Infrastructure for One Million Email Accounts?

cfsmp3 asks: "I have been asked to define the infrastructure for the email system for a huge company, which fed up of Exchange, wants to replace their entire system with something non-Microsoft. I have done this before, but not for anything of this scale. Suppose you are given a chance to build from scratch an email system that has to support around one million accounts. Some corporate, some personal, some free. POP, IMAP, webmail, etc are requirements. The system must scale perfectly, 99.9% uptime is expected... where would you start?"

Comments

Obviously

[SpiffyMarc]

I'd start by submitting a question to Ask Slashdot.

Re:Obviously

[CDMA_Demo]

I'd start by submitting a question to Ask Slashdot.

Upon which the global "wankfest" will commence, leading to solutions ranging from Novell to qmail based solutions, upon which the OP will look for someone else for advice, upon which the OP will end up paying an IBM consultant to set up his company's email.

Re:Obviously

[WarPresident]

I'd start by submitting a question to Ask Slashdot.

Ah, a proof by contradiction, eh?

Re:Obviously

[AKAImBatman]

upon which the OP will end up paying an IBM consultant to set up his company's email.

At which point the highly paid consultant will post a question to Ask Slashdot...

Re:Obviously

[88NoSoup4U88]

The obvious answer is of course : Send all those thousand employees an Gmail invite !

Re:Obviously

[Stephan Schulz]

Or complain loudly enough to be an embarrasement to Microsoft and they will supply equipment and support to get Exchange running smoothly!

Yes, but who can affort the space, electricity and cooling for 500000 servers (generously assuming that Exchange can handle 2 users per server)?

Re:Obviously

[mollymoo]

I didn't think there was anything more tragic to do on /. than boast about a first post. But the idea of boasting about a first post you didn't even make had never occurred to me. Kudos.

Re:Obviously

[pjbgravely]

WalMart runs the worlds biggest Exchange install. They and msft are quite proud of it, actually...


Thanks, another reason to never shop there.

Re:Obviously

[MarkGriz]

Whoa there cowboy...

He said "up".... beat yourself *up*

Easy.

[Chess_the_cat]

gmail.google.com

I'd start by

[technoextreme]

bashing my head up against a desk.

Re:I'd start by

[moranar]

Ah! Sendmail!

POP?

[lseltzer]

A million users and they want POP3? Add a gun and a single bullet to your administration requirements.

Re:POP?

[JoshWurzel]

I'd ask for six bullets. Why would you want to risk getting the empty chamber?

Re:POP?

[tktk]

I'd ask for enough bullets to handle the department thats making you to do this.

Re:POP?

[Mr. Underbridge]

I'd ask for six bullets. Why would you want to risk getting the empty chamber? I see that you are familiar with the subtle nuances of Polish Roulette.

Re:~ 320K accounts

[DaveCar]

The mail "databases" are spread among Domino servers

Yeah, but we all know what happens when one of these Domino servers falls over ...

While we answer this question...

[hellfire]

... Is anyone wondering what's going on at Microsoft right now?

It starts with a slashdot geek working in the email department spitting up his coffee, followed by a few rumors which make it up to a guy in accounting and customer service, followed by frantic management emails, including some inappropriate language, from Steve and Bill. Then a few good geeks start tracing who this cfsmp3 guy is and try to trace him to a company while the salesreps begin coldcalling any customers running around 1 million customers.

And Microsoft will botch it because they have no experience in cowtowing and bootlicking, which are important skills for any company who wants to humbly keep its customers.

Re:Qmail!!

[Loconut1389]

You used to work for NASA right?