[Dovecot] Questions about the upcoming Object Storage Plugin for 2.2

[Timo Sirainen]

On 11.4.2013, at 15.31, Charles Marcus <CMarcus at Media-Brokers.com> wrote:

> I'm curious and have questions about the new Object Storage Plugin (OSP), and how it can be leveraged by an SMB like us.

I'll give some more complete answers and examples and such within a few days.. Or probably better if I write down some scenarios to some web page or something.

> First, am I reading this right where it could be used as a kind of 'live/realtime backup' solution, where everything is stored *both* locally and in the cloud, with two-way syncing, ie, so local users could access the local server for faster access, and when outside the office, they'd access the cloud based storage and any changes made there are sync'd back to the local server? Or is it intended to be more as an alternative storage for storing older emails in a separate namespace? Or both/either?

Currently you have a local cache (e.g. 100 GB total). You can also use dsync replication to replicate it somewhere, either locally or to another server. With dsync I think you can basically run it any way you want.

> Second, is SIS fully supported by the OSP?

Not currently, but could be added.

> Third - I'm a little confused by the Amazon S3 pricing page, especially on how to try to estimate the costs for usage (bandwidth, etc)... do you have any idea how to go about estimating that? Is there some kind of process we could use on our existing server to measure it over a given period of time that would give us an estimate of what to expect if we decided to switch over?

If you have large enough local cache, you're not really doing anything except uploading messages. Also index files are periodically being uploaded for each user (every 5 minutes if they have changed), but they are often also not full index files but smaller diffs for them (although upload bandwidth is free so doesn't really matter either). So ideally there would be no download costs at all, because nothing is downloaded. And the number of requests per user per day .. I haven't really counted, but I'd guess between a few hundred and a thousand. Lets say a thousand, which means with 100 users/year it's $182.50.

> Last - have you established pricing for the OSP? Will it be per user, or per MB/GB, per month (or per year), or just a one-time cost? And/or will you include/bundle it with any/all of your support tiers?

All of the above, I think ;)