[Dovecot] dbox vs. mdbox

[Hangas]

Timo Sirainen <tss <at> iki.fi> writes:

> > 4. Are there real-world benchmarks showing measurable differences between 
> >maildir, sdbox mdbox?
>
> Not that I'm aware of. So far everyone I've tried to ask have replaced their 
> whole mail system and their storage, so the before/after numbers can't be 
> compared. I'm very interested in knowing myself too.

I think I can give my contribution here.  I'm planning to migrate from dovecot 
1.x to 2.x.  Currently, on 1.x I'm using Maildir as this was my best choice at 
the time, but now I'm trying to decide the mailbox format for a 2.x 
fresh install.

The environment will be virtually the same as this is running in a virtualized
environment. I'm keeping the same storage and storage network, same host  
hardware and about the same VM specs.

Its the data from about 100 users, sizing about 300GB in size spread over about 
2 million files in Maildir format. So I think this could provide statistically 
relevant information.  

My ideia is to install a fresh server and replicate the production maildir on it 
to build a test "source disk" that I'll use then to experiment the conversions 
to sdbox and mdbox.
I then plan to test the performance of the dbox formats, but I can include 
Maildir measurements just for the record.

I'm open to suggestions on how to test this properly