Probably not the answer you want - but I would strongly suggest using Dovecot replication.? Dovecot replication Just Works - so don't reinvent the wheel when Timo provided such a polished tool already.? Okay, thanks, I'll look at replication for the warm spare. Although we do use shared folders, which your link below says don't work properly. And based on my previous SIS experience - while dbox is nice I would suggest avoiding SIS until there are reports of more development.? Sdbox will be solid - which is what you want for an archive - though maildir would be the safest.? Archives don't need to be rapid-access - they need to be dependable.? SIS is wonderful for space saving - but until there's more safety checks built-in I'd suggest avoiding it for production backups.? Drives are cheap - lost data, lost time, lost hair, lost sanity...is not.
Our main motivation for dbox is SIS. We don't have a very high volume of mail, so maildir speed is unlikely to be an issue. What we do have is a lot of users who like to mail around large files. Drives are cheap, but there are advantages to a smaller mailstore. That said, data security wins.
We will probably abandon dbox entirely and continue with maildir, thanks.
The backups don't have to be "visible" to other machines - don't even have to be running IMAP/POP services (I think).? And the replication command is run - via ssh (https://wiki.dovecot.org/Replication) - so what's the problem?
Well, our backup servers are supposed to be running a minimalist set of software. If we need to restore from backup after a security issue or application bug on a production machine, then we are trying to minimise the chance that the backup machine itself could be affected.
Anyway, if we aren't using SIS, then we needn't use dbox, and therefore backup machines can continue to run a minimalist OS with only rsync.
Thanks,
Ash
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