Below are the sizing requirements for either BYOC or On-Premises installations of PoliteMail; hosting is taken care of by PoliteMail for SaaS deployments.
BYOC Sizing
In PoliteMail, you can deploy a “bring your own cloud” infrastructure using Microsoft Azure (AWS application servers with a SQL instance will also work). Compared to traditional on-premises deployment, BYOC offers a more streamlined setup process using cloud services.
The information below lists your hardware requirements based on the number of employees:
Up to 10k Employees
| Firewall / Load Balancing | 1x Regional WAF (optional) |
| Application Servers | Option 1 (Recommended): Std App Service Plan S2
Option 2: Standard _D2_v5 (Azure) or m5n.large (AWS) |
| Database | Azure SQL - 2 vCores (or AWS RDS equivalent) |
| SMTP Server | Runs on Primary Node |
10k to 20k Employees
| Firewall / Load Balancing | 1x Regional WAF (optional) |
| Application Servers | Option 1 (Recommended): Std App Service Plan S3
Option 2: 1x Standard _D2ads_v5 (Azure) or m5zn.large (AWS) |
| Database | Azure SQL - 2 vCores (or AWS RDS equivalent) |
| SMTP Server | Runs on Primary Node |
20k to 30k Employees
| Firewall / Load Balancing | 1x Regional WAF (Application Gateway) |
| Application Servers | Option 1 (Recommended): Std App Service Plan S3 w/Scale out 2 instances
Option 2: 2x Standard _D2_v5 (Azure) or m5n.large (AWS) |
| Database | Option 1 (Recommended): Azure SQL – 4 vCores, 30GB memory
Option 2: Standard D4as_v5 (Azure) or mzn.xlarge (AWS) + SQL Server Web license 4 x Premium SSD LRS (128 GB, 128 GB, 64 GB, 256 GB) or AWS RDS equivalent |
| SMTP Server | Runs on Primary Node |
30k to 50k Employees
| Firewall / Load Balancing | 1x Regional WAF (Application Gateway) |
| Application Servers | Option 1 (Recommended): Std App Service Plan S3 w/Scale out 3 instances
Option 2: 2-3x Standard _D2_v5 (Azure) or m5n.large (AWS) |
| Database | Option 1 (Recommended): Azure SQL – 6 vCores, 40GB memory
Option 2: Standard D4as_v5 (Azure) or mzn.xlarge (AWS) + SQL Server Web license 4 x Premium SSD LRS (128 GB, 128 GB, 64 GB, 256 GB) or AWS RDS equivalent |
| SMTP Server | VM deployments only: 1x Standard D2as_v4, 1 x Premium SSD LRS (128 GB) |
50k to 100k Employees
| Firewall / Load Balancing | 1x Regional WAF (Application Gateway) |
| Application Servers | Option 1 (Recommended): Std App Service Plan S3 w/Scale out 4 instances
Option 2: 4x Standard _D2_v5 (Azure) or m5n.large (AWS) |
| Database | Option 1 (Recommended): Azure SQL – 6 vCores, 32GB memory
Option 2: Standard D4as_v5 (Azure) or mzn.xlarge (AWS) + SQL Server Web license 4 x Premium SSD LRS (256 GB, 256 GB, 64 GB, 512 GB) or AWS RDS equivalent |
| SMTP Server | VM deployments only: 1x Standard D2as_v4, 1 x Premium SSD LRS (128 GB) |
100k – 200k Employees
| Firewall / Load Balancing | 1x Regional WAF (Application Gateway) |
| Application Servers | Option 1 (Recommended): Std App Service Plan S3 w/Scale out 6 instances
Option 2: 4-5x Standard _D2_v5 (Azure) or m5n.large (AWS) |
| Database | Option 1 (Recommended): Azure SQL – 8 vCores, 60GB memory
Option 2: Standard D4as_v5 (Azure) or mzn.xlarge (AWS) + SQL Server Web license 4 x Premium SSD LRS (256 GB, 256 GB, 64 GB, 512 GB) or AWS RDS equivalent |
| SMTP Server | VM deployments only: 1x Standard D2as_v4, 1 x Premium SSD LRS (128 GB) |
200k+ Employees
| Firewall / Load Balancing | 1x Regional WAF (Application Gateway) |
| Application Servers | Option 1 (Recommended): Std App Service Plan S3 w/Scale out 10 instances
Option 2: 6x Standard _D2_v5 (Azure) or m5n.large (AWS) |
| Database | Option 1 (Recommended): Azure SQL – 12 vCores, 80GB memory
Option 2: Standard D4as_v5 (Azure) or mzn.xlarge (AWS) + SQL Server Web license 4 x Premium SSD LRS (512 GB, 512 GB, 128 GB, 1 TB) or AWS RDS equivalent |
| SMTP Server | VM deployments only: 1x Standard D2as_v4, 1 x Premium SSD LRS (256GB) |
On-Premise Sizing
PoliteMail processes brief bursts of small, high-volume transactions. The server sizing is primarily based on distribution size, and volume of recipient email being processed and measured. A high-performance SQL Server environment is required for all 30K+ implementations. Server sizing requirements (RAM, storage) increase with size of distributions.
Note that M365 is required if you will be using PMUA on-premises as PMUA is deployed via Manifest.
Server Configuration Recommendations
| Number of Employees | Recommended Server Configuration | SQL Server RAM / Storage |
|---|---|---|
| 5k - 15k | Single App Server 2C 8GB 100GB | 16GB / 100GB (or attached to cluster)
Size data according to SQL Sizing Table below. |
| 15k - 30k | Dual App Servers, NLB 2C 8GB 100GB | 24GB / 150GB (or attached to cluster)
Size data according to SQL Sizing Table below. |
| 30k - 100k | Dual App Servers, NLB 2C 16GB 100GB
+ Separate SMTP Server 4C 32GB 250GB |
32GB / 250GB (or attached to cluster)
Size data according to SQL Sizing Table below. |
| >100k | QUAD App Servers NLB 2C 16GB 100GB
+ Separate SMTP Server 4C 32GB 250GB + Separate Archive Server 2C 8GB 100GB |
64GB / 500GB (or attached to cluster)
Size data according to SQL Sizing Table below. |
SQL Sizing
| Type | Purpose | Specification |
|---|---|---|
| Application Server | This is where the application lives and is hosted. Networking traffic will flow through here. | OS Drive: 100GB SSD
CPU: Dual Core RAM: 4GB |
| SQL Server | If opting for a dedicated SQL Server, SQL manages the databases and should have proper maintenance plans that your organization manages.
Minimum SQL version 2018. Required collation mode SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. |
OS Drive: 100GB SSD
Data Drive: 100GB SSD Log Drive: 100GB SSD Backup Drive: 200GB HDD CPU and RAM covered per unique recipient count above. |
| SMTP Server | This optional system will house IIS6 SMTP for mailflow, as well as the PoliteMail services. | OS Drive: 100GB SSD
Mailflow Drive: 100GB SSD; size should be determined by the maximum size of your messages times the total possible number of recipients. CPU: Dual Core RAM: 2GB |
| Combining | In the case of mixing systems onto a single server, such as APP/SMTP or APP/SMTP/SQL, the drive specs must be followed. | Hardware specs for SMTP may be ignored.
Additional 4GB RAM if merging SQL into an application instance. |
