Cyrus IMAP and MySQL mailboxes (Building load-balancing cluster)

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 08:01 -0600, Gary Mills wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 11:54:55AM +0300, Igor Zhbanov wrote:
> > I need to build mail system without using uncommon hardware such as
> > shared storage connected via SCSI or fiber channel. I need
> > "software-only" solution. Can you recommend me what kind of clustered
> > filesystem and/or network block devices to use? GFS, DRBD-0.8,
> > something else? What is better, reliable and more tested?
> In that case, you should consider iSCSI for shared storage.  It has
> the advantage that the host connections are ordinary ethernet.

And you can setup an ordinary LINUX box as an iSCSI target.

http://linux-iscsi.sourceforge.net/
http://www.cuddletech.com/articles/iscsi/index.html
http://www.cs.uml.edu/~mbrown/iSCSI/

Of course I really don't understand an attitude of I-really-need-HA but
an unwillingness to buy real SAN hardware.  Real SANs are rigorously
tested and optimized to do exactly what they do more so than what you
will be able to accomplish with an ordinary host box.

"What is better, reliable and more tested?" 

A real SAN.  On the software side GFS is widely used, maybe not for
Cyrus, but it is stable.