choosing a file system

[Robert Banz]

On Dec 30, 2008, at 8:49 AM, LALOT Dominique wrote:

> Hello,
>
> We are using cyrus-imap for a long time. Our architecture is a SAN  
> from EMC and thanks to our "DELL support" we are obliged to install  
> redhat. The only option we have is to use ext3fs on rather old  
> kernels. We have 4000 accounts for staff and 20000 for students
> The system is rather fast and reliable. BUT..
>
> Once, there was a bad shutdown corrupting ext3fs and we spent 6  
> hours on an fsck.
> Next we discovered that our backup system was going slower and  
> slower. We just pointed out that it was due to fragmentation, and  
> guess what, there's no online defrag tool for ext3.
>
> I'm looking for other solutions:
> ext4fs (does somebody use such filesystem?), xfs
> zfs (but we should switch to solaris or freebsd and throw away our  
> costly SAN)
> use a NetApp Appliance (are you using such a device?, NFS seems to  
> be tricky with cyrus..)

Run Solaris, but keep a machine on the SAN with that old version of  
RedHat that you can use to replicate any problems you have? ;)

-rob