[Mailman-Users] Moving Lists

[carconni]

Brad,

Thank you!  It sounds like you've saved me a lot of heartache.  We  
have a Netapps that I was hoping to mount on the mail server  and was  
hoping I could avoid losing mail when the mail server ran into problems.

It's my understanding that the next version on Leopard will support  
mail clustering so the solution I was looking for was somewhat  
temporary.  I'll have to give this a lot more thought.


On May 24, 2007, at 9:46 PM, Brad Knowles wrote:

> On 5/24/07, Brad Knowles wrote:
>
>>  In short, I'd avoid this kind of solution like the plague, as far as
>>  postfix is concerned.  It may be okay to store certain types of user
>>  mailboxes out on NFS (or other shared filesystem type), but not the
>>  mail queues themselves.
>
> I should also say that most mailbox formats are not safe to store  
> on NFS, or any other kind of typical shared filesystem.  If you  
> spend the really big bucks and you get Veritas VxFS (plus all their  
> cluster-aware software) on big honking Sun Solaris servers, then  
> you may be able to store them on a shared filesystem (if you do it  
> right), but at that point I imagine you'd have enough money that  
> you wouldn't need to be coming to us with questions.
>
> There are some mailbox formats that are supposedly safe to store on  
> NFS, but even they have some issues and extra baggage that they  
> bring to the table, and which I imagine you are probably not aware of.
>
>
> Of course, most NFS implementations would still leave you with a  
> single-point-of-failure (SPOF), that being your NFS server.
>
> The only way to resolve that one is to go with a clustered NFS  
> server solution, such as sold by the folks at Network Appliance.   
> But those things are pretty damn bloody expensive, too.  Even so,  
> they're still a lot less expensive than solutions from the likes of  
> EMC or Hitachi Data Systems.
>
>
> Now, if you're talking about a shared filesystem type that is  
> anything but NFS, then you've got a whole 'nother Universe of  
> problems.
>
> Yes, I know about GFS from what used to be Sistina (since bought by  
> Red Hat), and I know one of their former senior architects -- he's  
> been my co-author on some of the invited talks I've done, and I've  
> been a technical reviewer of his book.  I also know about things  
> like Coda (or AFS), and a wide variety of other distributed  
> filesystem solutions.
>
> No, I'm not going to buy any sales pitch regarding how they're the  
> perfect solution for problems like this.  If you want a real  
> distributed cluster-aware filesystem for use with mail servers,  
> then you're going to have to pay some real money.  It's that simple.
>
> Veritas VxFS isn't necessarily the only solution here, but it is  
> one of the best known.  There are other alternatives in this space,  
> but they are equally expensive.  And no, Veritas VxFS on Linux is  
> not the same as Veritas VxFS on Solaris.
>
>
> Since you're using Mailman on Mac OS X, I should also point out FAQ  
> 1.21 and 1.29 at <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py? 
> req=show&file=faq01.021.htp> and <http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/ 
> faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.029.htp>.
>
> -- 
> Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>, Consultant & Author
> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
> Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4>
>
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>