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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 ;)

6 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! by roguerez · · Score: 3, Funny

    This makes the ultimate spamrelay.. ;)

  2. The mainframe's not dead... by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is the kind of thing that mainframes do well: information processing with little or no actual computation. Their I/O abilities really make the difference here.


    Hopefully, this kind of result will show the skeptics that there's a real purpose for the big boxes.

    --
    Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
  3. The rest of the article... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny
    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..."


    ...And in another benchmark test, IBM was also proud to announce that the massive I/O and processing infrastructure of its flagship zServer range was able to sustain 2 million Sendmail security holes, with 10 percent of the holes being exploited at any given moment...truly a new world record.

  4. Sendmail's an MTA not a MUA by swb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No end user can access their mail with Sendmail, it's a mail transfer agent for relaying mail, intra or inter-node.

    Mail access means reading the end-user spool through the usual MUAs and support daemons: Pine, Elm, mail(1), imapd, pop, etc.

    End users do use sendmail to relay mail, but they can't access their own mail that way.

    1. 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

  5. Re:1.2 Million dollars! by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Image what I could build with 1.2 million in cheap clone hardware... I think I could do at least twice as much processing, and include the pop/imap servers.

    Then you get to maintain and run those thousand boxes. Consider power, floor space, and most importantly, people requirements. (Are you going to maintain those systems yourself? Two or three people, maybe? I don't think so.)


    Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

    --
    Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!