imap server performance benchmarks

[Weldon Godfrey]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Bill Campbell
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 1:46 PM
To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: imap server performance benchmarks

On Fri, Mar 09, 2012, Da Rock wrote:
> I'm reconsidering my current setup (postfix/courier) for imap and I was  
> doing some research on performance comparisons between imap server  
> setups. I stumbled on this article just just about fell of my chair  
> laughing when I read the last article on future benchmarking tests to  
> perform:
>
> research.microsoft.com/pubs/138302/lisa.pdf
>
> Considering I have close to a hundred folders or more, and an average of  
> 50,000 emails in each (yes, not good, and I am working on archiving but  
> it won't help _that_ much) with nearly 200,000 in just one! I got a real  
> kick out of the comment that "no sane email user would have more than  
> 21,000 emails in a folder" - that would make me certifiable :D Oh, and  
> that most email wouldn't be more than a GB or so... mine's edging 6GB  
> already...


I would highly recommend looking at Dovecot.  I have used courier for
several ISPs then switched to Dovecot on my last install.  Its ability for
caching the index per user is of great performance advantage if you choose
to leverage an IMAP based webmail solution (like Roundcube, or even
Squirrelmail, but I would recommend Roundcube over Squrrel)...especially if
you are going to deal with mailboxes of tens of thousands of messages.