Jay,
It's not about moving along, it's about limiting the CPU to only 100%,
or at least not piling it on when it gets there. I could be wrong in
assuming that 1 thread = 1 message (hopefully I will be corrected if
so), but 30 average messages being processed at once will most
definitely peg my processors, and adding more threads when you are at
100% will actually slow down performance.
Another note, not all systems are configured equally. A vanilla install
of Declude would likely handle 4 times the number of messages that mine
does since I run 4 external filters, two virus scanners, and something
like 100 Declude filters (though they mostly get skipped with
SKIPIFWEIGHT and END statements as they are targeted). Running a single
virus scanner and RBL's is just a fraction of the load. With my
pre-scanning gateways blocking more than 90% of all traffic (about half
of that is dictionary attacks and most of the rest is done with
'selective greylisting'), I can scale one server to handle over 20,000
addresses, possibly as many as 40,000 (doesn't host the accounts
though), so despite the heavy config, it is optimized.
But back to the real topic...I'm just guessing that 30 messages/threads
is the limit for my box, but I'm sure that it isn't as high as 80,
though setting it at 80 would be of no consequence outside of a
prolonged heavy load caused by something like a backup of my spool. It
would be a bigger mistake to set it too low.
Matt
Jay Sudowski - Handy Networks LLC wrote:
30 threads seems awfully low. We set ours to 80 on a dual xeon box with a
separate drive for spool/logging and we move right along without any issues.
Thanks!
-----
Jay Sudowski // Handy Networks LLC
Director of Technical Operations
Providing Shared, Reseller, Semi Managed and Fully Managed Windows 2003 Hosting
Solutions
Tel: 877-70 HANDY x882 | Fax: 888-300-2FAX
www.handynetworks.com
________________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 3:25 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Experience with 4.x
Andrew,
Thanks for your notes and their history.
I'm using the following settings right now:
THREADS 30
WAITFORMAIL 500
WAITFORTHREADS 200
WAITBETWEENTHREADS 100
WINSOCKCLEANUP OFF
INVITEFIX ON
AUTOREVIEW ON
There are a few reasons for trying these values.
THREADS 30 - I'm pretty confident that dual 3.2 Ghz Xeons and RAID can only
handle 30 threads with average messages. In reality, one single message can
spike the system to 100%, but these are uncommon. I figure that if I open this
up too wide and I am dealing with a backup or something, launching more threads
when at 100% CPU utilization will actually slow the system down. This was the
same with 2.x and before. There is added overhead to managing threads and you
don't want that to happen on top of 100% CPU utilization. I am going to back
up my server later tonight to see if I can't find what the magic number is
since I don't want to be below that magic number, and it would probably be best
to be a little above it.
WAITFORMAIL 500 - On my server, this never kicks in, but if it did, it wouldn't
make sense to delay for too long because I could build up messages. A half
second seems good.
WAITFORTHREADS 200 - This apparently kicks in only when I reach my thread
limit; sort of like a throttle. I don't want it to be too long because this
should only happen when I am hammered, but it is wise not to keep hammering
when you are at 100%. Sort of a mixed bag choice here.
WAITBETWEENTHREADS 100 - I see this setting as being the biggest issue with
sizing a server. Setting it at 100 ms means that I can only handle 10 messages
per second, and this establishes an upper limit for what the server can do. I
currently average about 5 messages per second coming from my gateways at peak
hours, so I figured that to be safe, I should double that value.
INVITEFIX ON - I have it on because it comes on by default and I don't know any
better. I know nothing about the cause for needing this outside of brief
comments. It seems strange that my Declude setup could ruin an invitation
unless I was using footers. If this is only triggered by footer use, I would
like to know so that I could turn it off. I would imagine that this causes
extra load to do the check.
AUTOREVIEW ON - I have this on for the same reason that Andrew pointed out.
When I restart Decludeproc, messages land in my review folder, and I don't wish
to keep manually fishing things out. If there is an issue with looping, it
would be wise for Declude to make this only trigger say every 15 minutes
instead of more regularly.
Feel free to add to this if you want.
Matt
Colbeck, Andrew wrote:
I'd second that... on both the observed behaviour and the request for documentation.
I'm attaching my highly commented declude.cfg as a reasonable sample.
Andrew 8)
________________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 10:36 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Experience with 4.x
David,
That did the trick. I can't even see any messages in my proc folder any more.
I might suggest adding your explanation to the comments in the file just in
case others feel the need to turn this on like I did. I recalled the issues
from the list and I turned it on because I didn't want the possibility of DNS
crapping out and the leakage that this would cause.
Here's a screen cap of what my processor graph looks like now:
Thanks,
Matt
David Barker wrote:
The purpose of WINSOCKCLEANUP ON is to reset the winsock, what
happens when using this setting is that when the \proc directory hit 0
decludeproc will finish processing all the messages in the \work before
checking the \proc again. As WINSOCKCLEANUP is to be used only by those who
experience DNS issues I would suggest running your tests again with
WINSOCKCLEANUP commented out and see how the behavior differs. Also having
the WAITFORMAIL to low can cause the CPU to process very high as it is
constantly checking the \proc I would suggest a minimum of 500-1000
David B
www.declude.com
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 8:12 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Experience with 4.x
Darrell,
I put up two Windows Explorer windows side-by-side under normal volume
and the pattern was consistent where the proc folder grows while the
work folder shrinks until the work folder hits zero at which point the
proc folder empties out and everything lands in work and then the
pattern repeats with proc growing while work shrinks.
My settings are as follows:
THREADS 50
WAITFORMAIL 100
WAITFORTHREADS 10
WAITBETWEENTHREADS 50
WINSOCKCLEANUP ON
AUTOREVIEW ON
INVITEFIX ON
Matt
Darrell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
It's a faulty design that leaves more than half a server's CPU
capacity unused due to the mere fact that they wait for all threads
to complete before moving in a new batch.
I can't speak to what you see on your server, but that is not how it
is running on my server. I just double checked again to make sure I
am not crazy, but as I watch the thread count on my server
(decludeproc) the threads fluctuate between 7 - 30 ( threads currently
set to 50). It is not uncommon to see the threads move as follow:
11,8,10,7,15,.... While I was watching it I never seen a case where
it went down low enough for the WAITFORMAIL setting to kick in.
Watching the proc/work directory you can see files moving in and out,
but never really emptying out. Its possible what I am seeing is an
anomaly or maybe I am interpreting it wrong.
Maybe David can comment on this.
Darrell
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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