Topic: Processing requirements?

[guest]

Hi,
I am wondering if someone could offer an opinion on the following.

With all the exploits, on the internet, and our implementation of tools on the SME Servers such as Snort/Acid, Amavis, or other Antivirus, Spamassassin etc, I am wondering how much performance hit the servers take as gateway?
Is it minimal?

Is all the SPAM, and rule processing, and virus scanning putting much of a load on these machine?

This last while, with some  of the things I have read, it is starting to make me wonder if it is time to think differently about using the one box to "do it all". (Web Gateway, SPAM, ANTIVIRUS, VPN, file sharing etc.)

[grand-pa]

I don't know if it can help to answer your question, but on my personnal SME box (AMD K6-2/400, 192 Mo, 5 years old), i have SpamAssassin+ClamAV+Amavis (about 50 spams + 150 viruses per day), many logfiles analyzers, 3 sites running (14000 hits/day, 64 Mo/day), and sometimes webcam streaming.
My total CPU average utilization is about 7% (one year statistics) on that computer. You can have a look on my CPU graphs and all my statistics graphs.  

So, i think a one box to "do it all" is still a good thing for many people/societies.