Cyrus Imap server Questions

[John Duthie]

OS will be Redhat EL 5.3 (not exactly my first choice)

looking at just using ext3fs, would this be a bad thing ?


Where does one find this mysterious "offline" setting in outlook ?



2009/8/17 Nic Bernstein <nic at onlight.com>:
> If you need to do archival, I recommend that instead of using Sendmail, you
> look into using Postfix.  It has an option "always_bcc" which can be used to
> send a copy of each message, internal as well as incoming and outgoing, to a
> particular mailbox.  You can then either have that mailbox put into a
> separate partition.  Or, if you need to be able to support legal discovery,
> such as for Sarbane Oxley compliance, you should look into using a database
> backed archival solution, such as with the catchmail.py script or dbmail.
>
> As for the Outlook performance issues, do your users have Outlook configured
> for "offline" mode support?  If so, that may be the cause of the problems.
>  Unless these users are using portable computers there is no real need for
> this mode to be employed.
>
> As far as you hardware choices, they seem reasonable.  I have systems with
> hundreds of users working off of SATA arrays quite happily, though for a
> modern system I would use SAS.
> You didn't mention which operating system you are using.  If you haven't yet
> chosen, I would recommend looking into one which supports ZFS, which would
> mean Solaris, OpenSolaris, NexentaOS or FreeBSD, for example.  We have a
> server with 1500 users on similar hardware to your spec, running on FreeBSD
> with the mailstore in a ZFS volume with RAIDz2 and are quite happy with the
> performance.  With ZFS RAIDz options you do not really need the RAID
> controller, and all the problems that go along with them.
> If you are more comfortable with Linux, which does not have ZFS support,
> then I recommend NexentaOS, which is the OpenSolaris kernel and core with
> the Ubuntu userland bolted on.  You get the best of both worlds that way.
>
> Cheers,
>   -nic
>
> On 08/16/2009 06:02 PM, John Duthie wrote:
>>
>> I am currently proving a Cyrus Imap / E-Groupware server will work at
>> my company.
>> (replacing FT gate, Competing against Exchange).
>>
>> We are almost at the stage where we will be getting hardware.
>>
>> I need advice on some points.
>>
>> Hardware.
>> archival.
>> ms outlook IMAP support Issues.
>>
>> The Site:
>> ~50 Users , all accessing email all day (heavy usage can be assumed).
>> IT Company/ Call center.
>>
>> Hardware:
>>
>> Single server
>> Dual Xeon 2 core , 8 GB ram
>> looking at a Intel SAS 256 MB RAID card
>> with 2 Arrays
>> 300 GB SAS - OS / and email
>> and 1 TB SATA -  Archival
>>
>> would using SATA for the /var/spool/imap folder limit performance much
>> vs using SAS drives ?
>>
>> would raid5 using 3 or 4 1 TB drives be better than the sas raid 1 ?
>>
>>
>> My test server.  is a Dualcore E5200  @ 2.50GHz wwith 2GB ram and a
>> 160 SATA drive.
>>
>> I get delays accessing my email in Outlook (1.5 Gb of email) , I
>> suspect this delay is Outlook
>> Outlook is unresponsive for 2-3 minutes at startup (when syncing)
>>
>> I also get a Message now and then  about my connection being closed
>>
>> All of the users currently use Outlook.
>> Outlook Auto Archive does not seem to work with IMAP
>>
>> I am 99% sure this is outlook is the problem, are there workarounds
>> available ?
>> (fairly sure I can convert a lot of people to Thunderbird etc , But
>> the Managers like their Outlook!)
>>
>>
>> Is there a way to Archive Older Messages on the server ?
>> maybe ipurge not purging but moving emails ?
>>
>> ( we need to keep every email Archived for Legal reasons etc. )
>> (still don't know how to get Sendmail to archive all outgoing messages
>> yet either)
>>
>> also:
>> The RHEL5.3  cyrus rc script  runs a database backup on shutdown and a
>> restore on bootup - This is a bit dumb, when the backup progess
>> crashed due to a misconfigeration (test server) and the server was
>> Power reset.  it the restored a broken backup and I lost the mailbox
>> database ..  - Not your fault but something to watch out for.
>>
>>
>> If anyone out there has set-up a similar system and hit a Stumbling
>> block Please let me know !!
>>
>> also if anyone needs a pam config for imap to authenticate against a
>> egroupware mysql database I have it working.
>>
>> TIA
>>
>> John.
>> ----
>> Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/
>> Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki
>> List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html
>>
>
>
> --
> Nic Bernstein                             nic at onlight.com
> Onlight llc.                              www.onlight.com
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