[CentOS] Large scale Postfix/Cyrus email system for 100,000+ users

Thu Oct 25 03:25:35 UTC 2007
Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com>

On Thu, 2007-10-25 at 10:30 +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-10-25 at 09:58 +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
> >> Les Mikesell wrote:
> >>> Christopher Chan wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>>>> I thought the usual ways of doing this were to either use a 
> >>>>>>> high-performance NFS server (netapp filer...) and maildir format so 
> >>>>>>> you can run imap from any client facing server, or to keep the 
> >>>>>>> delivery host information in an LDAP attribute that you find when 
> >>>>>>> validating the address.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> This is the 'I have the money' way of doing this ;-)
> >>>>> There are at least 2 free ldap servers.  Or if you are stuck with 
> >>>>> mysql you can probably add your own field for delivery host.
> >>>> The service provider I used to work for tried openldap in 98. They got 
> >>>> burned big time. Maybe it is up to the task today. What kind of 
> >>>> hardware, though, would you use for one that the OP indicates will get 
> >>>> a lot of writes? Everything I have read says LDAP is not for high 
> >>>> write problems.
> >>> 1998 was a long time ago.  Red Hat (fedora) directory server has claimed 
> >>>  good performce for several years now.
> >>> http://directory.fedoraproject.org/
> >> Yeah, well, I guess the Fedora Directory server is unlikely to drop its 
> >> entire datastore and will actually keep running but hey, are you going 
> >> to migrate back to ldap if you have a system that is distributed across 
> >> different mysql boxes running on cheap boxes and does its job?
> > ----
> > what I can't figure out is why you are asking questions when you have
> > already decided answers...in part based on experiences from 10 years
> > ago.
> 
> Well, I do not work for that service provider anymore...I was just 
> putting forth the question they would probably ask...
> 
> In any case, the money for hardware stands I believe unless Fedora 
> Directory/OpenLDAP has really good performance in a heavy read/write 
> environment versus mysql.
----
Heck, I see lots of circles where they wouldn't trust mysql for an
enterprise application so it seems clear that you are not talking about
stability or performance but rather familiarity and the amount of trust
you have in what you know.

I would expect openldap to blow the doors off a mysql db but what do I
know? I deal in circles < 100 user accounts (small businesses).

Craig