You may actually need to setup a Shared Disk Array, like fibre channel,
which would make the computer believe that it was its own personal HD, and
besides the performance is WAY better than a network share.
The only problem is concurrency, if an email comes in to the same account on
seperate servers at the same time It would be bad(possibly lost email),
UNLESS Imail performs some type of locking to avoid it.
Concurrency situation:
ServerA gets EmailA for [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ServerB gets EmailB for [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ServerA opens the mailbox for [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ServerB opens the mailbox for [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ServerA adds EmailA and closed mailbox for [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ServerA adds EmailB and closed mailbox for [EMAIL PROTECTED], but because he
opened the mailbox before EmailA was added it wont contain EmailA which is
now losted.
The following MAY work(but I haven't really worked with imail for the past
few years, So I am rusty and it may not even be possible with Imail):
You have 6 Domains of the same size(load balanced): DomainA, DomainB,
DomainC, DomainD, DomainE, DomainF
You have 3 Servers: ServerA, ServerB, ServerC
You have the following MX Records:
DomainA To ServerA Priority 10
DomainA To ServerB Priority 20
DomainA To ServerC Priority 30
DomainB To ServerA Priority 10
DomainB To ServerB Priority 20
DomainB To ServerC Priority 30
DomainC To ServerA Priority 30
DomainC To ServerB Priority 10
DomainC To ServerC Priority 20
DomainD To ServerA Priority 30
DomainD To ServerB Priority 10
DomainD To ServerC Priority 20
DomainE To ServerA Priority 20
DomainE To ServerB Priority 30
DomainE To ServerC Priority 10
DomainF To ServerA Priority 20
DomainF To ServerB Priority 30
DomainF To ServerC Priority 10
You setup ServerA to be primary(actually put the mail in the mailbox) for
DomainA and DomainB, and to be backup(store and forward mail to primary) for
DomainC, DomainD, DomainE, and DomainF
You setup ServerB to be primary for DomainC and DomainD, and to be backup
for DomainA, DomainB, DomainE, and DomainF
You setup ServerC to be primary for DomainE and DomainF, and to be backup
for DomainA, DomainB, DomainC, and DomainD
As long as only 1 server actually writes to the mailbox then concurrency is
elimanated, and with each server managing 1/3 the domains the load is
somewhat balanced, and with the servers being backups for the other domains
you get a very basic form of failover.
But with this setup if ServerA goes down DomainA and DomainB can't check
email until it is fixed, which isn't as redundant as an actual cluster, but
as far as I know you can't cluster Imail.
----- Original Message -----
From: "craig loosenth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 7:00 PM
Subject: [IMail Forum] Load Balanced Imail Servers with Network Mailboxes
> Hello Everyone,
> I'm having trouble having your evaluation edition of Imail Server coexist
> with it's users' mailboxes on a network share. Basically, I would
eventually
> like to have a few Windows 2003 servers load balanced with an instance of
> Imail Server on each load balanced server with the hosts' top directory on
a
> network drive that has it's own storage array happening.
>
> The problem I'm experiencing with the only instance of the evaluation
> edition of Imail is that the test users are experiencing a "invalid
folder"
> error when logging in via web messaging. I've reviewed and tested your
> unsupported post in your knowledgebase
> (http://support.ipswitch.com/kb/IM-20031106-DM02.htm) with no success.
>
> The weird thing is that if I click on the "Directory" tab of one of my
test
> users, the imail administrator can successfully show the mailbox
> information. This would tell me that Imail is successfully reading the
> mailbox on the network share.
>
> Some other things I've tried:
> 1. check the "ignore source address..." option in the web messaging
options
> with no luck
>
> 2. ruled out any permission problem by giving all involved load balanced
> servers Administrative access to the network share.
>
> 3. When I change the top directory to C:\, all is well.
>
> 4. If I use the Imail Client Utility to log into the mailbox, I can see
the
> mailbox just fine
>
> 5. trying to log into web messaging on the actual Imail server itself via
a
> browser produces the same "invalid folder" error also.
>
> Any Clues?
>
> Sorry about the lengthy message. I'm just out of resources and wanted to
> give you as much information as possible.
>
>
> Best Regards,
> Craig Loosenth
>
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