[Dovecot] Recommended FS for Dovecot Maildir

[Daniel Watts]

>
>
> IIRC all typical filesystems for Linux (ext3, xfs, jfs, reiserfs) use
> directory indexing, usually by means of a b-tree.
>
> It's important to note that these filesystems each have their own
> strengths, and performance will depend on many factors such as the size
> and number of files, parallellism, number and type of disks,
> fragmentation, i/o load, possibly even cpu load. Are we talking about a
> relaying mailserver or end-user storage? Do the users move or delete a
> lot of files? Do they rather use imap, or pop3? What other activities run
> on the machine? How do you see the reliability/performance trade-off?
>
> In real life, things aren't as clean-cut as in most of those generic
> benchmarks, and people tend to attach too much importance to them and
> then usually get into silly flamewars. :)
>
>   
For the sake of this discussion I think it would be most relevant to 
assume a machine dedicated to Dovecot IMAP Maildir storage without any 
other services running on it.
In terms of load type does it matter whether there are a lot of light 
usage users or just a few massively heavy usage users? Maximal mailbox 
reads and writes is probably the best abstract way to avoid the 'how 
many users / how many mail files?' problem.
>  Now I believe that
> people should just pick what they feel comfortable with, because the
> differences are often not that large and it's rarely worth their time and
> money.
>
> (Though, that's often not what people want to hear. :) )
>   
Actually that is my gut feeling too. However some people dont' really 
have a preference and so might as well spend a bit of time choosing the 
best system in terms of (theoretical) performance for their particular 
application.