Most support people have seen every mail server configuration possible, and others that would have been considered impossible. No matter whether the operating budget is very tight, mega-sized or somewhere in between, people often try to throw everything onto a single server, including the kitchen sink. Well, that kitchen sink is often the cause of email blockage, rather than the actual mail server program. Even a honking new machine with mega-sized specs can have performance problems if it becomes bloated with unnecessary and/or resource hogging apps.
Example:
A single server installed with Exchange and Active Directory and SQL and then a trial version of another mail server program. Apparently the mail flow was sluggish to begin with, hence the trail mail server to see if something else worked better.
Aside from forgetting that only one mail server can use Port 25 at a time (which prompted a call to Support after all mail flow stopped), our intrepid Admin hadn’t checked on the health of his CPU and memory before installing that trial copy. After we helped uninstall it, we sat and watched as his SQL immediately gobbled up the bulk of the server’s memory: there was the cause of the sluggish mail. Moving SQL onto its own server made the whole system happier.
This might seem like obvious advice, but we’ve seen this situation too many times to count: don’t fall into the trap of putting all your major applications on a single server! And don’t mess with non-standard configurations on an enterprise server, either.
Other DOs and DON’Ts culled from actual support calls:
– Don’t: configure a single NIC card with over 1000 IPs. Yes, someone once tried it, and their mail flow degraded noticeably in a very short time.
– Don’t: install a mail server on a Microsoft Web Edition Server. Focus on the word WEB; it’s not designed to be used as a mail server.
– Don’t: overclock the system, especially on an enterprise server. We watched one overheat and die, and the admin was very lucky to keep his job.
– Do: audit your mail server every now and then, to look for any unnecessary little programs, applications and tools that have accumulated over time and can be removed.
– And finally, do provide redundancy and don’t set yourself up for a catastrophic failure. When the mail server goes down, the phone calls do go up!
Have you seen any odd configurations? I’d love to hear about them!
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