[Dovecot] Architecture for large Dovecot cluster

[Stan Hoeppner]

On 1/26/2014 11:45 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 24, 2014, at 7:23 PM, Stan Hoeppner <stan at hardwarefreak.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 1/24/2014 11:09 AM, Tom Johnson wrote: Is anybody using the
>>> Object Storage plugin for large-scale installations?
>> 
>> I've not used it.
>> 
>>> We're considering it, but are thinking of an in-house S3 storage
>>> system (riak, or ceph, or ?)   Looking to support perhaps 300k
>>> users.  I was thinking that if we use a bank of dovecot servers 
>>> (with director) with ssds as cache, we might be able to
>>> consolidate all the storage on something like a riak cluster,
>>> which would make scaling simple and inexpensive - certainly much
>>> less than a NetApp solution.
>> 
>> Everything costs less than a NetApp...except an EMC.
>> 
>>> If anyone has any first-hand experience (or even 
>>> off-the-top-of-their-head thoughts), I'd love to hear them)
> 
> (Stan gives a great run-down on the economics of using a NetApp or
> even homegrown NFS filer versus using an object storage backend.)

Tom I'm sorry I wasted your time with my initial response.

> I am quite familiar with NetApp, and EMC - I used to have a number of
> Celera file servers back in my BigFish/FrontBridge days.
> 
> But now I'm in a situation where I have dozens of servers with spare
> storage bays and unused CPU cycles sitting in data centers where the
> power is already provisioned, and a DFS is what makes most sense for
> me now.

Had I known these details above up front I wouldn't have responded.  I
incorrectly assumed you were designing new infrastructure, wading into
new waters, because few are yet to deploy DFS for mailbox storage these
days.

> So, I would like to ask once again- is anyone on the list using the
> object storage plugin for dovecot at any reasonably large scale,
> whether it's an in-house storage solution or S3?

I'm hoping, as I'd guess you are, that someone will respond who is
already doing this.  If someone has it working well it offers others
more storage options, which is always a good thing.  Whether it costs
more or less than the other solutions, it may still be a better option
for some folks either way.

-- 
Stan