[Dovecot] Dovecot readable compressed mail archive

[Dave Hall]

Hello.

Is Dovecot able to create and/or read any sort of compressed mail 
archive?  We have a large installation with a few users who need to keep 
a large amount of email available.  With maildir this means a large 
number of individual files, leading to additional load on our backup 
process.  Even using a compressed mbox file as an archive would help, 
but only if Dovecot is able to interact with this file seamlessly while 
keeping current email in the maildir format.

Please pardon if this is old business, but I haven't been able to find 
any reference to it by searching.

Thanks.

-Dave

-- 
Dave Hall
System Administrator
Computer Science
Binghamton University
davehall at cs.binghamton.edu
607-760-2328 (Cell)
607-777-4641 (Office)