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View Full Version : Email server Clustering/Redundancy

jfer
22nd April 2006, 20:43
Hi Everyone,

Our mail server died for several hours due to a hardware failure, we dont have any extra parts laying around so we have to order it sameday.

We did not loose any emails because we have a MX backup collecting incoming email. The problem is: user can't send and receive emails until we resolve the issue.

I would say it would be one of the Best Howto to include in Howtoforge.
MX backup is good for short term downtime but not for long term ones.

A howto on linux HA (heartbeat), FreeBSD (VRRP), OpenBSD (CARP) would be
greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Tortanick
22nd April 2006, 23:44
I second this motion, I've got two computers and luckaly two houses in vastly diffrent area's, a guide on how to use them both as mail servers efectively would be briliant!
noahlau
23rd April 2006, 19:24
just an idea, i didnt try it before.

maybe Heartbeat for failover, DRBD for mirror user mailbox and user account between 2 server.

actually, Falko wrote a great guide, u may want to have a look:
http://www.howtoforge.com/high_availability_nfs_drbd_heartbeat
Tortanick
23rd April 2006, 21:04
I'll have to look up NFS server, the idea of putting all the E-mail data and profiles on one and getting them to mirror eachother sounds delightfull!
jfer
23rd April 2006, 23:04
come on everyone, start working on it. :D
falko
24th April 2006, 10:59
come on everyone, start working on it. :D
What about noahlau's proposal? :)
noahlau
24th April 2006, 17:17
What about noahlau's proposal? :)

gonna try it in weekend. :)
noahlau
26th April 2006, 16:08
Should i mirror the mail queue directory ?

any advices ?
falko
27th April 2006, 00:19
What exactly are you trying to do?
noahlau
3rd May 2006, 18:21
What exactly are you trying to do?

i mean when the server1 go down, the emails contained in server1 's mail queue will be lost if we only mirror the user mail box.
falko
3rd May 2006, 23:34
But the mails will be delivered when server1 comes up again...
And you shouldn't have many mails in the queue on a properly configured server...
noahlau
4th May 2006, 04:35
But the mails will be delivered when server1 comes up again...
And you shouldn't have many mails in the queue on a properly configured server...


i see, many thanks !
jfer
4th May 2006, 17:38
I think I'm almost done, I did this with QMAIL.
I just need to unmirror the queue directory.
dklima
22nd August 2006, 20:59
Cyrus Murder ?
http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/imapd/install-murder.html
josesan311
30th April 2008, 06:10
Hello,

Im about to try this out, but i have a question regarding email clustering.

How do i handle the disk space thing? Im probably need to buy 3 1TB disks so i need one more server to do this.
Do i create two NFS servers with 3TB each and share the space betweem them?

I cannot understand how to cluster the disk space being used by the email data.

Thank you in advance.
dklima
30th April 2008, 15:31
For storage, you can use NFS, but the best way you can get what you want is using GFS or even NBD (Network Block Device).