Dear Sarah
thank you for your thorough answer !
maybe we can wait and see if Cyrus 2.3.7 and mupdate
can do the job along with FreeBSD+PEN+VRRPD...i´ll test it.
best regards,
Sarah Walters wrote:
Marcelo et al,
-----Original Message-----
From: info-cyrus-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:info-cyrus-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Marcelo Maraboli
thanks for the input, I know wishing 100% is only available
with a gooooogle size amount of money ;), but I am looking
for a CYRUS IMAP server solution similar to a load balancing
web server farm...i.e:
- a Load balancing server (PEN in Freebsd if you like) that
will direct an IMAP session to ANY of a group of IMAP servers,
all of which have access to a central storage of user MBOXs.
So if any of the IMAP (backend) server dies, the load balancer with
automatically not forward any new requests to that server
and users won´t notice any downtime..
this is diferent from Andrew´s solution number 1, since ANY of
the backend IMAP server should accept connections for ANY user.
examples:
http://siag.nu/pen/vrrpd-linux.shtml
http://redundancy.org/fbsd_lb.html
can IMAP be set up this way ??
regards,
This need is why I suggested beefy servers rather than the Murder, which I don't consider sufficiently highly available due to actually being a number of discrete servers at the back end. Great for load balancing, useless for instant failover in case of server loss.
In short, as I understand it Cyrus cannot be set up this way. Only a single machine can have write privileges to the mailboxes database at a time. The only way I can see to do this is to use NFSv4 which is supposed to get the locking correct. Then, assuming the database is closed between changes (can a developer please confirm whether it is kept open by master or not?) you should be able to run multiple IMAP servers over the same filesystem stored on a NAS (network-attached storage, as opposed to SAN). That is the only way I can think of to do what you are after. You would need two NAS boxes, ideally in separate buildings, with live mirroring (10 Gb fibre or copper connection between) and a bunch of cheap servers in each building all load-balanced. You should be able to lose a complete data centre and just keep running at 50% capacity as long as your network is properly routed (with redundancy in case of an idiot with a spade cutting through your fibre of course).
It's expensive, but it should work if the database is not held open. If it is, then you need to look at a different email product. Cyrus is a great server, but if you need five 9s reliability then you have to pay for it. You could always look at an appliance - dedicated hardware is often more reliable and at least if it goes down you can scream at the vendor and cover your butt that way.
Regards,
Sarah Walters
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Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/
Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki
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--
Marcelo Maraboli Rosselott
Jefe Area de Redes y Comunicaciones (Network & UNIX Systems Engineer)
Ingeniero Civil Electronico, CISSP (Electronic Engineer, CISSP)
Direccion Central de Servicios Computacionales (DCSC)
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria phone: +56 32 2654071
Chile. http://www.usm.cl http://elqui.dcsc.utfsm.cl
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Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki
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