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

["Matthew Barr" <mbarr@mbarr.net>]

OK.. I've only seen one mention of what I thought would be the best
solution.  Take this for what the advice cost you:

NOTE: Not sure how many front end systems you'd need, so i'll do a *very*
minimal approach.  concept here, not implementation...

Take  load balancer, plug in 2 machines for front end servers.  SMTP is
already taken care of by using MX records, normally, but whatever.

IMAP/POP3 on each front end machine.   Add in a SAN.  Should be able to
get the same drive on each machine, replicated, in theory.  They have
products that do live replication.  In line virtualization stuff, etc. 
Should probably be transparant to the front end server.

I'm sure I have holes in this idea, but why so few mentions of SAN's?  I'm
not using it in my environment.. but from everything I've seen and heard,
it's wonderful for these types of applications.

You can have redundent Raids, switches, and still not need as messy a HA
system on the machine.  I believe the load balancer can take care of
bringing a machine out of the pool, so you should be able to take things
out for mainatnace w/ no apparent down time.


I'm fishing for holes here... I don't know these techs well enough to tell
you downsides.

Matthew