Re: [SAGE] SMTP/POP/IMAP mail server redundancy

[Trey Harris <trey@sage.org>]

In a message dated 27 Aug 2002, Mark McCullough writes:
> (Though some have suggested using high performance NFS to a NetApp so
> every front end box is writing to the same mail spool instead of using a
> proper back end.)

Yikes!  The state of the art in NFS locking may be further along than it
was the last time I looked at doing something similar on a high-volume
mail server, but I'd be very, very afraid.

When you're doing mail, you live and die by the locking on the final
mailspool destination.  Put you mailspool on a network filesystem, and
your ability to do locking either becomes dicey at best, or it becomes
slow, or both.  Neither situation is good for high-volume mail (though I'd
rather have slow than corrupted mail.)

But I haven't done large-scale email in years, so take my comments with a
grain of salt.

-- 
Trey Harris
Secretary and Executive
SAGE -- The System Administrators Guild (www.sage.org)
Opinions above are not necessarily those of SAGE.