Is 'noatime' safe?

[abnormaliti]

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?

[ScalixSupport]

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.

[abnormaliti]

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

[ScalixSupport]

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.

[pete]

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

[abnormaliti]

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.

[pete]

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

[Richard Hall]

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