Redundant and Geobalancing setup

[Cedric Malitte]

Thanks Robert,

Having 2 separate servers would mean domain splitting in a way.
So I'll have to dispatch incoming mail, and maintain 2 or more users
databases.
Well I could only maintain one, and let the DB replicate itself to other
servers and only grab the users they are allowed to.

We have many domain aliases for many countries and a dozen users traveling
around the globe.
So geo balacing would not be the best for them.

But the redundancy is missing.... if one server goes down, I loose a bunch
of users and that's not what I am looking for.

I looked for providers offering that, but I guess my bosses would not let
me spend over 3000$ per month on that.
Else I would already have the mails hosted by microsoft and have a cocktail
on the beach :)

I'm not any kind of guru, I do not have any disciples.
I did kernel mod development on embedded systems with freebsd 4 and 5, I
still develop some linux kernel drivers for proprietary systems from time
to time.
My main degree is electronic engineering and I also graduated in computing
related to management in other words I learned a bit of everything to be
able to manage teams developers and understand what they do.

Looks like it's doable, so I'll continue to dig and experiment.

Best regards

Cedric


2016-02-13 16:05 GMT-05:00 Robert Schetterer <rs at sys4.de>:

> Am 13.02.2016 um 04:00 schrieb Cedric Malitte:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I use dovecot for a long time now, but only as a single isolated server
> > each time.
> >
> > I joined a company a few years back. We had trouble with compagnies
> hosting
> > our mail, supposedly full redundant and so on.
> >
> > The company is small, but we have many dealers around the world, and it's
> > growing.
> >
> > Mail became the fist choice for clients to contact the dealers.
> > No mail, and we loose sales.
> >
> > For now we have a single server ( with a backup ) on east coast.
> > And sometimes peoples from EU complain about speed.... ah users :)
> >
> > What I'd like to implement is a redundant system with 2 servers, one in
> NA,
> > one in EU.
> > And I'd also like to be able to add another server if needed on the west
> > coast.
> >
> > Idea is, that if a server goes down, the users will be able to still
> > receive and send mails, and never loose mails.
> >
> > For geobalacing and failover, I read that I can do it with DNS ( I'm with
> > easydns ).
> >
> > I'm at the first stage where I collect informations that I try to
> > understand and foresee a solution.
> >
> > First idea is to set up servers with a mysql master, slaves and a
> glusterfs
> > in replica mode on the servers.
> > I tried glusterfs on FreeBSD and OMG, it's slow as hell ! ( well maybe
> it's
> > a trouble on the VMs nics )
> > On centos it's way better.
> > But I read there might be trouble/index corruption for the mail storage
> on
> > "shared" space using maildir.
> >
> > I also had a look at dsync, but I wonder if it can be used on more than 2
> > servers.
> >
> > I found many pages on dovecot clusters using shared storage NFS mounted,
> > but I feel it's not really what I need as the servers will be in
> different
> > datacenters.
> >
> > So any guide, clue hint would be really appreciated for me to do my
> > homework !
> >
> > Regards.
> >
> > Cedric
> >
>
> complicated and expensive for a small company
> why not have one imap server in US and the other in EU
> so US Users should have their Mailboxes on the US Server
> EU users should have their Mailboxes on the EU Server
>
> Smtp you might manage via smtp routing, perhaps with subdomains us eu
> and aliasing
>
> Or you might take some paid service which has geo stuff allready up and
> and running, dont try or think of doing it yourself, unlees youre a guru
>
> Best Regards
> MfG Robert Schetterer
>
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