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Sendmail On IBM Mainframes Running GNU/Linux

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sends-mail dept.

raffe writes: "Cnet reports that Sendmail has released a version of its e-mail server software that can run on Linux-powered IBM mainframe computers. In one benchmark test, IBM found that it was possible to house 2 million e-mail accounts on a single server, with 10 percent of the users accessing their mail at any given moment" For some reason though, IBM zSeries machines aren't listed at pricewatch ;)

3 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Misleading by Syberghost · · Score: 2, Informative

    The test was of 400,000 users, not 2 million; the 2 million number is a projection that has not been tested.

    If we're going to pretend we're journalists, let's pretend we took at least one semester of it, shall we?

  2. Re:Sendmail's an MTA not a MUA by kzinti · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah, but read IBM's report of the "benchmark". (It was a 400,000-user test; the 2 million quoted in the articles is an extrapolation of that number.) The test performed was to measure the overall system load, not just that of Sendmail. The IBM writeup says that the simulated users were accessing their e-mail via POP clients. The point was to demonstrate the scalability of the whole system, Sendmail included.

    --Jim

  3. The competition ain't in the Open Arena by MrChuck · · Score: 2, Informative
    Remember back when Unix was 12 vendors all yelling about each other that their competitors' Unix sucked and that theirs was best? Who won?

    NT

    It came up behind while the big boys of Unix were standing in their circle peeing at each other.



    In corporate-land, the ones that have mainframes already and are facing huge IT costs and a recession, the ones who are winning the mailboxes are Exchange and Notes. They had virtually no share 10 years ago, now they have lots of network share. They also cost a lot to run (Gartner says $25+ per mailbox per month).



    Now here's a company that runs on Unix, that has an IMAP server that can scale HUGELY on one (or many) boxes. That can give Secretary Joe the ability to do the admin on his group's 100 users and do that for 200 groups so that the system admin can do more important things than deal with adding a mailbox for this month's temp receptionist.



    QMail? Postifix? Who? Go talk to the CEO's, the stockholders. Given Dan's support group a call at 4AM when your TLS mail isn't working right or general stability of the organization, this isn't a choice for those who don't really want to spend all their money running their computers.



    Recall that when you're trying to run mail for 500+ people, there just aren't a lot of options out there. Notes and Exchange tack on the IMAP letters on their product and claim it supports standards.

    For those in the Real World, take a look around at how many actual standards based tools there are with solid commercial support.



    So Sendmail's MTA, IMAP server and Webmail client run on the Mainframe!? Bitchin', now I have something to counter those MSCE's who claim that we must run Exchange to survive.