dovecot - Jun 2016 - Storage upgrade maildir suggestions?

Hi,

we start to run out of diskspace soon as our users start to keep mails
for longer time periods. That's fine, but space consuming.

The maildirs are about 1 TB in total, and not long ago we enabled zlib
which is very nice.

Now I have some thoughts about the next steps:

a) Migrating the whole system to a new server with more storage?

b) Install a virtual server for the mailsystem and an extra storage
system may be NFS?

c) Stay with the current server and move all mails to a bigger NFS storage.

The last option c) would be the most easy one for me as I currently have
NFS space.

Any thoughts? Hints regarding the NFS storage? Pros Cons?

I have seen the dovecot wiki on NFS already and for now we will stay
with one single dovecot server.


    Thanks and regards . G?tz



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On 2016-06-21 07:17, G?tz Reinicke - IT Koordinator
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> we start to run out of diskspace soon as our users start to keep mails
> for longer time periods. That's fine, but space consuming.
> 
> The maildirs are about 1 TB in total, and not long ago we enabled zlib
> which is very nice.
> 
> Now I have some thoughts about the next steps:
> 
> a) Migrating the whole system to a new server with more storage?
> 
> b) Install a virtual server for the mailsystem and an extra storage
> system may be NFS?
> 
> c) Stay with the current server and move all mails to a bigger NFS 
> storage.
> 
> The last option c) would be the most easy one for me as I currently 
> have
> NFS space.
> 
> Any thoughts? Hints regarding the NFS storage? Pros Cons?
> 
> I have seen the dovecot wiki on NFS already and for now we will stay
> with one single dovecot server.
FC or iSCSI as storage.

and always have a lvm layer between your HW and the FS. that way you can 
easily attach
more disk to the stripe set and grow your storage that way.

    darix

-- 
            openSUSE - SUSE Linux is my linux
                openSUSE is good for you
                    www.opensuse.org

Gotz,

at that level of usage I would just add more drives. Working with
NFS/clustering is not worth it when you are at that level. In the following
months I'll send a e-mail to the list here talking about how I'm using
Ceph
FS successfully with Dovecot, but it's a lot of trouble. At the 1TB/2TB/4TB
level, just go out and buy a bigger disk.

As a side note, with too may emails it is always a problem to have too many
small files. I would recommend taking a look at mdbox.

Best,
Daniel Colchete

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 4:17 AM, G?tz Reinicke - IT Koordinator <
goetz.reinicke at filmakademie.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> we start to run out of diskspace soon as our users start to keep mails
> for longer time periods. That's fine, but space consuming.
>
> The maildirs are about 1 TB in total, and not long ago we enabled zlib
> which is very nice.
>
> Now I have some thoughts about the next steps:
>
> a) Migrating the whole system to a new server with more storage?
>
> b) Install a virtual server for the mailsystem and an extra storage
> system may be NFS?
>
> c) Stay with the current server and move all mails to a bigger NFS storage.
>
> The last option c) would be the most easy one for me as I currently have
> NFS space.
>
> Any thoughts? Hints regarding the NFS storage? Pros Cons?
>
> I have seen the dovecot wiki on NFS already and for now we will stay
> with one single dovecot server.
>
>
>     Thanks and regards . G?tz
>
>
>
>

Am 21.06.16 um 16:09 schrieb Marcus Rueckert:
> On 2016-06-21 07:17, G?tz Reinicke - IT Koordinator wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> we start to run out of diskspace soon as our users start to keep mails
>> for longer time periods. That's fine, but space consuming.
>>
>> The maildirs are about 1 TB in total, and not long ago we enabled zlib
>> which is very nice.
>>
>> Now I have some thoughts about the next steps:
>>
>> a) Migrating the whole system to a new server with more storage?
>>
>> b) Install a virtual server for the mailsystem and an extra storage
>> system may be NFS?
>>
>> c) Stay with the current server and move all mails to a bigger NFS
>> storage.
>>
>> The last option c) would be the most easy one for me as I currently
have
>> NFS space.
>>
>> Any thoughts? Hints regarding the NFS storage? Pros Cons?
>>
>> I have seen the dovecot wiki on NFS already and for now we will stay
>> with one single dovecot server.
>
> FC or iSCSI as storage.
>
> and always have a lvm layer between your HW and the FS. that way you
> can easily attach
> more disk to the stripe set and grow your storage that way.
>
>    darix
>
Hi Darix,

thanks for that feedback. Currently we are moving away in lot of areas
from iscsi as it is to mutch maintenance for us. But may be we go with a
small one for the mailsystem ...

    Regards . G?tz

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Hi Daniel,

thanks for your feedback. Adding more disks is adding a new shelf as all
slots are in use and this is a sun/intel server with all slots already
in use.

Ceph is our goal for this year for some filestorages but for mail I'll
need space now xD ... O.K. I'll check some storage with a bigger disk;
may be some small "iscsi-box".

Regards . G?tz

Am 21.06.16 um 21:53 schrieb Daniel van Ham Colchete:
> Gotz,
>
> at that level of usage I would just add more drives. Working with
> NFS/clustering is not worth it when you are at that level. In the following
> months I'll send a e-mail to the list here talking about how I'm
using Ceph
> FS successfully with Dovecot, but it's a lot of trouble. At the
1TB/2TB/4TB
> level, just go out and buy a bigger disk.
>
> As a side note, with too may emails it is always a problem to have too many
> small files. I would recommend taking a look at mdbox.
>
> Best,
> Daniel Colchete
>
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 4:17 AM, G?tz Reinicke - IT Koordinator <
> goetz.reinicke at filmakademie.de> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> we start to run out of diskspace soon as our users start to keep mails
>> for longer time periods. That's fine, but space consuming.
>>
>> The maildirs are about 1 TB in total, and not long ago we enabled zlib
>> which is very nice.
>>
>> Now I have some thoughts about the next steps:
>>
>> a) Migrating the whole system to a new server with more storage?
>>
>> b) Install a virtual server for the mailsystem and an extra storage
>> system may be NFS?
>>
>> c) Stay with the current server and move all mails to a bigger NFS
storage.
>>
>> The last option c) would be the most easy one for me as I currently
have
>> NFS space.
>>
>> Any thoughts? Hints regarding the NFS storage? Pros Cons?
>>
>> I have seen the dovecot wiki on NFS already and for now we will stay
>> with one single dovecot server.
>>
>>
>>     Thanks and regards . G?tz
>>
>>
>>
>>
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