To bypass the connection limit you will need to use SMTP, POP3 and IMAP to connect to the server. The integrated PMail/Mercury setup requires file sharing access.  The "force through server" option will write local messages to the Mercury queue rather than directly to the recipient mailbox directory.

We're Running M32 on a lower end HP server, (Win7 Pro), with the mailboxes on a separate file server. The file server also has Pmail installed, so that the bulk of our users simply have an Icon on their desktop, the pmuser variable set to their account.  We also have some remote users who use the traditional POP3/SMTP connection. Generally we have about 70 users connected.  M32 and Pmail are latest and greatest.

Our file server is getting over burdened, (I/O read/write delays).  I'd like to move the mailboxes onto the Win7 machine, where M32 lives, to improve performance. My concern is that Win7 is limited to 20 simultaneous connections.  Using pconfig.exe, we have our system setup through "Manage user-defined gateways", with "Force all mail through" set to "Yes".

My question: By having all connections going through M32, do I avoid the problem of having 70 users, but only 20 available connections?

TIA

Joel Barnett

That limit is for connections to Windows resources (file shares, printers and such), and won't apply to TCP/IP based network activity such as SMTP, POP3 and IMAP.

Rolf,

Thanks for the reply and sorry for my tardy response.

I do understand that ordinary TCP/IP connections are not dependent on Windows file sharing. What I am not clear about is when local users send or check their email via Pmail, does this involve Windows file sharing. If so, then hosting the mailboxes on the Win7 box wouldn't work, as the bulk of our users are in this category.

That is, we have a network install of Pmail, integrated with Mercury, and the mailboxes on a file server, which is not the machine Mercury lives on. If possible, I would like to put the mailboxes on the machine where Mercury lives. This is a low end HP Proliant server, RAID 1, Win7 x64. Note that in pconfig.exe, I do have the "force through server" set to True.

Any advice much appreciated,

Joel Barnett