Chapter 9. Conclusion

By this time, I would expect readers to have had their fill of information on email performance tuning. If information seemed a bit repetitive toward the end, it shows that the reader has been paying attention and ideally is well on the way to understanding how to improve the performance of email servers.

As comprehensive as this book has attempted to be, there remains much more to learn that hasn't been covered. The reader would be well advised to continue researching and learning everything possible about the topic. An almost unlimited amount of good information is available today, and the industrious student shouldn't lack for ideas about where to look.

Specifically, some additional sources that may be useful to the reader include the following:

Books on General System Administration That Cover Email Issues

  • UNIX System Administration Handbook, 3rd edition, by Evi Nemeth, et al.

    If I were teaching a "how to" course on system administration, I would use this handbook as a textbook. It contains a great deal of good information on how to maintain a wide variety of UNIX servers under many circumstances. Necessarily, its coverage of configuring and running sendmail is abbreviated compared to specialized books, but what it provides is quite good.

  • The Practice of System and Network Administration, by Thomas Limoncelli and Christine Hogan

    This book isn't about the "nuts and bolts" of everyday system administration, but rather discusses the "big picture" issues. If someone wants to learn how to install new disk drive, read the book by Nemeth and colleagues. If someone wants to learn how to set up a file server to minimize the amount of effort it will take to maintain going forward, read this text. It's an excellent book with which all professional system administrators should become familiar.

Books Specifically About sendmail

  • Linux Sendmail Administration, by Craig Hunt

    Because it covers sendmail through version 8.11, and because it emphasizes building configurations using M4, it is my opinion that this book is the best tutorial on learning sendmail available today. Its apparent focus on Linux should not dissuade administrators who favor other operating systems from looking through this book, as it's quite easy to separate out the Linux specifics from the more general sendmail advice.

  • sendmail, 2nd edition, by Bryan Costales and Eric Allman

    Despite the fact that it covers sendmail only through version 8.8, the "Bat Book" remains the definitive reference on sendmail. While a third edition is in progress, at the time of this writing it's uncertain when it will be released. In the meantime, any sendmail email administrator who doesn't have a copy should acquire one. My main argument with this book is it spends too little time discussing configuration using M4.

Other Books About Email

  • Managing IMAP, by Dianna and Kevin Mullet

    Anyone running either a UW or Cyrus IMAP server will almost certainly want a copy of this book, although it's unfortunate that it says very little about Cyrus version 2. A lot of other information in this book may be useful to email administrators who are not running IMAP.

  • Programming Internet Email, by David Wood

    This very good book describes both Internet standards and issues involved in developing email applications.

Books on General Performance Tuning

  • Sun Performance and Tuning: Java and the Internet, by Adrian Cockroft and Richard Pettit

    Even though this book covers only Solaris, and only up to version 2.6, it contains a lot of very good information. It's especially strong in explaining how to diagnose problems and use system performance monitoring tools. If I could own only one book on performance tuning, I'd choose Musumeci and Loukides's book because it is more current. However, Sun Performance and Tuning is still well worth reading.

  • System Performance Tuning, 2nd edition, by Gian-Paolo Musumeci and Mike Loukides

    This excellent book focuses on how what goes on "under the hood" in a computer system affects performance. The book emphasizes Solaris and Linux, but its coverage of many tools is very good, and more thorough than that presented here.



sendmail Performance Tuning
sendmail Performance Tuning
ISBN: 0321115708
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 67

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