Tuning Brightmail Anti-Spam on Sun Servers with CoolThreads Technology

Not all software is ready to harness the computing power of the UltraSPARC T1 processor out of the box, and Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam is no exception. Sun and Symantec worked together to optimize SBAS performance using a load generator to drive a synthetic workload. The result is a set of tuning steps to increase the number of threads that the software will utilize, and changes to reduce the contention for software locks.

The result is an astonishing 5.2x performance improvement over a default SBAS installation on a Sun Fire T2000 Server with a message-handling rate exceeding 100 messages per second. Given the differences between the test configuration and individual MTA configurations, average message sizes, spam percentages, and the dynamic changes in the filtering rules provided by Symantec, your results may vary.

Key Benefits

• Undisputed Performance Leadership - 100+ Messages/second
• Customer Ready Pre-configured solution - integrated, optimized and tested
• Three times the throughput at 30 percent less power and cooling costs of competitive servers
• Up to 32 simultaneous processing threads and up to 64 GB memory


• The combination of Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam and the Sun Fire T2000 Server is a potent tool for enterprise grade spam, virus, and content filtering.
• Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam is server-side anti-spam technology that stops spam before it can clog networks, servers, and inboxes.
• Constantly updated with current filtering rules from the Brightmail Logistics and Operation Center, Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam stays ahead of spammer tactics.
• Filtering every incoming e-mail is an inherently multi-threaded operation. The combination of the Sun Fire T2000 Server, the UltraSPARC® T1 processor, and the Solaris Operating System is the perfect match for high antispam throughput.
• Tuning this solution to best utilize the UltraSPARC T1 processor's ability to concurrently execute up to 32 threads yields a 5.2x improvement over an out-of-the box configuration.