Stephen Lee wrote:
On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 19:30 +0200, Martin Hudec wrote: <snip>
Well imagine that we have 100 users in company, each of them has 200M mailbox usually filled at least to 150M. That gives us 15G database (I am not counting administrative overhead like indexes etc.).
Lovely. What would such database solution require, for example running on MySQL (usual database for many of the small businesses out there), I cannot truly say now and I am afraid of it. It would be a hard beast. In terms of maintenance and also of resources requirements.
When using mail server with maildir/mailbox we have two components: mail server software alone and disk subsystem. When using database we would get mail server software plus database software and disk subsystem. Thus introducing new component with new unknown behaviors in certain situations.
Martin
WRT size of the db, what about keeping just the message headers and indices in the db and the body as a file? This is akin to some content management systems where the file info is in a db and the content resides as a file. Don't know what the logistics and performance issues are though. Clearly SQL mail storage is not for everyone.
Stephen
Of course it's not for everyone. mbox wins for quick, small, and simple. MySQL would be for those who need what SQL offers. There's lots of features in Dovecot that I don't use, but I'm glad are in there.