Re: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v

2008-06-24 Thread Ed W

Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa wrote:
And backup is a problem here, so an security filesystem is very 
important for not losing mail.



I have been using rsync (rsnapback) for many of my backups, but it 
struggles when you point it at hundreds of thousands of files in a 
directory.  I have seen a number of solutions involving running multiple 
independent rsyncs for each maildir to keep the file numbers reasonable, 
but it's a bit of a fiddle


More recently I was reading webmail.us / rackspace's notes on their 
backup strategy and they have  presentation on their use of S3 which is 
kind of cool.  Reading between the lines they use something like an MD5 
hash of all their files and then copy the files up to remote storage 
(S3) based on the file hash name.  They then use some kind of index to 
record who has which files and which maildirs they belong in.  Seems 
fairly cheap to make incremental backups and robust to maildirs tendency 
to move thousands of files from new/ to cur/... 

There is an implementation of a similar algorithm via "brackup" - it 
might be interesting for your needs?  I plan to do some more 
investigation into it for backing up our maildirs

http://search.cpan.org/~bradfitz/Brackup/

Regards

Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v

2008-06-24 Thread Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa
On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 15:20 +0100, Ed W wrote:

> Hi
> 
> Sounds like you know what you are doing!
> 

No, sounds like I'm thinking what I'm doing. :-D I really need more
information to get more from the structure.

> >>  - can I assume you have given some thought to 
> >> tuning your file system which handles the spool files?
> >>
> >> 
> > The server uses xfs for maildir partition and so on, it uses 
> > noatime,nodiratime,nobarrier,logbufs=8.
> 
> 
> I guess you have read around a little on XFS + maildir?  There was some 
> discussion a while back that showed it could sometimes get a little slow 
> without some tweaking - I think the logbugs param you used was mentioned 
> as the solution?

That's right.

>   Since you are IO constrainted did you try some 
> benchmarks on other filesystems?
> 

No. I used reiserfs before and I had many problems with it. The guy that
was in charge before me tried xfs and showed me lots of good things
about xfs. So, I decided to try it too. And backup is a problem here, so
an security filesystem is very important for not losing mail.

> Good luck
> 
> Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v

2008-06-24 Thread Ed W

Hi

Sounds like you know what you are doing!

 - can I assume you have given some thought to 
tuning your file system which handles the spool files?



The server uses xfs for maildir partition and so on, it uses 
noatime,nodiratime,nobarrier,logbufs=8.



I guess you have read around a little on XFS + maildir?  There was some 
discussion a while back that showed it could sometimes get a little slow 
without some tweaking - I think the logbugs param you used was mentioned 
as the solution?  Since you are IO constrainted did you try some 
benchmarks on other filesystems?


Good luck

Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v

2008-06-24 Thread Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa
On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 11:44 +0100, Ed W wrote:

> Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa wrote:
> > Ehlo all,
> >
> > I've been working on a migration of about 240K users from one server
> > with qmail, courier imap, maildrop and ldap to postfix, dovecot, lda
> > +sieve. Before the migration the server and the storage were always on
> > high load. 
> >
> >   
> 
> It almost doesn't seem enough of a drop...!

Really? The load of the qmail server were always on 120, but if
something happens, like suddenly increase of mail deliver the server
load jumps to 800. With postfix+dovecot the highest load I got was 35.

>  Have you benchmarked the 
> various apps a little?

No, only dovecotxCourier.

>   Postfix syncs disks like crazy to prevent mail 
> loss in case of disaster

Postfix queue is on local disk, and iostat only shows 6% of
utilization. 

>  - can I assume you have given some thought to 
> tuning your file system which handles the spool files?
> 

The server uses xfs for maildir partition and so on, it uses
noatime,nodiratime,nobarrier,logbufs=8.

> Good luck
> 
> Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v

2008-06-24 Thread Ed W

Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa wrote:

Ehlo all,

I've been working on a migration of about 240K users from one server
with qmail, courier imap, maildrop and ldap to postfix, dovecot, lda
+sieve. Before the migration the server and the storage were always on
high load. 

  


It almost doesn't seem enough of a drop...! Have you benchmarked the 
various apps a little?  Postfix syncs disks like crazy to prevent mail 
loss in case of disaster - can I assume you have given some thought to 
tuning your file system which handles the spool files?


Good luck

Ed W


Re: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v

2008-06-23 Thread Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa
Joe,


On Mon, 2008-06-23 at 22:58 +0800, Joe Wong wrote:

> Hi Raphael,
> 
> Can you also share the figures on the average mailbox size

This is very hard to know... Because it depends on the hosting package,
now every new mail account is created with 1,5G.

>  and number of 
> cocurrent users in peak hour before and after migration?

The concurrent users doesnt change after the migration. Its about 820
concurrent imap users and 400 concurrent pop3 users.

>  What is your 
> hardware configuration (CPU / MEMORY / DISK TYPE )?

Server is a Dell PE 1950, dual xeon(5160), 4G, 2x146SAS and the storage
is Hitachi AMS 500, with 41x146G Fiber 15K.

> - Joe
> 
> - Original Message - 
> From: "Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "dovecot" 
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 10:36 PM
> Subject: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v
> 
> 
> > Ehlo all,
> >
> > I've been working on a migration of about 240K users from one server
> > with qmail, courier imap, maildrop and ldap to postfix, dovecot, lda
> > +sieve. Before the migration the server and the storage were always on
> > high load.
> >
> >
> > Before migration:
> >
> > Storage IOPs = 4600
> > Read average  = 2800
> > Write average = 1800
> >
> > Storage CPU (Raid5)
> > Crl0 = 50%
> > Crl1 = 50%
> >
> > Server Load = 120
> > %user = 35
> > %system = 60
> > %iowait = 5
> > %idle = 0
> >
> > After migration:
> >
> > Storage IOPs = 3000
> > Read average  = 1200
> > Write average = 1800
> >
> > Storage CPU (Raid5)
> > Crl0 = 40%
> > Crl1 = 40%
> >
> > Server Load = 25
> > %user = 10
> > %system = 27
> > %iowait = 40
> > %idle = 23
> >
> > And now the server responds so quickly to any imap command.
> >
> >
> > Dovecot is now the default imap/pop server here, Thanks Timo.
> >
> >
> > []s,
> >
> > Raphael Costa
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 
> 


Re: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v

2008-06-23 Thread Joe Wong

Hi Raphael,

Can you also share the figures on the average mailbox size and number of 
cocurrent users in peak hour before and after migration? What is your 
hardware configuration (CPU / MEMORY / DISK TYPE )?


- Joe

- Original Message - 
From: "Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "dovecot" 
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 10:36 PM
Subject: [Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v



Ehlo all,

I've been working on a migration of about 240K users from one server
with qmail, courier imap, maildrop and ldap to postfix, dovecot, lda
+sieve. Before the migration the server and the storage were always on
high load.


Before migration:

Storage IOPs = 4600
Read average  = 2800
Write average = 1800

Storage CPU (Raid5)
Crl0 = 50%
Crl1 = 50%

Server Load = 120
%user = 35
%system = 60
%iowait = 5
%idle = 0

After migration:

Storage IOPs = 3000
Read average  = 1200
Write average = 1800

Storage CPU (Raid5)
Crl0 = 40%
Crl1 = 40%

Server Load = 25
%user = 10
%system = 27
%iowait = 40
%idle = 23

And now the server responds so quickly to any imap command.


Dovecot is now the default imap/pop server here, Thanks Timo.


[]s,

Raphael Costa









[Dovecot] 1 week after full migration to 1.1v

2008-06-23 Thread Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa
Ehlo all,

I've been working on a migration of about 240K users from one server
with qmail, courier imap, maildrop and ldap to postfix, dovecot, lda
+sieve. Before the migration the server and the storage were always on
high load. 


Before migration:

Storage IOPs = 4600
Read average  = 2800
Write average = 1800

Storage CPU (Raid5)  
Crl0 = 50%
Crl1 = 50%

Server Load = 120
%user = 35
%system = 60
%iowait = 5
%idle = 0

After migration:

Storage IOPs = 3000
Read average  = 1200
Write average = 1800

Storage CPU (Raid5)  
Crl0 = 40%
Crl1 = 40%

Server Load = 25
%user = 10
%system = 27
%iowait = 40
%idle = 23

And now the server responds so quickly to any imap command.


Dovecot is now the default imap/pop server here, Thanks Timo.


[]s,

Raphael Costa