[Dovecot] nfs director

[Edward avanti]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 2:59 PM, Noel Butler <noel.butler at ausics.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 2010-08-27 at 08:54 +1000, Edward avanti wrote:
>
> > Halo,
> > Please can you explain why this is advantage over a hardware load
> balancer.
>
>
> it is no advantage over a dedicated hardware solution, but director does
> not do the exact same thing.
>
>
> > I fail to see advantage if anything it add in more point of failure, with
>
>
> i agree with this and it is why we dont use it
>
> we use dovecots deliver with postfix and have noticed no problems, not
> to say there was none, but if so, we dont notice it.
> postfix looks up the user, it determines if it accepts the mail, if it
> does, it queues it for mailscanner to do its stuff, then gives it back
> to postfix, which is then told to give it to dovecots deliver, it makes
>

I have offlist discussion with Timo, he said help with I/O, you make good
case, not more I/O intense than scanning mail, delivery just like router


> no sense to me that it should then be sent to another machine just to be
> stored on a remote file server, the same remote file server the initial
> server assigned that conenction by a true load balancer has mounted and
> would store it to as well.... would be miuch easier to have deliver
> ignore the index file by an option, eliminating the corruption risks to
> the index file and just storing the darm thing. or am i only one who
> thinks mail systems do not need to be complex to run faultlessly, I
> think those who feel the need to make it very complex are not only
> looking for trouble, but further trying to justify their position to
> their employer that they are indispensable.
>
>
If operation is simple, is little to go wrong, when nothing go wrong, boss
happy and my job safe


>
>
> >
> > if director service assign 60K user to each front end,  how it handle if
> 5K
> > simultaneous user login, but all 5K happen to be assign to that one
> machine,
>
>
> that would be rare, but, technically speaking, if you are that large in
> user numbers, it is a possible scenario
>
>
We have 418K mailbox users


>
> > Is it really worth it? Do we really need this, or just let foundry switch
> > handle it as it does now.
> > We also have 24 front end SMTP server, these deliver mail to netapp
> filer,
> > all 24 plus 8 pop3 server and 2 webmail imap server all mount /vmail, so
> all
> > access same maildir. it seem work very effective thus far and for many
> many
>
>
> Sounds similar setup to us, smtp, pop3 and webmail all
> mounting /var/vmail/ on a FAS2050,  I've asked if it can avoid touching
> the index files before (see a thread as recent as a few weeks back),
> Timo is just not interested, to much work apparently for so little users
>

Oh my, so i waste time talking asking him for extra switch to deliver to
ignore indexing, drat.


> (although I never in all hte years ive been on this list, ever seen a
> poll taken/question asked to users - about it, plus, well, every single
> dovecot user  is on this list, right? <sarcasm>  anyway, mostly I guess
> although it has risks, it seems to work for everyone who uses NFS anyway
> and has done for very many years :) , maybe one day when Timo is so
> bored and cant think of anything to add, he will give us an option, or a
> dedicated deliver binary separate to normal deliver that does this)
>
> Maybe not many people here use time proven setup



> /rant ( but its nice to know im not the only one here who feels this
> way)
> Cheers
>
>