English
Chinese (Simplified)
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Russian
Spanish
Vietnamese
Security Gateway System Requirements
Minimum Server Requirements
SecurityGateway for Email is designed to run on current and supported versions of Microsoft Windows Server. For more information, see a full list of our Supported Products →
| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
| Processor | Dual-core 2.0 GHz 64-bit | Quad-core 2.4 GHz or higher |
| Memory | 4 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM |
| Storage | NTFS volume, 1 GB free | SSD with 10 GB+ free |
| Network | TCP/IP, 100 Mbps | Gigabit Ethernet |
Storage Performance Requirements
Security Gateway is heavily I/O bound. Disk performance directly impacts message processing throughput. Before deploying Security Gateway in production, verify your storage meets minimum IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) and latency requirements using Microsoft DiskSpd. For additional information on measuring disk performance for your deployment, please see our Knowledge Base Article →
Virtualization Considerations
When running Security Gateway on VMware, Hyper-V, or other hypervisors:
- Dedicated disk resources – Avoid shared storage (SAN/NAS) with high-contention workloads from other VMs
- Thick provisioning – Use thick-provisioned virtual disks; thin provisioning can cause latency spikes during allocation
- Direct-attached storage preferred – Network-attached storage with high latency degrades performance
- Monitor disk latency – Virtual disk latency visible in hypervisor tools should remain below 10ms average
- Test before go-live – Run DiskSpd inside the VM to verify the actual available IOPS
Common issue: Customers running Security Gateway on virtualized infrastructure with shared storage often experience degraded performance during peak hours when other VMs compete for disk I/O.
Scalability Hardware Recommendations
| Deployment | Users | Messages / Day | Processor | RAM | Drive Type / Minimum IOPS |
| Small | Up to 100 | 50,000 | Dual-core 2.4 GHz | 8 GB | Spinning disk or SSD / 500 |
| Medium | 100 to 500 | 250,000 | Quad-core 2.8 GHz | 16 GB | SSD / 3,000 |
| Large | 500 to 1,000 | 500,000 | 6+ cores, 3.0 GHz | 32 GB | SSD / 10,000 |
| Enterprise | 1,000 to 2,500 | 1,250,000 | 8+ cores, 3.5 GHz | 32 GB | SSD / 20,000 |
| High Volume | 2,500+ | 2,500,000 | 12+ cores, 3.5 GHz | 64 GB | SSD (NVMe recommended) / 50,000 Separate drives for database, message queue, logs, and archives. |
Other important considerations:
- These are the minimum recommended system requirements for Security Gateway to run efficiently. This does not account for running multiple applications simultaneously. To run multiple applications simultaneously, the server may need to exceed these recommendations.
- The required hard drive size will vary depending on the amount of email stored on the server, the amount of logs you want to retain, and the other applications installed on the machine.
- The system specifications provided above are general recommendations for physical hardware. If you are planning to run Security Gateway in a virtual environment, your system specifications may vary.