Scalix Forums

I am looking at tuning the performance of our Scalix server as much as possible and I am looking at setting the 'noatime' mount option of the dedicated /var/opt/scalix filesystem to improve I/O.

Is it safe to do this?

Any other suggestions to tune server performance?

I am not sure how safe this is. Theoretically, just _not_ setting last access for files should not harm operations, but I'd like you to try it out and tell us, first ;-)

As far as I know, we have no customers using noatime, if there are, please chime in!

Cheers,

Sascha.

It is a simple way to improve I/O so I would be surprised if no one else has thought of it.

I am not brave enough to 'try this out' on a production server.

Wouldn't you at 'Scalix Support' have easy access to a testlab that you could easily test this out?

Ben

I am afraid the answer is not that easy. While I can certainly lab it out, that does not validate it. We can't compare a testbed with a production environment. Nothing replaces real-life experience.

Cheers,

Sascha.

Anyone tried this yet, and not had to pick up the pieces? It would be really nice to know
if it works, and if it makes any difference to performance.....

P

I have been using the 'noatime' mount option since not long after "ScalixSupport" told me to get ....

Premium Users: 157
Standard Users: 380

No problems here and although i don't have any benchmark figures for you the "I/O wait" certainly settled down.

You think about it and it can only help, Scalix mailstore consists of 10's of thousands of tiny files being constantly hit by those pesky users.

Thanks for the info, abnormaliti - I was trying to think of a reason that this might cause problems - but then I remembered that this is OpenMail^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H er Scalix. I'll give it a try next time I have to do maintenance.

P

More discussion on this at:
viewtopic.php?t=8446
Feeling seems to be that it's safe, but tread carefully...