From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Sep 23 21:29:26 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 39615106566B for ; Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:29:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gandalf@shopzeus.com) Received: from viefep12-int.chello.at (viefep18-int.chello.at [213.46.255.22]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 72B0E8FC21 for ; Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:29:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gandalf@shopzeus.com) Received: from edge03.upc.biz ([192.168.13.238]) by viefep16-int.chello.at (InterMail vM.7.08.02.00 201-2186-121-20061213) with ESMTP id <20080923210531.SRXG20914.viefep16-int.chello.at@edge03.upc.biz> for ; Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:05:31 +0200 Received: from [192.168.2.175] ([89.134.231.52]) by edge03.upc.biz with edge id JM5V1a02k18VCLh03M5WAL; Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:05:31 +0200 X-SourceIP: 89.134.231.52 Message-ID: <48D95A19.8030700@shopzeus.com> Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:05:29 +0200 From: Laszlo Nagy User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 (X11/20080724) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-2; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Tony Nagy - SHOPZEUS Subject: dovecot, maildir, UFS 2 performance 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: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:29:26 -0000 I need to install a new server. Primarily it will run apache + PHP + PostgreSQL. Its main task is to serve several websites, and provide web based admin interface for OLTP. The server will have 2xSAS disks in RAID 1 for the base system and 10xSATA2 disks in RAID 1+0 for the rest. The SAS pair will only have 150GB space. The RAID 1+0 array will be above 1.5 TB. I already have a good idea about how to tune PostgreSQL: log files go to SAS and data dir goes to SATA. The secondary task for this server is to be an IMAP and mail server. We will be using dovecot, and shared maildir folders with ten thousands of messages. I'm not sure where to put the maildir folders, and what options to use for the filesystem. Dovecot wiki is not talking about UFS, only ext3, reiserfs and xfs: http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir Can you tell me some basic idea about how to configure this? I have some ideas but they may be competely wrong: #1 maildir stores each message in a separate file. I think I need to dedicate a separate disk slice for maildirs and decrease block size on it. How big should the blocksize be? #2 searching in messages is a common operation. Possibly read speed is very most important. But since there will be thousands of files to open, seek operation is also important. On which RAID array should I put mail dirs? Small SAS or bigger SATA array? Thanks, Laszlo