This is an interesting paper that I read a while back, and it is probably (kind of) relevant. It goes into how some of the "Big Dogs" develop there systems. It is entitled "A Highly Scalable Electronic Mail Service Using Open Systems". It talks about the mail system used at Earthlink, and how they developed it.
http://www.earthlink.net/about/papers/mailarch.html .~. /v\ -- // \\ JA /( )\ ^`~`^ L I N U X [-----------------------------------------------------------] Justin Ainsworth Systems Administrator & PHONE: (530) 879-5660x108 Technical Support Supervisor FAX: (530) 879-5676 Sunset Net LLC WEB: http://www.sunset.net 1915 Mangrove Ave EMAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95926 [-----------------------------------------------------------] > -----Original Message----- > From: Jeremy Beaty [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 8:08 PM > To: Subscribers of Qpopper > Subject: Re: Splitting Mail Across Hosts > > > I understand what you are talking about regarding Qpopper not > using NFS. The manual recommends against it. However, SAN > sounds like an expensive option. It would seem that a > splitter like the first guy was talking about would allow you > to distribute the load over several older, slower, cheaper > servers would be a reasonable solution. What would make SAN > so much more advantageous that it would be worth spending the > money on it? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Peter Evans" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Subscribers of Qpopper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 5:24 PM > Subject: Re: Splitting Mail Across Hosts > > > > Kim Scarborough ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > > > someone wrote about what to do when it gets too big for one machine. > > > > > You're barking up the wrong tree. You should have the multiple > > > servers share the partition with the spools through NFS, > then change > > > the > hostname > > > that your pop users have been using to be round-robin DNS with > > > entries for each of the real machine names. That's what > the larger > > > ISPs do. > > > > Last time I checked, qpopper wasnt ready for NFS. > > (Though I might be behind the times.) > > > > No, we dont use NFS, we use SAN. > > the mail server doesnt matter as long as it does ldap. > (although qmail > > needs hacks, exim/postfix/sendmail dont) you can even do it with > > kernel-of-the-week linux. > > > > once you have ldap, you can do whatever you want because > you no longer > > have any users, only mail. You no longer need human intervention on > > individual servers because ldap is doing magic for you. > > > > although out of the box qpopper doesnt speak ldap, its an > easy hack to > > add (remember to cache that query though or you'll make a second > > request for the same data.) > > > > > > I believe this discussion shows up every 3 or 4 months, you > might want > > to check the archive. > > > > P > > ----* > > been there, seen it, done it twice. > > > > > > > > > > -- > > END OF LINE. > > > >
