At 2:10 PM +1000 2004-06-29, Guy Waugh wrote:
I want to set up Mailman in a load-balanced fashion on two servers running within an LVS (linux virtual server) cluster. I want the two servers to act as the same Mailman instance.
Okay, so far.
The two servers will mount an NFS shared directory from a third server, and the NFS mount will, I guess, contain the shared Mailman stuff.
There's a problem. NFS sucks at operations that require lots of file locking. Of course, all queueing type operations involving mail servers involve lots of file locking.
This is why you do not ever put /var/spool/mqueue on NFS, whereas you can find ways to kinda-semi-sorta deal with the NFS locking problem for user mailboxes on /var/spool/mail (all solutions to this problem involve trade-offs that hurt performance in other areas).
Likewise, Mailman does file locking with the queueing process that it manages.
If you can find a way to put things on a proper clustered filesystem, that should work much better. Sistina GFS may work for you, or possibly Veritas VxFS plus their VCS tools.
I've found a few things on the web about load-balancing Mailman, but not much.
The thing is that you can run the web server for Mailman separate from the mail servers. So, you could cluster the mail servers in a scalable way that will work for you, and then separately work on the issue of building a scalable web farm solution for the rest.
Further, is anyone running Mailman in a load-balanced fashion like this? Any hints/tricks/tips?
If you are interested in splitting of the mail cluster part of this equations, then I suggest you look at the parts of the FAQ that talk about performance tuning, especially the stuff in section 6. The most extensive entry is at <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq06.003.htp>.
-- Brad Knowles, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
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