetApp instead of getting the device through IBM.

Adam Sherman wrote, at 1/8/2010 10:16 AM:

--
Jeff Wark
TBayTel Internet
807-625-3041

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