A Merce Broadside system can installed on a single server or on an array of servers, controlled from a single administrative console.
An entry-level Merce Broadside installation can run on a single server with two processors and local hard disks. Merce Broadside partitions this physical server into multiple virtual machines, each working independently. This allows high performance pre-processing and transmission of messages in dozens of parallel streams from a single physical server, and also provides excellent isolation of the components from each other, enhancing overall stability. Such entry-level installations have been measured to saturate 4-Mbits/sec Internet links, sustained, and can easily transmit more than 1 million emails per day, each with a PDF attachment payload.
A large Merce Broadside installation can extend over dozens of physical servers, connected using a Gigabit Ethernet backplane or core switch for inter-process communication and data flow. Such an installation can have a set of transmitter processes on each physical server, thus running hundreds of transmitter processes on dozens of physical servers in parallel, saturating a 100-Mbits/sec Internet link, sustained. Such installations will have multiple parallel dispatcher and pre-processor processes, each running on their own hardware. All these diverse components can be controlled, monitored, and started or stopped from one central administrative console. All data from all these components is logged into one central database with one message log.
Designed for scalability. Inter-process communication among the different processes in Merce Broadside is over TCP/IP, thus allowing scaling up of a system to a cluster of servers. Shared disk files and network file systems are not used in any of the high-speed data paths, thus eliminating some bottlenecks for scalability. The dispatcher(s) and transmitters do not require large local disks, therefore are easy to operate as a scalable array. As per our best practices guidelines, even small bulk-mail applications use at least five separate transmitter processes to ensure that a few slow or unreliable remote servers do not slow down the overall mail flow. The management and monitoring of even the largest Merce Broadside systems can be done with just one administrator sitting at the administration console.
Licensed for scalability. Merce Broadside is licensed per pair of CPU sockets. A smaller installation can use one dual-socket Intel server with local disks, and pay the minimum licence fees for Merce Broadside. Large instalations can have a rack of servers or a blade chassis with 12-16 blades booting off a shared SAN back-end and working in concert to deliver global-outreach throughput levels, for a higher licence fee. And a customer's investment in a smaller Merce Broadside licence fee is fully protected when scaling up to additional servers -- only the difference in licence fees is payable.
