[Dovecot] benchmark dovecot

2008-10-30 Thread Mathieu Kretchner
Hello,

We would like to do a feed back to this active mailing list. We are
working on a migration project from cyrus to dovecot. And we have just
completed the benchmark sequence.

As I say, this benchmark is here only to show that our old imap server
is out to date. I would not be the source of controversy at all, so I
try to explain my approach.

Because the only thing I found was this old oriented benchmark :
http://www.isode.com/whitepapers/mbox-benchmark.html

We've tried to do our tests, here you could find our results :

http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Mathieu.Kretchner/dotclear/index.php/2008/10/29/3-dovecot-versus-cyrus


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Re: [Dovecot] benchmark dovecot

2008-10-30 Thread Mark Zealey
Thanks; these look interesting. We have a similar nas setup but we have
2 frontend dovecot servers connecting to it and store the indexes over
nfs. We also have around 10 mail servers running deliver to try to keep
the indexes on the nfs store up-to-date. Have you done any tests with
the speed of multiple boxes each maintaining a local index of the
mailbox? I suspect in this case keeping indexes on nfs would be the best
bet but I don't have anything to substantiate that claim...

Also one thing to note with storing things on nfs is that there are a
large number of broken kernels out there (they issue about 10* more nfs
lookup requests than they should) - centos 5.1 had these issues iirc
(though the centosplus kernel and centos 5.2 did fix it). Always give it
a good test before you change the kernel on your server... I assume you
are using nfs3; has anyone tried using heavily loaded nfs4 and seeing if
any better performance can be achieved?

Another thing - I found that dovecot's pop3 implimentation is worse than
courier's over nfs (wait state on our boxes is significantly increased).
I still don't really understand why this is; I suspect it's probably due
to to the indexes being created/updated though I thought these were
meant to be discontinued after a while if it is just a simple
login/fetch all operation. I only mention this because if you are
offering pop then you should really do the same benchmarks for that.

Mark


Re: [Dovecot] benchmark dovecot

2008-10-30 Thread Mathieu Kretchner


Mark Zealey a écrit :
 Thanks; these look interesting. We have a similar nas setup but we have
 2 frontend dovecot servers connecting to it and store the indexes over
 nfs. 
Could you please tell me how have you done this configuration ?
2 frontend dovecot proxy with 10 dovecot mda ? We are looking for such a
configuration : 2 mda frontend with maybe an active and a passive one !


 We also have around 10 mail servers running deliver to try to keep
 the indexes on the nfs store up-to-date. Have you done any tests with
 the speed of multiple boxes each maintaining a local index of the
 mailbox? 
No sorry

 I suspect in this case keeping indexes on nfs would be the best
 bet but I don't have anything to substantiate that claim...
 
 Also one thing to note with storing things on nfs is that there are a
 large number of broken kernels out there (they issue about 10* more nfs
 lookup requests than they should) - centos 5.1 had these issues iirc
 (though the centosplus kernel and centos 5.2 did fix it).
Good thing to know, I'll try to change kernel before my migration !

 Always give it
 a good test before you change the kernel on your server... I assume you
 are using nfs3; has anyone tried using heavily loaded nfs4 and seeing if
 any better performance can be achieved?
 
 Another thing - I found that dovecot's pop3 implimentation is worse than
 courier's over nfs (wait state on our boxes is significantly increased).
 I still don't really understand why this is; I suspect it's probably due
 to to the indexes being created/updated though I thought these were
 meant to be discontinued after a while if it is just a simple
 login/fetch all operation. I only mention this because if you are
 offering pop then you should really do the same benchmarks for that.
 
 Mark
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Re: [Dovecot] benchmark dovecot

2008-10-30 Thread Mark Zealey
 Mark Zealey a écrit :
  Thanks; these look interesting. We have a similar nas setup 
 but we have
  2 frontend dovecot servers connecting to it and store the 
 indexes over
  nfs. 
 Could you please tell me how have you done this configuration ?
 2 frontend dovecot proxy with 10 dovecot mda ? We are looking 
 for such a
 configuration : 2 mda frontend with maybe an active and a 
 passive one !

I'm not quite sure what you mean? Physically, we have loadbalancers on the 
frontend so it's all active/active. We use exim with database lookups to find 
the home directory and then use deliver to drop it onto the filer and update 
the indexes.

Mark