MEM Performance Considerations

The MEM provides a middle-tier proxy for the Webmail (Messenger Express) client. This client enables users to access mail and to compose messages through a browser. The benefit of the MEM is that end users only connect to the MEM to access email, regardless of which back-end server is storing their mail. MEM accomplishes this by managing the HTTP session information and user profiles via the user’s LDAP information. The second benefit is that all static files and LDAP authentication states are located on the Messaging Server front end. This benefit offsets some of the additional CPU requirements associated with web page rendering from the Message Store back end.

You can put the MMP and MEM on the same set of servers. The advantage to doing so is if a small number of either MMPs or MEMs are required, the amount of extra hardware for redundancy is minimized. The only possible downside to co-locating the MMP and MEM on the same set of servers is that a denial of service attack on one protocol can impact the others.