If a site ever did get to the point where one machine couldn't handle the disk/network I/O, you could easily split up each domains user dirs across 1(default) to 63 nodes. 0-9,A-Z,a-z.
Ken Jones On Thu, 2001-11-08 at 21:11, Doug Clements wrote: > 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. > > > > > > > >
