Backend-storage on NFS?

[Phil Brutsche]

Sten Fredriksson wrote:
> Would it still be "big no no" if back ends store their mail on NFS mounted 
> storage but not sharing and use some sort of heartbeat (keepalived / 
> heatbeat etc) to take over the ip and mount up the storage. Or is NFS 
> even if not sharing mail storage is not supported and/or recommended at all?

In my understanding NFS has been big a "big no no" period - precisely 
because of the reason addressed in the RH patch.  RH may have the patch, 
but that doesn't mean the patch has been accepted into the mainline 
kernel or has been pulled into SuSE's kernel, or that NFS behavior is 
client- and server- specific.

It just might work with sufficiently-patched RHEL systems... but that 
doesn't mean anything for Solaris, *BSD, or any other OS that supports NFS.

Hence the advice that "NFS is a big no no" in the FAQ.

It really doesn't matter if a single machine is using the volume or
multiple machines are using the volume - the file locking
mmap()/read()/write() combinations still don't work correctly. You still
end up with a corrupted mail store requiring the use of 'reconstruct'.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at optimumdata.com
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