alexander benaguev wrote:
> dual-master mysql as backend. set of dbmail-imapd or -pop3d at both
> blades as frontend, which connected to localhost. 

That's not advisable. Dual master/slave is OK, in which each node is
it's own master and slaves the other. Simultaneous write access on both
heads will give you problems though. For instance smtp injection on one
head while the user is playing with his imap box on the other head will
cause replication failures which require manual intervention - basically
a manual transaction merge on both machines :-(. No fun.

Better to let the imap, pop3 and smtp frontends connect not to localhost
but to a specific ip number. You can use heartbeat to make this ip
number highly available, in which each of your mysql nodes can take over
from the other.

It's just the reads that are concentrated on one head in this setup.
The write load is replicated anyway. You might want to compensate for
the read load inbalance with something intelligenter than round-robin.
Or maybe something less intelligent, that is running some frontends
specifically on the node which is /not/ currently the mysql primary.

It's good to think about your goal here. High availability + data
integrity (maximal uptime) leads to other choices than load balancing
(maximal performance). Especially given relatively modest projected
numbers of users, uptime maximalisation might make more sense than
performance maximalisation.

:*CU#
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