Scalix Forums

Hello,

We are currently in the process of installing Scalix as our primary mail server. It looks like we will be using the Enterprise edition because we would like to install two instances and create a cluster environment. We are also toying with the idea of keeping the files located on a file server. Is this too much? Will there be a hit on performance?

Thanks,

Eric

Hi Eric,

we are just in the process of updating some of our cluster docs, see http://www.scalix.com/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos/HA for a preview. I believe this should give you what you need.

On the storage side, we recommend against using NFS as a storage technology and in fact won't support it, if this is what you are referring to when talking about a file server. This is because NFS is performance optimized for large-bllock read-mostly access like on a home share server or so - where the needs of a transaction-based email system like Scalix are quite the opposite (small chunks of data, lots of writes, synchrnous access, locking).

For shared storage in a cluster, you are much better off using a SAN, FibreChannel or SCSI based disk arrays or external enclosures.

I would recommend that you get in touch with us and discuss the exact details of your setup with one of our product specialists who will be glad to help you.

Cheers,
Florian.

Hi Florian
(I'm back!!!)

This NFS subject is of particular interest to us, since this is exactly how we intended to setup up our scalix fail over arrangement, with the addition of a 2nd mail server in a *cluster*.

I've been working with NFS for many years, primarily under Irix and solaris, often times with demands exactly as you described : small chunks of data, lots of writes, synchronous access, locking, and 500+ clients at the time. Since the early 90's I even forgot that we used to have some problems with NFS. We moved temporarily to SAN solutions for some applications around 2001 primarily due to network bandwidth restrictions, but once infiniband technology came up we had no problems just applying NFS again in the "traditional" way.

My experience using redhat as an NFS server under production conditions goes back only 4 months, still in a relatively small scale, but I must say so far we have had no adverse surprises (except for no snapshot on update 4). So, would you be able to be a bit more specific on the assortment to problems you identified with RHE's NFS/scalix in your lab? I can't conceive yet how much of an issue it could be to add *just 2 more scalix clients* to the already existing pool of over 40 other NFS clients of the same server. After all, we may end up with only around 120 scalix users at the end. And if the problem is with redhat I can always use one of the old and reliable SGI/SUN servers.

Thanks
Jaime

The answer is in the release notes at http://downloads.scalix.com/.community/11.0.3/RELEASE_NOTES.html#supported

Cheers

Dave

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Jaime