[CentOS] Load balancing email?

[Jay Leafey]

Benjamin Smith wrote:
> Currently, we have two mail relays for inbound messages, and a third for POP. 
> 
> The inbound messages go thru all the CPU-intensive anti-spam stuff, and then 
> they relay it to the POP server for pickup. 
> 
> Currently, one of these is the "primary", and the other is "secondary", and 
> I'd like them to be considered more or less as equals, since the "primary" 
> system is getting beaten pretty hard. 
<snip>
> so that they both get about the same amount of inbound messages. Has anybody 
> here actually done this? How well does this work as far as failover if either 
> system fails? 
> 
> -Ben 

I'm using a similar setup at work, two identical Linux boxes (with a 
pair of equal-priority MX records pointing to them) running 
Postfix/Amavisd/SpanAssassin/anti-virus feeding to another box acting as 
the POP/IMAP server.  The DNS round-robin stuff does a fair job of load 
balancing but it's not perfect, I'm still looking into alternatives for 
that.

In order to make the two servers redundant I'm using the LinuxHA 
heartbeat stuff to make one of the servers take over the IP address used 
by the other server for mail.  So far it's survived several 
single-server failures without a hiccup.

Just my $.02
-- 
Jay Leafey - Memphis, TN
jay.leafey at mindless.com
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