[Dovecot] Is Dovecot Director stable for production??

[Aliet Santiesteban Sifontes]

>Aliet, have you thought about is is better to use ipvs or dovecot diretord
to do de job ?  I >mean does anyone know ? if it is let me know so i can
configure also here.

The problem with clustered filesystems is locking and cache, I have not
worked with OCFS2 I believe they use DLM as GFS, but in the case of GFS1 and
GFS2 you must try to keep user persistency with one node, that's why you
need dovecot director, linux lvs can do persistency but with connections and
client ip source not with user mailboxes, that's the job of dovecot director
I guess, so you must:

Cient <--> Linux IPVS <--> Dovecot directors Servers <--> Backend Email
Cluster

IPVS for ip persistency and load balance and Dovecot Director for mailbox
node persistency and also load balance, this should in theory improve your
cluster filesystem performance, since one node will access always the same
area of your cluster filesystem, if you have many different nodes
accessingthe same directory in a cluster filesystem, I mean doing
read, write, delete
etc operations of many small files this will terrible decrease your io
performance because of dlm, imagine a mail server where this happens in
ratios of thousands maybe millions of times with many small files, then you
cluster filesystem will eventually halt...

best regards

2010/11/13 Henrique Fernandes <sf.rique at gmail.com>

> Robert, does't you have problens with performance  ? What mail storage do
> you use, maildir mbox or other one? do you use any particular config to
> seeting up your OCFS2 cluster?
>
> I am using in prodution  ldiretord and heartbeat with balancing 2 servers
> with dovecot 2.07 and have another server in the cluster for maillist.
>
> But i am having lots of problens with IO wait.  I am in really troubel
> trying to figure out how to manage that. I am not sure if is ocfs2 or my
> swicth or the storage it self. We still trying to figure out this. Are you
> with any problem with IO in your cluster ?? thanks
>
>
> Aliet, have you thought about is is better to use ipvs or dovecot diretord
> to do de job ?  I mean does anyone know ? if it is let me know so i can
> configure also here.
>
> Thanks
>
> And i am sorry not help!
>
>
> []'sf.rique
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 8:50 PM, Aliet Santiesteban Sifontes <
> alietsantiesteban at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ok, I answer to my self what I did:
>>
>> In /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
>>
>> protocols = imap pop3 lmtp sieve
>>
>> In /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.con
>>
>> disable_plaintext_auth = no
>>
>> Removed comment to
>> !include auth-static.conf.ext
>>
>> In /etc/dovecot/conf.d/auth-static.conf.ext
>>
>> passdb {
>>  driver = static
>>  args = proxy=y nopassword=y
>> }
>>
>> In /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf to fix perms
>>
>> service auth {
>> ...
>>    mode = 0600
>>    user = dovecot
>>
>> ...
>>
>> In /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-lmtp.conf
>>
>> lmtp_proxy = yes
>>
>> In /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-director.conf
>>
>> director_servers = 172.29.9.25 172.29.9.26
>>
>> director_mail_servers = 172.29.9.10 172.29.9.11
>>
>> director_user_expire = 15 min
>>
>> service director {
>>  unix_listener login/director {
>>    mode = 0666
>>  }
>>  fifo_listener login/proxy-notify {
>>    mode = 0666
>>  }
>>  unix_listener director-userdb {
>>    mode = 0600
>>  }
>>  inet_listener {
>>    port = 4000
>>  }
>> }
>>
>> service imap-login {
>>  executable = imap-login director
>> }
>> service pop3-login {
>>  executable = pop3-login director
>> }
>>
>> # Enable director for LMTP proxying:
>> protocol lmtp {
>>  auth_socket_path = director-userdb
>>  passdb {
>>    driver = static
>>    args = proxy=y nopassword=y port=24
>>  }
>> }
>>
>>
>> Both backend configured and working using ldap, with this director config
>> is
>> working but I still have a problem...
>> if I run command
>>
>> doveadm director map I get
>>
>> user                                              mail server ip expire
>> time
>> <unknown>                                         172.29.9.11
>>  2010-11-13
>> 17:43:31
>>
>> lmtp, imap and pop director working but in the list the user appears as
>> unknown, how tofix this??
>> any ideas??
>>
>> 2010/11/13 Aliet Santiesteban Sifontes <alietsantiesteban at gmail.com>
>>
>> > Today I will try Dovecot Director for a setup using a Cluster Backend
>> with
>> > GFS2 on rhel5, my question is if is Director stable for use in
>> production
>> > for large sites, I know is mainly designed for NFS but I believe it will
>> do
>> > the job also for a cluster filesystem like GFS2 and should solve the
>> mail
>> > persistence problem with a node and locking issues.
>> > I plan to add a layer behind a load balancer to do the stuff, I will
>> > appreciate if you guys can point me to best practices in configuring the
>> > director, or how the thing works since is new for me, I have seen the
>> > example conf but I don't have clarity in some of the concepts and the
>> wiki
>> > is empty.
>> > I use 2.0.6, thank's for a great job with dovecot.
>> > best regards, Aliet
>> >
>>
>
>