From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jun 21 21:56:28 2004 Return-Path: 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 5C09416A4CE for ; Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:56:28 +0000 (GMT) Received: from internet.potentialtech.com (h-66-167-251-6.phlapafg.covad.net [66.167.251.6]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 267A043D2D for ; Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:56:28 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from working.potentialtech.com (pa-plum1c-102.pit.adelphia.net [24.53.179.102]) by internet.potentialtech.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4057E69A39; Mon, 21 Jun 2004 17:56:27 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 17:56:26 -0400 From: Bill Moran To: Matthew Seaman Message-Id: <20040621175626.3e762448.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <20040621214348.GB63857@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> References: <20040621132006.2b1a296f.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <20040621172520.3544d6fe.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <20040621214348.GB63857@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> Organization: Potential Technologies X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.10 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: aharrison@gmail.com cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What's the best possible email failover solution X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:56:28 -0000 Matthew Seaman wrote: > On Mon, Jun 21, 2004 at 05:25:20PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote: > > > The return can be significant. The company I am doing this for provides IMAP > > mail services for business. If a filesystem crashes and service is down for a > > while, we can easily lose clients. If we had some sort of failover, we'd be > > able to just switch the IP on the backup machine and life would be good. > > > > "long way to go" is what I'm trying to establish. I was hoping to find > > something workable without reinventing the wheel. For example, Postgresql can > > do real-time replication between two Postgresql servers using Slony. If I can > > find an IMAP server that will keep the mail folders in PostgreSQL, I've got my > > failover system ... tada! > > http://wiki.dovecot.org/moin.cgi/DovecotPostgresql Unfortunately, this only keeps the user database in Postgresql, but not the mailboxes themselves. We already have the equivalent of this using LDAP, and I'm in the process of setting up a slave LDAP server for redundancy. It's the mailboxes themselves that are difficult to get. Best we've got right now is backing up the Cyrus mail folders using rsync ... but this is very time- consuming, and (thus) only done once a day. In order for it to be done right, Cyrus has to be shut down while it's backing up. Thanks Matthew! -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com