Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2010-03-11 Thread Sebastian Färber
>b) Use threads, either via some library or implement yourself. Each thread of >course uses some extra memory. Also enabling >threads causes glibc to start >using a thread-safe version of malloc() (I think?), which slows things down >(unless that can be avoided, >maybe by using clone() directly

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2010-03-11 Thread Ed W
On 10/03/2010 21:19, Timo Sirainen wrote: On 10.8.2009, at 20.01, Timo Sirainen wrote: (3.5. Implement async I/O filesystem backend.) You know what I found out today? Linux doesn't support async IO for regular buffered files. I had heard there were issues, but I thought it was mainl

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2010-03-10 Thread Stan Hoeppner
Timo Sirainen put forth on 3/10/2010 3:19 PM: > On 10.8.2009, at 20.01, Timo Sirainen wrote: > >> (3.5. Implement async I/O filesystem backend.) > > You know what I found out today? Linux doesn't support async IO for regular > buffered files. I had heard there were issues, but I thought it was m

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2010-03-10 Thread Timo Sirainen
On 10.8.2009, at 20.01, Timo Sirainen wrote: > (3.5. Implement async I/O filesystem backend.) You know what I found out today? Linux doesn't support async IO for regular buffered files. I had heard there were issues, but I thought it was mainly about some annoying APIs and such. Anyone know if

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 22:20 +0100, Ed W wrote: > Timo Sirainen wrote: > > > > The SQL code was for v1.0 and the lib-storage API has been simplified > > since then, maybe not hugely but still pretty much. Maybe some day I'll > > see about updating the SQL code for v2.0 API. > > > > Oh and some docum

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Ed W
Timo Sirainen wrote: The SQL code was for v1.0 and the lib-storage API has been simplified since then, maybe not hugely but still pretty much. Maybe some day I'll see about updating the SQL code for v2.0 API. Oh and some documentation about it would probably help a lot too. I guess I should wri

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Jeff Grossman
On 9/28/2009 1:44 PM, Charles Marcus wrote: On 9/28/2009 4:24 PM, Jeff Grossman wrote: In fact there are lots of IMAP improvements in v3... I can't wait until all my extensions catch up, and I figure out how to customize the UI the way I want (e.g., how in the world do I get rid of the stupi

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Charles Marcus
On 9/28/2009, Charles Marcus (cmar...@media-brokers.com) wrote: > > You can't get rid of tabs per se, but you can make it so you don't use > > > them. I hate tabs personally also. Go to Options, Advanced, Reading > > > and Display, and select Open Messages In: An Existing Window or A New > > > Wi

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Charles Marcus
On 9/28/2009 4:24 PM, Jeff Grossman wrote: >> In fact there are lots of IMAP improvements in v3... I can't wait until >> all my extensions catch up, and I figure out how to customize the UI the >> way I want (e.g., how in the world do I get rid of the stupid Tabs??) > You can't get rid of tabs per

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Jeff Grossman
On 9/28/2009 11:43 AM, Charles Marcus wrote: On 9/28/2009, Ed W (li...@wildgooses.com) wrote: In theory Thunderbird does this, but at least on my machine it just repeatedly downloads the same message again and again in various ways - it grinds to a halt every time I click on an email with a

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 20:11 +0100, Ed W wrote: > > lib-storage API has existed since Dovecot v1.0 and it's used to abstract > > out access to maildir, mbox, dbox, cydir, etc. SQL would fit right there > > with those. > > > > OK, I thought that was what you were going to be simplifying... Nope.

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Ed W
Timo Sirainen wrote: On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 19:21 +0100, Ed W wrote: In my mind this is more about what lib-storage API was supposed to abstract out, whereas my filesystem API would be used simply for binary data storage. The same FS API could be used to store both dbox files and index files.

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 19:21 +0100, Ed W wrote: > > In my mind this is more about what lib-storage API was supposed to > > abstract out, whereas my filesystem API would be used simply for binary > > data storage. The same FS API could be used to store both dbox files and > > index files. > > > >

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Charles Marcus
On 9/28/2009, Ed W (li...@wildgooses.com) wrote: > In theory Thunderbird does this, but at least on my machine it just > repeatedly downloads the same message again and again in various ways > - it grinds to a halt every time I click on an email with a decent > sized attachment, even if I have alre

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Ed W
Timo Sirainen wrote: On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 18:35 +0100, Ed W wrote: I would have thought that your API will prefer to request message parts where it can (eg header, body, mime part), and just issue a read_bytes, where that's what the client is asking for otherwise. This would allow the sto

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 18:35 +0100, Ed W wrote: > I would have thought that your API will prefer to request message parts > where it can (eg header, body, mime part), and just issue a read_bytes, > where that's what the client is asking for otherwise. This would allow > the storage engine to opt

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Ed W
Timo Sirainen wrote: On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 17:57 +0100, Ed W wrote: My only request to Timo was to kind of consider that a bunch of these ideas from the audience will almost certainly involve splitting up the mime message into component parts and that the abstracted interface should try not

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Ed W
Timo Sirainen wrote: On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 09:00 -0700, paulmon wrote: My current thinking is a key/value store as you've proposed. Something like Hadoop components or Project Voldamort. Voldamort might be a better fit from what I've read. My understanding of Hadoop is that it's mor

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 17:57 +0100, Ed W wrote: > My only request to Timo was to kind of consider that a bunch of these > ideas from the audience will almost certainly involve splitting up the > mime message into component parts and that the abstracted interface > should try not to throw away any

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 09:00 -0700, paulmon wrote: > My current thinking is a key/value store as you've proposed. Something like > Hadoop components or Project Voldamort. Voldamort might be a better fit > from what I've read. My understanding of Hadoop is that it's more about distributed computi

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread Ed W
paulmon wrote: My current thinking if having the local delivery break messages up into their component pieces, headers, from address, to address, spam scores, body etc into various key:value relationships. Whilst this looks appealing on the surface I think the details are going to need some b

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-09-28 Thread paulmon
On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 14:33 -0700, Seth Mattinen wrote: > Nothing forces you to switch from maildir, if you're happy with it :) > But if you want to support millions of users, it's simpler to distribute > the storage and disk I/O evenly across hundreds of servers using a > database that was de

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-15 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 18:18 -0400, Timo Sirainen wrote: > On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 14:54 -0700, Daniel L. Miller wrote: > > If every attachment in a given message is individually scanned to > > generate some unique identifier, and that identifier then used to > > determine whether or not it exists i

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-14 Thread Charles Marcus
> But for example, what I'd really like to be able to do is say something > like: > > SiS_mode = binary,64K > > So only binary attachments over 64KB in size would be checksummed and > single instance stored. I don't care bout the headers, or body text, or > tiny (< 64KB) sig attachments, or text

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-14 Thread Steffen Kaiser
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Timo Sirainen wrote: So yeah, either one are as reliable as the script :) Well, I think this is not what the OP intended :) This will work for only a little amount of mails I see, because: a) forwarded messages differ, b) re

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-13 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Aug 13, 2009, at 8:13 AM, Charles Marcus wrote: I'm also having trouble figuring out how using hard links (or their equivalent) for messages with large attachments and having only one instance of the attachment could cause *more* disk I/O than having dozens/hundred of multiple copies of the m

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-13 Thread Charles Marcus
On 8/12/2009, Daniel L. Miller (dmil...@amfes.com) wrote: > Under the structure I've proposed, net storage consumed by the > attachments should be one copy of attachment 1, and one copy of > attachment two, plus headers and any comments in the messages times > the number of recipients. Domino woul

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-13 Thread Charles Marcus
On 8/12/2009, Ed W (li...@wildgooses.com) wrote: > It also had a bunch of limitations, it was basically only single > instance for CC recipients on a message (more or less). Quite a lot > of things such as certain types of virus scanning would (I think) > easily disable the single instance storage

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-13 Thread Charles Marcus
On 8/12/2009 4:02 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote: >>> Do you need per-MIME part single instance storage, or would per-email be >>> enough? Since the per-email can already done with hard links. >> The only thing I can find about this on the wiki is where it says single >> instance attachment storage (for

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-13 Thread Charles Marcus
On 8/12/2009 3:58 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote: >>> - and I've never heard of any other mail server supporting such a >>> thing. >> Exchange does... and is the single and only reason I have *considered* >> switching to it in the past few years... > I heard that the next Exchange version drops that fe

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Aug 12, 2009, at 6:54 PM, Daniel L. Miller wrote: Do the indexes contain any of the header information? Yes. In particular, since I know nothing of the communication between IMAP clients & servers in general, is the information that is shown in typical client mail lists (subject, send

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Daniel L. Miller
Ha! Fooled you! I'm going to reply to the original question instead of SIS! Timo Sirainen wrote: * Index files are really more like memory dumps. They're already in an optimal format for keeping them in memory, so they can be just mmap()ed and used. Doing some kind of translation to another

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Daniel L. Miller
Timo Sirainen wrote: On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 18:18 -0400, Timo Sirainen wrote: Oh BTW. I think dbmail 2.3 does that. Then again I haven't yet seen a stable dbmail version. But looks like they've released 2.3.6 recently that I haven't tested yet. Looks like it even does single instance he

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 18:18 -0400, Timo Sirainen wrote: > Oh BTW. I think dbmail 2.3 does that. Then again I haven't yet seen a > stable dbmail version. But looks like they've released 2.3.6 recently > that I haven't tested yet. Looks like it even does single instance header values: > The header

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 14:54 -0700, Daniel L. Miller wrote: > If every attachment in a given message is individually scanned to > generate some unique identifier, and that identifier then used to > determine whether or not it exists in the database - this could have > HUGE effects. This now addr

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Daniel L. Miller
Steve wrote: dbox-only is fine. I could care less about the storage method chosen - filesystem, db, encrypted, whatever - but I believe the impact on storage - and possibly indexes & searching - would be huge. On the personal greedy side, if you want to see a mass corporate migration to Do

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Steve
Original-Nachricht > Datum: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:34:40 -0700 > Von: "Daniel L. Miller" > An: Dovecot Mailing List > Betreff: Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it > someone else\'s problem > Timo Sirainen wrote: > > On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 11:35 -0

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Ed W
Timo Sirainen wrote: On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 15:42 -0400, Charles Marcus wrote: - and I've never heard of any other mail server supporting such a thing. Exchange does... and is the single and only reason I have *considered* switching to it in the past few years... I heard that t

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 15:33 -0400, Charles Marcus wrote: > On 8/12/2009, Timo Sirainen (t...@iki.fi) wrote: > > Do you need per-MIME part single instance storage, or would per-email be > > enough? Since the per-email can already done with hard links. > > The only thing I can find about this on the

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 15:42 -0400, Charles Marcus wrote: > > - and I've never heard of any other mail server supporting such a > > thing. > > Exchange does... and is the single and only reason I have *considered* > switching to it in the past few years... I heard that the next Exchange version d

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Charles Marcus
On 8/12/2009, Daniel L. Miller (dmil...@amfes.com) wrote: > dbox-only is fine. I could care less about the storage method chosen > - filesystem, db, encrypted, whatever - but I believe the impact on > storage - and possibly indexes & searching - would be huge. It would be huge for us and anyone e

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Daniel L. Miller
Timo Sirainen wrote: On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 11:35 -0700, Daniel L. Miller wrote: Timo Sirainen wrote: Also the mime structure could be torn apart to store attachments individually - the motivation being single instance storage of large attachments with identical content... Anyway, thes

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Charles Marcus
On 8/12/2009, Timo Sirainen (t...@iki.fi) wrote: > Do you need per-MIME part single instance storage, or would per-email be > enough? Since the per-email can already done with hard links. The only thing I can find about this on the wiki is where it says single instance attachment storage (for dbox

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Charles Marcus
On 8/12/2009, Timo Sirainen (t...@iki.fi) wrote: > Do you need per-MIME part single instance storage, or would per-email be > enough? Since the per-email can already done with hard links. Our users are constantly in-line forwarding the same emails with (20+MB) attachment(s) to different people, bu

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Ed W
Daniel L. Miller wrote: Timo Sirainen wrote: Also the mime structure could be torn apart to store attachments individually - the motivation being single instance storage of large attachments with identical content... Anyway, these seem like very speculative directions... Yes, this is a

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 11:35 -0700, Daniel L. Miller wrote: > Timo Sirainen wrote: > >> Also the mime structure could be torn apart to store > >> attachments individually - the motivation being single instance storage > >> of large attachments with identical content... Anyway, these seem like >

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 19:19 +0100, Ed W wrote: > I actually thought your idea of having a bunch of cut down IMAP type > servers as the backend storage talking to a bunch of beefier frontend > servers was quite an interesting idea! > > Certainly though a simplification of the on-disk API would en

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Daniel L. Miller
Timo Sirainen wrote: Also the mime structure could be torn apart to store attachments individually - the motivation being single instance storage of large attachments with identical content... Anyway, these seem like very speculative directions... Yes, this is also something in dbox's f

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Ed W
Oh, have you considered some "optional" api calls in the storage API? The logic might be to assume that someone wanted to do something clever and split the message up in some way, eg store headers separately to bodies or bodies carved up into mime parts. The motivation would be if there was a c

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Ed W
Oh, have you considered some "optional" api calls in the storage API? The logic might be to assume that someone wanted to do something clever and split the message up in some way, eg store headers separately to bodies or bodies carved up into mime parts. The motivation would be if there was a c

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Seth Mattinen
Ed W wrote: > > Actually I use maildir, but apart from delete performance which is > usually rare, mailbox seems better for nearly all use patterns > > Seems like if it were possible to "solve" delete performance then > mailbox becomes the preferred choice for many requirements (also lets > solve

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 18:42 +0100, Ed W wrote: > > Something like that. In dbox you have one storage directory containing > > all mailboxes' mails (so that copying can be done by simple index > > updates). Then you have a bunch of files, each about n MB (configurable, > > 2 MB by default). Expungin

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Ed W
CouchDB seems like it would still be more difficult than necessary to scale. I'd really just want something that distributes the load and disk usage evenly across all servers and allows easily plugging in more servers and it automatically rebalances the load. CouchDB seems like much of that w

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 17:46 +0100, Ed W wrote: > My expectation then is that with local index and sql message storage > that the performance should be very reasonable for a large class of > users... (ok, other problems perhaps arise) If messages are stored to SQL in dummy blobs then the performa

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Ed W
1) Since latency requirements are low, why did performance drop so much previously when you implemented a very simple mysql storage backend? I glanced at the code a few weeks ago and whilst it's surprisingly complicated right now to implement a backend, I was also surprised that a database

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Eric Rostetter
On Aug 12, 2009, at 2:21 AM, Steffen Kaiser > wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, 11 Aug 2009, Eric Jon Rostetter wrote: For a massively scaled system, there may be sufficient performance to put the queues elsewhere. Which also allows that the queue can easily have

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Aug 12, 2009, at 11:26 AM, Ed W wrote: Hi * Mail data on the other hand is just written once and usually read maybe once or a couple of times. Caching mail data in memory probably doesn't help all that much. Latency isn't such a horrible issue as long as multiple mails can be fetched at o

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Ed W
Hi * Mail data on the other hand is just written once and usually read maybe once or a couple of times. Caching mail data in memory probably doesn't help all that much. Latency isn't such a horrible issue as long as multiple mails can be fetched at once / in parallel, so there's only a single l

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-12 Thread Steffen Kaiser
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, 11 Aug 2009, Eric Jon Rostetter wrote: For a massively scaled system, there may be sufficient performance to put the queues elsewhere. Which also allows that the queue can easily have multiple machines pushing & poping items. But on a

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Eric Jon Rostetter
Quoting Timo Sirainen : It depends on the locking scheme used by the filesystem. Working queue directories (the ones where stuff comes and goes rapidly) is best suited for a local FS anyway. And when a server and its disk dies, the emails get lost :( It would appear he is not talking about a

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 09:38 -0700, Seth Mattinen wrote: > > Why don't queue directories and clusters mix well? Is this a performance > > issue only, or something worse? > > > > It depends on the locking scheme used by the filesystem. Working queue > directories (the ones where stuff comes and go

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Seth Mattinen
Eric Jon Rostetter wrote: > Quoting Seth Mattinen : > >> Queue directories and clusters don't >> mix well, but a read-heavy maildir/dbox environment shouldn't suffer the >> same problem. > > Why don't queue directories and clusters mix well? Is this a performance > issue only, or something worse

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Aug 11, 2009, at 10:32 AM, Steffen Kaiser wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, 10 Aug 2009, Timo Sirainen wrote: 4. Implement a multi-master filesystem backend for index files. The idea would be that all servers accessing the same mailbox must be talking to each

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Eric Jon Rostetter
Quoting Seth Mattinen : Queue directories and clusters don't mix well, but a read-heavy maildir/dbox environment shouldn't suffer the same problem. Why don't queue directories and clusters mix well? Is this a performance issue only, or something worse? ~Seth -- Eric Rostetter The Departme

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Steffen Kaiser
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, 10 Aug 2009, Timo Sirainen wrote: 4. Implement a multi-master filesystem backend for index files. The idea would be that all servers accessing the same mailbox must be talking to each others via network and every time something is changed, p

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread ja nein
I was more thinking about thousands of servers, not clients. Each server should contribute to the amount of storage you have. Buying huge storages is more expensive. Also it would be nice if you could just keep plugging in more servers to get more storage space, disk I/O and CPU and the system w

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Seth Mattinen
Timo Sirainen wrote: > On Aug 11, 2009, at 2:16 AM, Seth Mattinen wrote: > >>> Show me a clustered filesystem that can guarantee that each file is >>> stored in at least 3 different data centers and can scale linearly by >>> simply adding more servers (let's say at least up to thousands). >> >> Ea

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Seth Mattinen
Robert Schetterer wrote: > Timo Sirainen schrieb: >> On Aug 11, 2009, at 12:41 AM, Seth Mattinen wrote: >> Nothing forces you to switch from maildir, if you're happy with it :) But if you want to support millions of users, it's simpler to distribute the storage and disk I/O evenly ac

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-11 Thread Robert Schetterer
Timo Sirainen schrieb: > On Aug 11, 2009, at 12:41 AM, Seth Mattinen wrote: > >>> Nothing forces you to switch from maildir, if you're happy with it :) >>> But if you want to support millions of users, it's simpler to distribute >>> the storage and disk I/O evenly across hundreds of servers using

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Aug 11, 2009, at 2:16 AM, Seth Mattinen wrote: Show me a clustered filesystem that can guarantee that each file is stored in at least 3 different data centers and can scale linearly by simply adding more servers (let's say at least up to thousands). Easy, AFS. It is known to support tens of

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Seth Mattinen
Timo Sirainen wrote: > On Aug 11, 2009, at 12:41 AM, Seth Mattinen wrote: > >>> Nothing forces you to switch from maildir, if you're happy with it :) >>> But if you want to support millions of users, it's simpler to distribute >>> the storage and disk I/O evenly across hundreds of servers using a

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Aug 11, 2009, at 12:41 AM, Seth Mattinen wrote: Nothing forces you to switch from maildir, if you're happy with it :) But if you want to support millions of users, it's simpler to distribute the storage and disk I/O evenly across hundreds of servers using a database that was designed for i

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Seth Mattinen
Curtis Maloney wrote: > Seth Mattinen wrote: >> Ick, some people (myself included) hate the idea of storing mail in a >> database versus simple and almost impossible to screw up plain text >> files of maildir. Cyrus already does the whole mail-in-database thing. > > Why do you think 'maildir' isn'

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Curtis Maloney
Seth Mattinen wrote: Ick, some people (myself included) hate the idea of storing mail in a database versus simple and almost impossible to screw up plain text files of maildir. Cyrus already does the whole mail-in-database thing. Why do you think 'maildir' isn't a database? Or to you does 'da

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Seth Mattinen
Timo Sirainen wrote: > On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 14:33 -0700, Seth Mattinen wrote: >> Timo Sirainen wrote: >>> This is something I figured out a few months ago, mainly because this >>> one guy at work (hi, Stu) kept telling me my multi-master replication >>> plan sucked and we should use some existing

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Timo Sirainen
On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 14:33 -0700, Seth Mattinen wrote: > Timo Sirainen wrote: > > This is something I figured out a few months ago, mainly because this > > one guy at work (hi, Stu) kept telling me my multi-master replication > > plan sucked and we should use some existing scalable database. (I gu

Re: [Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Seth Mattinen
Timo Sirainen wrote: This is something I figured out a few months ago, mainly because this one guy at work (hi, Stu) kept telling me my multi-master replication plan sucked and we should use some existing scalable database. (I guess it didn't go exactly like that, but that's the result anyway.)

[Dovecot] Scalability plans: Abstract out filesystem and make it someone else's problem

2009-08-10 Thread Timo Sirainen
This is something I figured out a few months ago, mainly because this one guy at work (hi, Stu) kept telling me my multi-master replication plan sucked and we should use some existing scalable database. (I guess it didn't go exactly like that, but that's the result anyway.) So, my current plan is