[Dovecot] Re: Recommended FS for Dovecot Maildir

[Roger Weeks]

> Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 00:24:23 +0100
> From: Daniel Watts <d at nielwatts.com>
> Subject: Re: [Dovecot] Recommended FS for Dovecot Maildir
> To: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>
>
> Can you remember any general findings?
>
> Thanks to all for responding in this thread - I am reading them all  
> and
> making notes. All very useful information.
>
> Can I phrase the question in a different way? Of those of you who are
> running 10,000+ user system - what FS do you use?
> Or do you all use special file servers (netapps, emc etc?) with
> proprietary filesystems?
>
> Daniel

We're probably right at your 10000 user threshold, but we're an ISP  
so we get a LOT of mail traffic.  Our mail system consists of dual  
exim servers processing incoming mail, writing to maildirs on a home- 
built NFS system.  The home-built system is a dual-xeon machine with  
lots of SATA disks in a RAID5.  We then have two client-facing  
machines running dovecot and squirrelmail.

These are all SuperMicro servers running RedHat ES 4.  They all use  
SATA disks.  We are using EXT3 for the RAID5 filesystem, and I have  
had no performance issues to speak of.  I had considered Reiser or  
xfs, but as I have limited experience with either filesystem I didn't  
feel comfortable using them in production.

--
Roger J. Weeks
Systems & Network Administrator
Mendocino Community Network