Multi-server but small scale

Daniel Miller
2018-11-20T01:51:58Z

I have a small but critical server that supports our group.? As a single
server - it's obviously a single-point-of-failure for lots of things.?
As I just experienced...again.? It was a lot more fun building systems
from components when I was younger...

Previously 3rd-party hosted solutions didn't look attractive for several
reasons...but I'm seeing prices now for cloud virtual machines that are
stupid cheap.? Even if they wind up being limited speed & availability -
it would seem they'd be a lot better than nothing!

So I'm considering having at least one backup server for various
services - obviously that includes mail.? So now I have to wonder about
the backend.? And while I think I'm reasonably current with networked
file systems (not distributed or cluster) I haven't played with
replication for a quite a while.

For this particular usage (I'm envisioning two servers total) - is there
a need/reason to use any form of networked/distributed/cluster file
storage?? Or would this be accomplished via "pure" Dovecot - dsync
replication would keep things updated between the servers and director
would handle the connections?? So with identically configured SMTP
servers, passing to the local LMTP agents, the file system would be
"purely local" with no NFS or other interconnection?

--
Daniel