This is offset by the risk of running non-redundant servers. We have a large NFS store running on FreeBSD (trying to get a Netapp). vpopmail provides a very effective directory structure which dynamically accounts for large amounts of domains and users. Also, with a dedicated NFS server, you can stuff it full of RAM and have it cache most directory accesses. This takes disk access load off the mail client. It also provides a central place to back everything up to. Back up one server, and one server only. If a node dies, you replace it. If the NFS server dies, replace it and restore a backup of data. We keep 2 IDE drives in the NFS server for rotating backups, so in a pinch, if the raid fails, we could mount a backup disk and be back online in minutes.
Of course, with a clustered netapp solution, it makes things so much easier. They're kinda expensive, though. >From the FreeBSD 4.4 release notes: A simple hash-based lookup optimization for large directories called dirhash has been added. Conditional on the UFS_DIRHASH kernel option, it improves the speed of operations on very large directories at the expense of some memory. So if you have tons of memory and still aren't happy with performance, you can tweak the server to be even faster :) --Doug > -----Original Message----- > From: Lu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 12:05 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: 5.0 next to 4.10.x > > > I appreciate everyone's feedback on this. > > A couple of last things I need to ask: > > Perhaps the downside of using NFS or other shared volume is at a certain > point, the number of directories and files it has to handle will be too > great whereas if I go with separate servers, this is not a problem and > likely an increase in performance. > > I guess it all depends on the type of hardware one has but is this > something you take seriously ? > > What about scalability ? > > Thanks. > > >
