Yesterday and today I worked on getting a new server setup running Sophos PureMessage 3.1.0. We have used PureMessage for several years and have had pretty good luck with it when it comes to blocking spam. The interface hasn’t changed much since the last upgrade.
We run PureMessage on a seperate box and don’t run it on our Exchnage server. This way it helps keep the spam load isolated and doesn’t hurt performance on our Exchange server.
The box that I used was a HP DL360 G5. It has a single quad-core Intel processor running at 2.8GHz, 4GB of memory (I’m going to add an additional 4GB when it comes in), and four (4) 72GB SAS drives configured in a RAID5 array with one logical disk.
Here are the steps I followed to get the new box up and running.
1. Installed Windows Server 2008 R2 and applied updates.
2. Joined the server to our domain.
3. Installed the SMTP Server (I always forget it is a “Feature” now).
4. Configured the SMTP Server with the 4 domains we use at work.
5. Installed Sophos PureMessage for Exchange 3.1.0.
6. Configured PureMessage with the same options that were set on our previous PureMessage server. I was able to export small parts of the configuration and then re-import them on the new server.
After that was all done, I made the change on our firewall so that our inbound email would get NATed to the new PureMessage box. Then I changed the Send Connector and Recieve Connector on our Exchange server.
Everything went smoothly. I’ll leave the old PureMessage server running for a few days to allow any queued messages to get delivered. The new server appears to be running well. The CPU utilization is between 0 – 10% and the memory is steady at around 1.25GB used.
Comments are closed.