[Dovecot] Migration questions...

[Steffen Kaiser]

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On Wed, 13 May 2009, Richard Hobbs wrote:

>> difference for you. A single server with recent hardware should be able
>> to easily handle hundreds of simultaneous users.
>
> That's also good to know... i like to do a job right instead of relying
> on faster hardware, as i'm sure you all do too, but it's good to know
> that if i make one or two "non-optimal" choices along the way, it'll
> probably be lightning fast anyway!

Well, IMHO there is some advantage to split index data and mail data on 
separate disks, if they are located at different channels, so the load 
per channel drops. But this is probably not so significant, if your OS 
uses one CPU for all I/O anyway....

> The main complaint we have from users is that their IMAP Inbox, with
> 5000 emails in it takes ages to appear, and no amount of coaxing will
> convince them to split their inbox into multiple folders.

Oh, we serve Maildir via Dovecot IMAP and 5000 messages per folder are a 
wimp. Problems start if the user:

a) hits a 2GB limit on a mailbox in the mail client,

b) try to move all their 20'000+ messages at once to an archive folder 
once a year, when their quota limit is exceeded. This can make the whole
server irresponsible slow, because I have the mail_log plugin running as 
well.

> With maildir, and especially dovecot, this problem effectively
> disappears! That's the theory anyway, right?

Bye,

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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