server-user  

RE: Reducing disc contention

Pete Williams
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:55:21 -0700

That's just the sort of comment I was looking for - thanks a lot. I'll go back 
to see if there is some solution to my Microsoft SQL Server issue.

> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:43:17 +0200
> From: amich...@amichais.net
> To: server-user@james.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Reducing disc contention
> 
> 
> Hi Pete,
> 
> 
> Back when I was using Windows with the simple file-based configuration 
> for James, I experienced a similar phenomenon - in particular, 
> restarting the system would cause up to 10 full minutes of disk 
> thrashing by James. While raw disk access, when done right, can be more 
> efficient than a database (less overhead), it's apparently not that easy 
> to get it done right. In all Windows versions I've used (dunno about 
> recent offerings), for example, accessing a file within a directory with 
> over 100k-300k files in it would be unusably slow. Although problems may 
> also rise due to how James handles its files, serialization, caching, 
> etc. Anyway, moving to a database mail store made the system usable 
> again. Moving it (with the db) to Linux made it mostly unnoticeable. 
> That's just a non-scientific personal anecdote, but I'd say moving to a 
> database is sure worth a try - I used MySQL on both platforms with no 
> special maintenance.
> 
> 
> Hope this helps :-)
> 
> 
> Amichai
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> Pete Williams wrote:
> 
> > Hello
> >
> > By quite hard on the disc, I mean that James uses it quite intensively. 
> > When James is running, other applications running on the server have their 
> > operations adversely affected. By running Filemon (part of Microsoft sys 
> > internals) I can see that the biggest user (in terms of 
> > open,read,write,close operations) of the disc is james.
> >
> > Hence my looking for ways to make changes.
> >
> >
> >   
> >> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:22:59 +0200
> >> Subject: Re: Reducing disc contention
> >> From: nor...@apache.org
> >> To: server-user@james.apache.org
> >>
> >> Hi Pete,
> >>
> >> James will not store sent emails anywhere by itself. Anyway what you
> >> mean with "quite hard on the disc" ? Does it use heavy I/O ? I don't
> >> have any expierence in using JAMES on a Windows Server so I can't say
> >> anything about tuning fs etc.
> >>
> >> So maybe a DB would help...
> >>
> >> Bye,
> >> Norman
> >>
> >>
> >> 2009/10/21 Pete Williams <pxc...@hotmail.com>:
> >>     
> >>> Hi
> >>>
> >>> I'm a new James user,
> >>>
> >>> James is working reliably but it seems to be quite hard on the disc, to 
> >>> the extent that it is affecting other applications.
> >>>
> >>> I've read the mailing list and wondered what is the best way to go.
> >>>
> >>> A few things that might help.
> >>>
> >>> - I don't need the server to store sent emails. If this will help, how 
> >>> can I use config.xml to stop James storing these?
> >>>
> >>> - Is adding a database into the equation  likely to help? I've had some 
> >>> difficulty trying to get the Microsoft JDBC driver working (it requires 
> >>> SSL on SQL server which I don't have). If this will reduce disc 
> >>> contention I can persevere with this, maybe trying another driver.
> >>>
> >>> I have the following config.xml settings.
> >>>
> >>> Max connections 2000
> >>> Timeout 200
> >>> Max threads 100
> >>> Min threads 20
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> There are something like 140 POP3 clients checking email every 90 
> >>> seconds, and 140 SMTP clients, each of which sends and email about once 
> >>> every 4 minutes.
> >>>
> >>> Any help appreciated.
> >>>
> >>> _________________________________________________________________
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> >>>       
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> >>     
> >                                       
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