Brad, Thank you! It sounds like you've saved me a lot of heartache. We have a Netapps that I was hoping to mount on the mail server and was hoping I could avoid losing mail when the mail server ran into problems.
It's my understanding that the next version on Leopard will support mail clustering so the solution I was looking for was somewhat temporary. I'll have to give this a lot more thought. On May 24, 2007, at 9:46 PM, Brad Knowles wrote: > On 5/24/07, Brad Knowles wrote: > >> In short, I'd avoid this kind of solution like the plague, as far as >> postfix is concerned. It may be okay to store certain types of user >> mailboxes out on NFS (or other shared filesystem type), but not the >> mail queues themselves. > > I should also say that most mailbox formats are not safe to store > on NFS, or any other kind of typical shared filesystem. If you > spend the really big bucks and you get Veritas VxFS (plus all their > cluster-aware software) on big honking Sun Solaris servers, then > you may be able to store them on a shared filesystem (if you do it > right), but at that point I imagine you'd have enough money that > you wouldn't need to be coming to us with questions. > > There are some mailbox formats that are supposedly safe to store on > NFS, but even they have some issues and extra baggage that they > bring to the table, and which I imagine you are probably not aware of. > > > Of course, most NFS implementations would still leave you with a > single-point-of-failure (SPOF), that being your NFS server. > > The only way to resolve that one is to go with a clustered NFS > server solution, such as sold by the folks at Network Appliance. > But those things are pretty damn bloody expensive, too. Even so, > they're still a lot less expensive than solutions from the likes of > EMC or Hitachi Data Systems. > > > Now, if you're talking about a shared filesystem type that is > anything but NFS, then you've got a whole 'nother Universe of > problems. > > Yes, I know about GFS from what used to be Sistina (since bought by > Red Hat), and I know one of their former senior architects -- he's > been my co-author on some of the invited talks I've done, and I've > been a technical reviewer of his book. I also know about things > like Coda (or AFS), and a wide variety of other distributed > filesystem solutions. > > No, I'm not going to buy any sales pitch regarding how they're the > perfect solution for problems like this. If you want a real > distributed cluster-aware filesystem for use with mail servers, > then you're going to have to pay some real money. It's that simple. > > Veritas VxFS isn't necessarily the only solution here, but it is > one of the best known. There are other alternatives in this space, > but they are equally expensive. And no, Veritas VxFS on Linux is > not the same as Veritas VxFS on Solaris. > > > Since you're using Mailman on Mac OS X, I should also point out FAQ > 1.21 and 1.29 at <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py? > req=show&file=faq01.021.htp> and <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/ > faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.029.htp>. > > -- > Brad Knowles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Consultant & Author > LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> > Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4> > > 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 > ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.027.htp
