In modern business, electronic mail has become a requirement for efficient and profitable communication with clients, providers, and colleagues. Due to this dependency on electronic communication, mail servers used to send, relay, and receive messages are critical to a company's daily operations. It is imperative that the mail server is highly resistant to attacks to provide a company with the most cost effective and reliable service possible. This paper describes the method and results of performance testing on several current email service implementations. Mail server software is configured on identical hardware where possible and tested for reactions to various simulated load conditions. For each configuration, throughput characteristics are measured and presented so that objective comparisons can be made.
In lab environments, where multiple computers are used, a method called imaging can be used to handle the challenge of installing and configuring multiple machines. Imaging is a method that uses a client server relationship that allows the client to download and install the necessary software, virus updates, and security patches by selecting an image file that resides on a server. Several software components and services are necessary to successfully image a client. First, a DHCP server provides a connection between the client and the image server by assigning a dynamic IP address to each computer. In addition to a unique IP address, each client is required to have a unique hostname. This hostname is incorporated into the image for each client using a Security Identifier Generator also known as a SID Generator. Finally, the operating system software, application software, and data files are downloaded to the clients by using imaging software such as Altiris and Norton's Ghost. The ability to create and deploy multiple images in a reasonable time span eliminates the headaches and lost time network administrators would otherwise experience doing repetitive software changes to many machines. This technique also provides for better lab utilization, reducing lab downtime for software maintenance. Other advantages of imaging include facilitating using the lab for multiple classes, research projects, and individual testing, since an entire lab's computers can be imaged within thirty minutes. Some applications require the use of multiple operating systems such as both Windows and Linux. By creating an image that dual boots operating systems computer equipment is fully utilized. This paper shows the advantages of using imaging software to create and deploy images to large quantities of computers in a lab environment. A network is created with required machines, including a DHCP server, SID generator, an imaging server, and clients. Several images are created with different configurations, including dual booting operating systems. These images are used for class-oriented lab configurations and for various configurations required for research projects that use the same machines.
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