[Dovecot] Zlib plugin - when does it make sense?

[Everton Foscarini]

I have a relatively big installation here in the university, 1 mail 
server for 10.000 daily active accounts.

I converted from maildir to mdbox + zlib in march, and these are my 
considerations:

1. CPU is not a problem, even delivering more than 400 messages per 
minute (blade HS21 with 2xQuad E5430 from 2008)
2. I used dsync to convert from maildir to mdbox, with dovecot 2.1 at 
the time.

The biggest win is the file number reduction, from 27 million to 2 million.



Em 25/11/2013 06:53, Frerich Raabe escreveu:
> Hi,
>
> I run a small IMAP server for a dozen guys in the office, serving 
> about 55GB of Maildir. I recently became aware of the Zlib plugin ( 
> http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Plugins/Zlib ) and wondered
>
> 1. given that there is about zero CPU load on my IMAP server, is 
> enabling the plugin a no-brainer or are there other things (except CPU 
> load) to consider?
>
> 2. For enabling the plugin, I suppose you compress all the existing 
> mail just once and then add 'zlib' to mail_plugins in order to have 
> all future incoming mail saved?
>
> Any insight by people familiar with the plugin would be much 
> appreciated - thanks!
>