To build open source based scalable, stable webmail server

[Chris Hastie]

On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Erol Ozcan <erolozcan at yahoo.com> wrote
>Hi!
>
>  I am looking for a scalable, stable and cost effective webmail
>server solutions. The server system
>

I've no idea how well it will scale to the sort of size you're asking 
about, but have you looked at IMP? <http://www.horde.org/imp>

> - should be cost effective and based on open source softwares as
>possible ( could be commercial )

Open source

> - should be scalable up to 200,000 users, but 150,000 a must

Don't know

> - account creation or deletion should not exceed 2 seconds

Account creation isn't a function of IMP as such. How quickly can you 
create an account on the LDAP server or other user backend.

> - could be support concurent 100 subscribers for webmail browsing on
>the system without any performance problems

Any web system with 100 people hitting it concurrently will show 
performance loss. The question is whether it's a significant performance 
loss. Given decent hardware, a PHP accelerator and possibly the use of 
IMAPProxy I suspect it will be acceptable.

> - should not be create real system user for mail or other purposes.

Well your web server and mail servers will have to run as something, but 
beyond that, depending on your choice of IMAP server you could achieve 
this - Cyrus for example.

>Account information stored LDAP or other databases.

Yes

> - does not needed pop3 support

Has it, but you don't have to use it.

> - could ( i think should ) be cluster or similiar system ( load
>balance, round robin dns..., MUPDATE )

Splitting web server from IMAP server from outgoing SMTP server from 
LDAP/MySQL user backend would be trivial, and probably essential with 
the sort of size you're talking about. Beyond that is down to your 
imagination and ingenuity really.

> - Webmail system should be support basic webmail functionality like
>read, compose, mail, delete, folders, address book, able to view
>attachments...

Yes

> - users quota limit could  be 1 MB or even 256 MB since webmail system 
>is used only for special
>mail traffic ( MMS content ).

What ever you set them to. Again, this is a function of the IMAP server 
at the back rather than of IMP (effectively an IMAP client)

> - user accounts on the current Suse eMail server could be migratable 
>to the new server. ( I think
>i needed write scripts )

No idea since I've no idea how things are organised on the Suse eMail 
server. But I do know of at least one organisation that runs IMP on a 
Suse eMail server with Cyrus as the IMAP server and LDAP for user 
accounts.

<http://www.suse.de/uk/company/press/press_releases/archive03/nottingham_
city_council.html>


-- 
Chris Hastie