[CentOS] RAID on Email Server

Fri Oct 10 17:10:32 UTC 2008
Matt <lm7812 at gmail.com>

I have an email server running Exim, Dovecot, Spamassassin, Clam, etc.
on Centos 4.x 32bit.  On occasion I have disk I/O problems.  Its
handling several domains and alot of email.  Its currently on a single
SATA drive.  I am thinking of moving too 3 drives with RAID 1 for
redundancy.  RAID 1 will help me on reads but do nothing on writes as
I understand.  I am thinking the majority of my I/O is read though
not?  I imagine quotta checks and all that being done and everytime a
user checks there email every message in the inbox must be read.

I guess I am asking if RAID 1 will help my I/O problem much?

[root at server ~]# w
 12:04:02 up  2:01,  1 user,  load average: 7.02, 7.47, 11.84
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
root     pts/0    208.92.169.4.ppp 11:25    0.00s  0.02s  0.00s w
[root at server ~]# vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id wa
 0  2      0 1558496 456916 1087224    0    0   198   749  795   537 18  4 27 50

The above is when its running pretty good.

Matt