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32 Understanding system requirements

Factors that affect performance

Factors that affect performance

The performance of Symantec Mail Security for SMTP can be affected by many 
factors. This section provides guidelines regarding those factors, and 
suggestions that may improve performance.

Overall performance involves several factors, some depending on the 
configuration and deployment options you choose, and others depending on 
external factors, such as the percentage of your organization’s email that is 
spam.

Hardware components that affect performance

The components that make up the system affect its performance. Increase 
performance by increasing the physical make-up of your system. If you run the 
Control Center and Scanner on different computers, consider the following 
recommendations:

Processing power – 

Scanners need less disk storage, but powerful CPUs and 

memory; especially if virus scanning is enabled. 

Disk space – 

The Control Center likely needs much more disk space 

(depending on the volume of logging, reporting, and quarantined messages 
retained). It should also have a much higher sustained I/O throughput 
capacity than what is specified for Scanners. 

Consider the following recommendations for computers running Symantec 
software:

Network – 

Consider using switched 100 Mb/s fast Ethernet or gigabit 

network connections between the Control Center and each Scanner.

CPU

 (speed and type)

 – i

ncrease the number and speed of CPUs per server. 

We recommend dual Intel Xeon processors if your email traffic rate warrants 
it. 

RAM

 (speed and type)

 – 

Track memory usage and increase RAM as 

necessary to minimize or avoid disk swapping. Tomcat can use as much as 
600 MB of RAM when completing certain tasks. MySQL can also use a large 
amount of RAM.

Disk Type and I/O speeds – 

Improve MySQL database performance by using 

a fast RAID and/or attached disk array. MySQL is used by the Control Center.

Summary of Contents for 10765539 - Mail Security For SMTP

Page 1: ...Symantec Mail Security for SMTP Planning Guide...

Page 2: ...by any means without prior written authorization of Symantec Corporation and its licensors if any THE DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED AS IS AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED CONDITIONS REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANT...

Page 3: ...rade insurance that delivers automatic software upgrade protection Content Updates for spam and virus definitions and security signatures that ensure the highest level of protection Global support fro...

Page 4: ...leshooting performed prior to contacting Symantec Recent software configuration changes and or network changes Customer Service To contact Enterprise Customer Service online go to http www symantec co...

Page 5: ...Chapter 2 Planning your deployment General deployment considerations 17 MTA usage 17 Configuring Scanners 17 Positioning with other filtering products 18 Filtering internal deliveries 18 LDAP compatib...

Page 6: ...e requirements 27 Minimum hardware requirements 27 Minimum software requirements 28 Reserved ports 31 Factors that affect performance 32 Hardware components that affect performance 32 Environmental fa...

Page 7: ...rehensive gateway based email security solution through the following Antispam technology Symantec s state of the art spam filters assess and classify email as it enters your site Antivirus technology...

Page 8: ...r system system logs and extensive customizable reporting Use it to configure both system wide and host specific details The Control Center provides the Setup Wizard for initial configuration of all S...

Page 9: ...Architecture Architecture Your Symantec Mail Security for SMTP installation processes a email message as follows For the sake of discussion our sample message passes through the Filtering Engine to th...

Page 10: ...cked against end user defined Language settings The Transformation Engine performs actions per recipient based on filtering results and configurable Group Policies New features for all users Table 1 1...

Page 11: ...supported LDAP servers Expanded variety of actions and combinations More than two dozen actions that can be taken on messages with many combinations of multiple actions available Expanded mail contro...

Page 12: ...ross all servers with one interface Group Policies Create separate inbound and outbound policies for an unlimited number of groups of users You can specify groups of users based on email addresses dom...

Page 13: ...cklists Configurable administrator timeout for the management interface Changes for Symantec Brightmail Antispam users Although the product name has changed if you were a Symantec Brightmail Antispam...

Page 14: ...policies for each user group Flexible mail management More flexible Group Policies Use LDAP groups to populate groups for Group Policies Multiple actions Specify more than one action to take on specif...

Page 15: ...for more information about your product The following online resources are available Provides access to the technical support Knowledge Base newsgroups contact information downloads and mailing list s...

Page 16: ...16 Introducing Symantec Mail Security for SMTP Where to get more information...

Page 17: ...filtering activities Note Symantec Mail Security for SMTP provides neither mailbox access for end users nor message storage it is not suitable for use as the only MTA in your email infrastructure Con...

Page 18: ...data from your company s LDAP accessible directories with its own database SyncService lets Symantec Mail Security for SMTP re normalize and index the data to fit the needs of Scanner Control Center a...

Page 19: ...ord This allows them to send spam directly to the old server bypassing your spam filtering To prevent spammers from circumventing the new spam filtering servers you should do one of the following Remo...

Page 20: ...ng Secure Email Services and relaying mail to other relay layers or to the user facing mail server layer On all configured server computers port 443 must be configured to permit outbound connections t...

Page 21: ...cannot be installed on the server running Exchange Multi tier gateway deployment Note This model may be implemented with one or more Scanner hosts The following figure shows Symantec Mail Security for...

Page 22: ...s to take individual Scanners offline for maintenance without incurring downtime This scenario enables load balancing of filtered mail across multiple downstream MTAs Considerations This approach requ...

Page 23: ...TAs downstream Figure 2 3 Post Gateway deployment Advantages If you have a customized MTA or specific business needs then running this configuration may outweigh the extra overhead and loss of functio...

Page 24: ...24 Planning your deployment Deployment models...

Page 25: ...roup of actions to perform given a particular verdict Each category of unwanted email includes one or more verdicts conclusions reached on a message by the filtering process Symantec Mail Security for...

Page 26: ...mantec Mail Security for SMTP Administration Guide for more information Deployment considerations The following table lists deployment considerations for select actions Table 3 1 Deployment considerat...

Page 27: ...tion gives detailed requirements for each supported platform Minimum hardware requirements Hardware requirements vary depending on the number of email users and the amount of email traffic The minimum...

Page 28: ...cessor or compatible 1 GB RAM minimum 2 GB or more recommended 512 MB disk space minimum 2 GB or more recommended Solaris UltraSPARC processor 1 GB RAM minimum 2 GB or more recommended 512 MB disk spa...

Page 29: ...Security for SMTP component on that computer After installation The subfolder where Symantec Mail Security for SMTP is installed and its subdirectories are created with the default permissions relativ...

Page 30: ...ity for SMTP Installation Guide for more information Alias Create a mail alias for the mailwall account so that all mail sent to mailwall is read by an administrator Domain name A fully qualified doma...

Page 31: ...y bound ports Port Component or function 22 Control Center to internal server connection 3306 MySQL database connection 11000 11004 LDAP sync 11011 11013 LDAP sync 41025 Spam Quarantine 41000 BMI clie...

Page 32: ...age but powerful CPUs and memory especially if virus scanning is enabled Disk space The Control Center likely needs much more disk space depending on the volume of logging reporting and quarantined me...

Page 33: ...documentation for more information External MTA performance If appropriate determine the performance of the MTA sending incoming email to your MTA and the performance of your gateway MTAs and message...

Page 34: ...ons refer to the Symantec Mail Security for STMP Administration Guide Control Center performance considerations The Control Center is used to start and stop servers view logs and reports set configura...

Page 35: ...per day into Spam Quarantine The more messages placed in the Spam Quarantine the larger the database and the more processing required Reduce the maximum size of the Spam Quarantine database by deletin...

Page 36: ...36 Understanding system requirements Factors that affect performance...

Page 37: ...Symantec Mail Security for SMTP new or changed features 11 filtering intra enterprise 18 performance considerations 33 Filtering Engine 10 Filtering Hub 10 filters email categories for 25 verdicts 25...

Page 38: ...arantine 35 ports reserved 31 positioning with other filtering products 18 post gateway deployment 23 advantages 23 considerations 23 R requirements 27 28 reserved ports 31 S Scanners 8 configuring 17...

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