Re: Maildirs on AWS EFS

2019-03-22 Thread Bert JW Regeer via dovecot



> On Mar 20, 2019, at 23:33, Rodolfo Gonzalez via dovecot  
> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> AWS released one month ago a EFS system with administered life cycle, which 
> means that files not accessed in the last 30 days are moved to a lower cost 
> storage tier. Currently I hold my e-mail, delivered to Maildir++ folders by 
> postfix and retrieved with Dovecot, in standard EBS volumes. This has the 
> disadvantage that I need to allocate more than enough space to ensure that 
> the volume won't get filled too soon. And this costs. Changing to standard 
> EFS wasn't an option, since it's way more expensive than EBS. But, with the 
> new system, costs are lower.
> 
> I just have a doubt in the technical side: is it safe to have the email in 
> EFS? I've read experiences about storing in S3 and using a driver to mount 
> the bucket, and it seems that it's not a very good option. But EFS works like 
> NFS4. Does anyone have experience mounting an EFS to store maildirs?
> 
> Thanks in advanced,
> Rodolfo.

I would not recommend storing your files on EFS. EFS has an average 5ms access 
latency per file (it can spike higher, at $WORK we have seen as high as 
20msec). So if you have a 1000 files and need to call stat on them, you are at 
least 5000 msec later. On top of that you get a max of 7000 IOPS, so if a user 
moves a lot of messages around you start getting even more latency and issues.

Also, unless you keep terabytes worth of data, you are going to get really slow 
transfer/throughput because only once you hit certain terabyte thresholds do 
they increase the throughput.

You also have to massively parallelize your access for it to be worth it (and 
then you hit the 7000 IOPS limit). You'll be really disappointed with the 
performance of EFS.

Re: Maildirs on AWS EFS

2019-03-21 Thread Ralph Seichter via dovecot
* Rodolfo Gonzalez via dovecot:

> I just have a doubt in the technical side: is it safe to have the
> email in EFS?

"Safe" as in "storing and retreiving will work"? Probably.

I would not do it for privacy reasons, unless all data was encrypted on
a machine before storing it in any service operated by Amazon, Google,
Microsoft, etc.

-Ralph


Re: Maildirs on AWS EFS

2019-03-21 Thread @lbutlr via dovecot
On 20 Mar 2019, at 23:33, Rodolfo Gonzalez via dovecot  
wrote:
> AWS released one month ago a EFS system with administered life cycle, which 
> means that files not accessed in the last 30 days are moved to a lower cost 
> storage tier. Currently I hold my e-mail, delivered to Maildir++ folders by 
> postfix and retrieved with Dovecot, in standard EBS volumes. This has the 
> disadvantage that I need to allocate more than enough space to ensure that 
> the volume won't get filled too soon. And this costs. Changing to standard 
> EFS wasn't an option, since it's way more expensive than EBS. But, with the 
> new system, costs are lower.
> 
> I just have a doubt in the technical side: is it safe to have the email in 
> EFS? I've read experiences about storing in S3 and using a driver to mount 
> the bucket, and it seems that it's not a very good option. But EFS works like 
> NFS4. Does anyone have experience mounting an EFS to store maildirs?

Are you storing mail directly into AWS?

I think I would not do that. I would store my Archive mailbox online, but my 
live mail? That seems like a bit too much.


-- 
'I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.' Screams,
flames, people running for safety...






Maildirs on AWS EFS

2019-03-20 Thread Rodolfo Gonzalez via dovecot

Hello,

AWS released one month ago a EFS system with administered life cycle, 
which means that files not accessed in the last 30 days are moved to a 
lower cost storage tier. Currently I hold my e-mail, delivered to 
Maildir++ folders by postfix and retrieved with Dovecot, in standard EBS 
volumes. This has the disadvantage that I need to allocate more than 
enough space to ensure that the volume won't get filled too soon. And 
this costs. Changing to standard EFS wasn't an option, since it's way 
more expensive than EBS. But, with the new system, costs are lower.


I just have a doubt in the technical side: is it safe to have the email 
in EFS? I've read experiences about storing in S3 and using a driver to 
mount the bucket, and it seems that it's not a very good option. But EFS 
works like NFS4. Does anyone have experience mounting an EFS to store 
maildirs?


Thanks in advanced,
Rodolfo.