[Dovecot] Maildir over NFS

[CJ Keist]

I'm working on bring up a new mail server to replace our current one.  
Our current mail server is running dovecot 1.1.16, with postfix using 
mbox format.  User inboxes are stored locally on the mail server and all 
other mail folders in users home directory under mail which is NFS 
mounted on the mail server.

For our new mail server I'm looking to switch to the Maildir format.  
Some years ago I remember reading that it was not recommended to run 
Maildir format over NFS.  Now I'm looking at several posts that seem to 
indicate that Maildir should run fine over NFS.  I'm a little concerned 
about running Maildir over NFS, especially from the howto conversion 
pages I read would move all messages over to the User ~/Maildir folder 
including the inbox.  So having every single mail transaction going over 
NFS doesn't seem the smart thing to do.

So question I have for the dovecot team, does running Maildir over NFS 
work well?  Or would you recommend that all user mail folders be stored 
locally on the mail server when using Maildir?

We have about 3400 users, doing about 30k mail deliveries daily.  Some 
users have 10's of thousands of mail messages in hundreds of mail folders.

Thanks...

-- 
C. J. Keist                     Email: cj.keist at colostate.edu
UNIX/Network Manager            Phone: 970-491-0630
Engineering Network Services    Fax:   970-491-5569
College of Engineering, CSU
Ft. Collins, CO 80523-1301

All I want is a chance to prove 'Money can't buy happiness'