with 1500 concurrent users you mean 1500 different users connected to the web interface at the same instant? if so you will need more than a single web server and, perhaps, also a mysql cluster on different hosts than the web servers. (also don't forget to use imapproxy to avoid to start/stop imap connections every click of the user)
Our server has 12 GB and ram & 1 quad core cpu (Intel i7 Nehalem),
SAS RAID 1+0 BBWC. That should be enough to handle that load, we are asking for real-world experience about this.
We are going to use jmeter to simulate load anyway, does anybody
have real-world experience with this kind of load?
Regards
Javier