So I've been working on a simple way to scale / install the DBmail-Postfix system we put together. The idea being that it takes just to many steps to configure a complete new system, thus too long and prone to mistakes in situations where we might really need a new box in a matter of hours not days.
I've explored a bunch of options including imaging and current free/open virtualization solutions.
I selected VMware's free virtualization server for the solution. The idea is to create a complete working install of dbmail/postfix as a virtual server that can be simply deployed to new machines as our hardware requirements grow. So now rather than taking the time to build a completely new box, about 4 hours, I can build a new box by simply installing vmware and copying an my virtual server over, 15 mins. Works GREAT!
There are definite sacrifices on performance when using a virtual server, but for us it is worth the ease to deployment and scalability options.
I strongly considered XEN and still might go back to it, but its configuration was a bit much kinda defeating the purpose. I can have a VMmware server up and running off of one rpm a couple minutes. Not open, but still free.
To setup a new server, I just install mysql/vmware on host os, copy the virtual dbmail appliance into vmware, startup and run a quick iptables config script. done :)
Anyway I thought people might be interested in this. I would like to start a project on source forge or other that is linked to vmware's community virtual appliance site. The project would hopefully follow a release schedule with updates to the various servers contained in the virtual dbmail appliance. Anyone interested?
-- Kevin Baker Mission Vi Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 858.454.5532
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