dovecot - Feb 2010 - any limitations running on a Mac?

I have postfix/dovecot/mysql installed using MacPorts on a quad-core 2.8GHz
MacPro running Snow Leopard (10.6.2). I moved the base mail directory to a pair
of 10k RPM Raptors that are mirrored (/Volumes/email/) and everything seems to
be working fine on an unused domain with very little traffic. I used imapsync to
pull everything from the current mailserver to this test server to play with.

Our current mailserver's IMAP performance *really* suffers when an IMAP
folder exceeds ~500MB or ~5k messages. I've become very tired of being the
mailbox police trying to get my 20 users to delete email or divide into smaller
mailboxes.

Are there folks on the list running postfix/dovecot on similar Mac hardware that
can share their experiences? Specifically, are there any limitations (file
descriptors, other?) that can impact performance I should be aware of? How does
dovecot on the Mac deal with >500GB maildirs?

Is there a recommended tool for loading and testing the server? Postal?

I have 20 IMAP users, with a total of ~37GB of mail currently.

Thanks for any help and insight.

-Terry

Terry Barnum
digital OutPost
San Diego, CA

http://www.dop.com
800/464-6434

On Feb 25, 2010, at 2:17 PM, Terry Barnum wrote:
> I have postfix/dovecot/mysql installed using MacPorts on a quad-core  
> 2.8GHz MacPro running Snow Leopard (10.6.2). I moved the base mail  
> directory to a pair of 10k RPM Raptors that are mirrored (/Volumes/ 
> email/) and everything seems to be working fine on an unused domain  
> with very little traffic. I used imapsync to pull everything from  
> the current mailserver to this test server to play with.
>
> Our current mailserver's IMAP performance *really* suffers when an  
> IMAP folder exceeds ~500MB or ~5k messages. I've become very tired  
> of being the mailbox police trying to get my 20 users to delete  
> email or divide into smaller mailboxes.
>
> Are there folks on the list running postfix/dovecot on similar Mac  
> hardware that can share their experiences? Specifically, are there  
> any limitations (file descriptors, other?) that can impact  
> performance I should be aware of? How does dovecot on the Mac deal  
> with >500GB maildirs?
>
> Is there a recommended tool for loading and testing the server?  
> Postal?
>
> I have 20 IMAP users, with a total of ~37GB of mail currently.
>
> Thanks for any help and insight.

Mac OS X 10.5.8
dovecot 1.2.9
Two mirrored 7200rpm sata drives.
dbox mailbox format

My Inbox is 3.5G on disk and I'm happy with my performance.
Mail.app took 8 sec. to search my Inbox for "postfix" but caches mail.
Telnet imap login took 55 sec. for 'search text "postfix"'.
New mail notifications in Mail.app are near instant. I know your old  
box fails here.


// Brad