Database Software Considerations

2.5 Database Software Considerations

MailMarshal supports use of SQL Express or Microsoft SQL Server. To estimate the size of your MailMarshal database and determine whether to use SQL Express or Microsoft SQL Server, review the following sample worksheet, and then complete My Worksheet (Table 8) with appropriate estimates.

Table 7: Sample database worksheet
Sample Worksheet
Number of users	=	100
Average number of valid and quarantined email messages per user per day	x	70
Kilobytes per message or classification logged (1KB = 1000 Bytes)	x	2
Number of days in log data retention period	x	100
Safety margin	x	1.25
Total database size in Kilobytes for retention period	=	1,750,000 KB
Total database size in Gigabytes for retention period (divide by 1,000,000)	=	1.75 GB

Information

Note: Each record in the Message table (quarantine, classification or delivery record) adds approximately 1.1KB to the database (depending on the size of data) Indexing on the Message table adds a smaller but significant amount. The Content table (logging of attachments) can also consume significant space, depending on the average number of attachments per message.

Table 8: Database worksheet for your environment
My Worksheet
Number of users	=
Average number of valid and quarantined email messages per user per day	x
Kilobytes per message logged (1KB = 1000 Bytes)	x	3
Number of days in log data retention period	x
Safety margin	x
Total database size in Kilobytes for retention period	=
Total database size in Gigabytes for retention period (divide by 1,000,000)	=

The following table shows calculations with example data you can use as a guideline if the assumptions for email volume, log retention duration, and safety margin are appropriate for you.

Table 9: Database sizing calculations
Users	Email/Day/ User	Days to Keep Logs	Safety Margin	GB (Rounded)	Database Version
100	70	100	1.25	2	Express
200	70	100	1.25	3.5	Express
250	70	100	1.25	4.5	Express
500	70	100	1.25	9	Express
1000	70	100	1.25	20	SQL
2000	70	100	1.25	35	SQL
5000	70	100	1.25	90	SQL

For small installations, when the MailMarshal email processing server is on a computer other than the Array Manager and database server, the database server will have a light load on the database. However, using the Consoles and Reports user interfaces places additional load on the database.

If you have more than 500 email users, the Microsoft SQL Server memory footprint can become quite high. In this case, you can add memory to the Microsoft SQL Server computer (3GB or more) so Microsoft SQL Server can use its maximum available memory and still reserve memory for the Array Manager, operating system, and other system demand. Other environment factors may also affect performance and throughput rates. For large installations, consider using multiple disk drives for the various database files to optimize SQL Server performance.

Information

Note: SQL Server, in particular 64 bit versions, will consume all available system memory by default. You may need to limit SQL memory usage. See Trustwave Knowledge Base article Q14902.

Trustwave MailMarshal 10.2.5 User Guide August 2024
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Full document: see MailMarshal Documentation.