Quoting Nicolas GRENECHE <nicolas.greneche@gmail.com>:
I plan to run a dovecot IMAPS and POPS service on our network. We handle about 3 000 mailboxes. I thought first buying a topnotch server (8 cores and 16 Go RAM) with equalogic iSCSI SAN SAS 15K for storage backend.
Sounds like overkill to me, but if you have the money go for it. :)
I run mine on an 8 core (dual quad core) system with 4G RAM, using SATA (would have preferred SAS, but cost was an issue for us).
created on a separete local filesystem. My question is : for 3000 users, is it possible to have only a SATA backend attached to my topnotch server (to handle bigger mail quotas) by storing index on local hard drives (SAS drives) ?
Sure. If you only have one dovecot server without any failover this is fine. If you have multiple (active or passive) servers then more care is required, and you need to decide on the level of risk you want to take.
Extra question, what is the better : iSCSI SATA backend or NFS share ?
iSCSI would be better than NFS IMHO.
NFS share is more convenient to have a failover server.
If you introduce NFS and/or a failover server, your local index question gets much more complex...
Is that a design requirement, desire, or future option?
Thanks for your help.
Regards,
-- Nicolas Grenèche - Orléans University - France http://blog.garnett.fr (in french)
-- Eric Rostetter The Department of Physics The University of Texas at Austin
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