From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 17 19:04:06 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D72DB16A403 for ; Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:04:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dave.list@pixelhammer.com) Received: from ecluster6.tls.net (ecluster6.tls.net [65.196.224.136]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 51D5B43D72 for ; Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:04:05 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dave.list@pixelhammer.com) Received: (qmail 20318 invoked by uid 89); 17 Apr 2006 19:04:04 -0000 Received: from 204-8-12-30.bb.hrtc.net (HELO ?192.168.0.102?) (ldg%tls.net@204.8.12.30) by auth-ecluster6.tls.net with SMTP; 17 Apr 2006 19:04:04 -0000 Message-ID: <4443E6A2.3020904@pixelhammer.com> Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 15:04:02 -0400 From: DAve User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <443731E5.9030209@greenmeadow.ca> <1144484393.9480.5.camel@localhost.localdomain> <86lku411kv.fsf@PECTOPAH.shenton.org> In-Reply-To: <86lku411kv.fsf@PECTOPAH.shenton.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: OT - Scalable email server solution needed X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:04:06 -0000 Chris Shenton wrote: > robert writes: > >> Have a look at qmail, It is very scalable and well supported with >> various sites and mailing lists. Iv'e been using it for well over a year >> now. > > Most important thing, IMHO, is uptime. If you use the Maildir mailbox > format you can put it on a solid NFS server like a NetApp and front it > with any number of MTAs and IMAP servers. Maildir is NFS-safe. > If a (used) netApp is too expensive for you, the same approach still > keeps your complicated services off your most critical file server. > > I used qmail-ldap (qmail with LDAP for virtualization) and a handfull > of 1U SMTP/IMAP/POP/Squirrelmail servers. Each server had a local > read-only replica of the LDAP data sync'd from the LDAP master. Zero > downtime in well over a year, even with taking individual boxes down > (one at a time) for upgrades and such. > > You could also look at Vpopmail virtualization for qmail. I've not > tried to scale that across multiple boxes so I don't know how you'd > replicate the account info. Vpopmail can use a SQL store for account info. Like you we have several 1U SMTP/IMAP/POP/Squirrelmail toasters running with all mail stored on a common NFS server. Which also is home to SQL for vpopmail, and for spamd. I have the NFS server (mail store is Raid5) on a second 1 gb network. Maildir delivery and SQL lookups are very very fast, even under a heavy load. 2+ years with the only issue being disk failure on the OS mirror of the toasters. I can recommend it. DAve -- This message was checked by forty monkeys and found to not contain any SPAM whatsoever. Your monkeys may vary