[Dovecot] Virtual Servers

[Noel Butler]

On Mon, 2011-06-27 at 11:40 -0700, Daniel L. Miller wrote:

> Maybe a little off-topic - but I hope not too much.
> 
> Looking for some insight on setting up Dovecot under a virtual server.  
> In particular, I use VirtualBox - and at the moment, Ubuntu Linux.
> 


I hope this is a lightly used server and does not do any real level of
mail traffic else you'll soon regret running in any VM :) 


> format.  I wish to continue storing the mail on "raw" disks - not place 
> the mail inside a virtual disk.  Accordingly, the VM needs to reach the 


At least you have very good sense not to do that


>  
> means NFS.  My initial testing shows NFS results in a dramatically 
> reduced performance for Dovecot.  Given that this NFS access is going to 


Hrmmm, something amiss somewhere then, I'd put it down to the VM, many
people on this list use NFS
and have no problems.


> there any NFS or Dovecot tweaks I should implement?  Is there an 


Though you have not mentioned what version you run, on 1.2.x using:

mmap_disable = yes
mail_nfs_storage = yes
mail_nfs_index = yes

... is  a must...

Also, what else runs on your server, how many VM's and what types?
The only VM I use, is personal and not work related, and then its only
for my personal domain secondary MX and secondary geo located (in the
U.S) DNS, it's a Xen box, but it does little work since my primaries
always respond, I set it up to NFS access my mail here once playing
around (seeing how much a difference being 10K Km's away makes), and the
only latency I got in accessing mail, was normal and as to be expected
with a 160ms each way trip, to be honest, it was faster to pop my mail
that way, than using my mobile directly to my main server given mobile
carriers always over subscribe.

Cheers

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