storage place for mails

[vinguy51]

hai.....usually so many websites are providing 2gb storage space for the mail users in free of cost... how they are allocating srorage space for the users....because if they allocate 2gb for all users means they have to arrange a huge huge storage place for it.

i want to know that what procedure they are following for allocating the storage space and i want to know the device details also.....help me......

thanks in advanz........

[Will.Spencer]

Originally Posted by vinguy51

if they allocate 2gb for all users means they have to arrange a huge huge storage place for it.

Exactly. They purchase and maintain huge storage area networks.

Originally Posted by vinguy51

i want to know that what procedure they are following for allocating the storage space

Each mail vendor can roll their own storage allocation system at the application level, or that can use a capability built into a third-party mail software package.

OS-level disk quota syststems are usually not useful for setting quotas on mail folders, because mail often does not exist as files owned by users in directories owned by users.

Originally Posted by vinguy51

i want to know the device details also.

There is not one specific device. Many company manufacture Storage Area Networks (SAN) devices.

[vinguy51]

hai.... let us take rediff.com as an example.....they will have some million mail users around the world......so how much will be the capacity of their san ...do you have any idea about that.......i want the storage capacity of their san................(if it is approx means also ok).........thanks in advanz.....

[Will.Spencer]

If Rediff has one million mail customers and each customer can have one gigabyte of stored e-mail, then the total potential storage utilization of the system is one million gigabytes.

1,073,741,824 bytes (a gigabyte)
x
1,000,000 (one million customers)
--------------------------------
1,073,741,824,000,000 bytes of total potential storage

That's approximately one petabyte.

But, most service providers realize that only about 10% of their customers will use their entire disk quota, so they only purchase enough storage to support the storage requirements which will actually be used. For Rediff, that would be around 100 terabytes.

Note that the ten percent number is just made up. The actual number will differ for each service provider. When their SAN utilization rises to near capacity, they will simply buy more storage hardware.