Topic: New ISP

[icemannz]

I have the job of setting up a small ISP and I really don’t know much about this.
I am hoping to start by hosting email on an SME server.
My questions are:

Do you know of how I can provide easy backups and a failsafe so that if the email server goes down for any reason I can have another email server continue to supply email to customers with out any delays or reconfiguration and what is the best way to provide full backups for disaster recovery.

Also if I was to use an SME server to host web pages, do you think this would be the best method or is there something else better suited.

I imagine I may have a number of web pages that I will need to host for various clients.

Any help would be appreciated.

[cc_skavenger]

I currently do this with SME.  I have separate boxes for mail and for the web server.  I would recommend a 3Ghz P4 with HT, 1GB ram, and 2 IDE drives (sata not supported yet) for the mail server.  These are the specs for my e-mail server, serves about 800 mail boxes with no problem.  Install Knuddi's clamav and spamassassin contribs and the backup to workstation contrib and you will be set for e-mail.  I actually do not have a backup e-mail server, never really had a need for one.  Just keep good backups.

For a web server, you could use something less powerful.  1Ghz, 256MB ram, and 2 IDE drives.  I would install the mod-gzip contrib, ftp chroot contrib, the awstats contrib, and the backup to workstation contrib.

Now for the backup, I have a third pc setup with a drive with the operating system on it and a drive just for data that is larger then the combined sizes of the two server's drives above.  For example, if you have 20gb hard drives in the mail server and 40 gb hard drives in the web server, I would use a 60gb hard drive.  I would setup the lan IPs of the two servers and the IP of the third PC to be on the same subnet.  I then would configure the backup to workstation contrib on each server to backup to shared directories on the data drive in the third pc.
This backup pc is for disaster recovery, it has worked well for me.

HTH

[smeghead]

I actually provide support to my ISP and we have concluded based on detailed testing that the best infrastructure that doesn't break the bank is to use s/hand Compaq Proliant Xeon servers.

We have just replaced the main mail/authentication server with a ML530 G1: Dual P3 Xeon 933 with 3GB ECC RAM & 4 * 73GB U320 SCSI HDD in RAID 5 with hot spare (about 150GB) on a Smart Array 5300 (128MB cache), triple redundant PSU's.

This server (less the new HDD's) was bought from eBay for about AUS1,200.  This box also has a Remote Insight card installed (came with it) so it can be managed from anywhere.

It currently handles all the mail (inc A/V & Spam) & authentication duties for about 3-4000 users.

It occasionally get up to 80% CPU but generally sits at about 50%; the 3GB RAM was installed based on load testing so it virtually never touches the swap.

We are testing a similar spec ML370 G2 for use as the primary webserver using Postgres, PHP5, and a few custom apps, so far it looks great.

Get them all rackmounted and use a high capacity, good UPS (also rackmount) and run them in a nice air conditioned room (my ISP is in a datacentre that provides this).

This rig is extremely robust with almost everything redundant and failsafe .

HTH

[icemannz]

Thanks for the replys,
I will setup the servers very soon and I intend to follow the advice given.
I am glad to hear that other people are using SME for ISP email servers before I head off on that track.

[CharlieBrady]

I am hoping to start by hosting email on an SME server.

The SME Server is not designed for, nor is it well-suited for, an ISP operation.

[smeghead]

oops, just reread my reply and realised I left out one crucial element, my ISP's system uses Whitebox Linux NOT SME.

Charlie is corrct in stating SME is not designed for use by an ISP and especially as the main authentication server as it lack many components for managing such an endeavour.