Hi! On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 1:54 PM, David Lang <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 12 Aug 2010, Timo Schoeler wrote: > >> thus David Lang spake: >>> I missed the beginning of this thread >>> On Thu, 12 Aug 2010, Timo Schoeler wrote: >>> >>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>>> Hash: SHA1 >>>> >>>> thus Jose Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa spake: >>>>> Hi! >>>>> >>>>> On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 3:56 AM, Faisal Ghulam <[email protected]> >>>>> wrote: >>>>>> I want to deploy LVS for highly traffic IMAP,POP3 . >>>>>> >>>>>> Can any one guide me how to get it with Centos 5.3. >>>>>> >>>>>> My backend Email server is Postfix. >>>>> Postfix handles SMTP, not IMAP/POP3. I use dovecot for IMAP/POP3, but >>>>> I'm more interested on security than performance, so..... maybe >>>>> someone else can suggest a faster IMAP server (although dovecot is not >>>>> slow, I think, just for the record). >>>> Dovecot is one of the best performing (if not *the* best performing) >>>> pop/imap servers out there. Just use the search egine you like for >>>> benchmark comparisons, and you'll get a bunch of results that will show >>>> this, on different OSes (may it be GNU/Linux, xBSD, or whatever). >>> >>> take a look at Cyrus, it is _very_ scalable, and includes replication and >>> clustering capabilities. It's routinely used by universities and other >>> larger >>> organizations. >> >> Cyrus is a nice player in the field (still run it myself on some hosts), >> but it has some major drawbacks: >> >> - - proprietary mail storage mechanism (compared to MailDir/mbox et al.) > > three things here > > 1. Cyrus is open source and everything is documented, this is not normally > what > 'proprietary' is used to mean. it does have a different on-disk format than > MailDir or mbox
By proprietary he means: only cyrus uses it! Dovecot has its own *proprietary* formats too: http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat > > 2. if you are accessing it via IMAP/POP, why should you care what mechanism it > uses? As an admin, if I'm going to stay to cyrus, I shouldn't care. As an user: I should not note the difference if you are using whatever imap server, I would just want my mail! > > 3. the storage mechanism is very similar to MailDir (one file per message, > folders are directories on the filesystem, etc) and mostly differs in how the > metadata is handled. I frequently write scripts to analyse/parse e-mail in an > archive folder so while it's 'proprietary', it's fully documented > >> - - slower than Dovecot, e.g. I think they are pretty much the same, maybe, dovecot a little faster (but, definitely, I find dovecot more security-oriented), or maybe Cyrus a little faster..... not sure. > > I can't speak to this, but does Dovecot implement the clustering and > replication > features that Cyrus does that lets it scale across many machines? http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki/bin/view/Cyrus/CyrusCluster Nothing new, except, maybe, the replication thing, Cyrus suggest the use of Perdition (which can be very problematic, specially with SSL/TLS related issues). Off course, I have to add: at least it have part of its documentation dedicated to cluster configuration. http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/imapd/install-replication.html (Replication) Looks like it is not ready for "load balancing", which is bad (and, at last, this comes back "on-topic"). It is only for HA, not load balancing. Furthermore, Dovecot has this: http://wiki.dovecot.org/PasswordDatabase/ExtraFields/Proxy Which replaces perdition. And, this: http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailLocation/SharedDisk Which clearly states that you can build clusters with Dovecot, by sharing mailstores. Also, I would have to say that: you can build the "other" kind of clusters, where you have different users on different servers (ala yahoo, or hotmail), with the proxying capabilites (or on Cyrus by using perdition). > >> - - compared to other pop/imap servers, it does not implement RFCs as good >> as others (Dovecot is very good here, too) > > I would be interested in hearing where Cyrus is behind, this is the first time > I've heard this and I've been considering Cyrus as one of the best IMAP > implementations available. There was a comparison on this, I read it some time ago (>1 year, can't find it right now), they compared several IMAP servers on the status and quality of the RFCs implementation, and Dovecot had it all. > > > I'll also point out that fastmail.fm, which is a major 'cloud' mail provider > (even though they've been in business longer than the term has existed) uses > Cyrus and is active in it's development. fastmail works on cyrus development? no wonder they use it, I would be worried if they didn't used it! Other thoughts: I believe that both Cyrus and Dovecot are good products (I had a really hard time making a decision between them both three years ago), both have SASL implementations, both have good performance, but what drove me to Dovecot was: 1. Easier to configure (in *my* opinion). 2. Security-oriented design. 3. More complete standards implementation I hope this helps, Ildefonso Camargo _______________________________________________ Please read the documentation before posting - it's available at: http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/ LinuxVirtualServer.org mailing list - [email protected] Send requests to [email protected] or go to http://lists.graemef.net/mailman/listinfo/lvs-users
