[Ocfs2-users] OCFSv2 in a mail cluster environment

[Andy Kipp]

We run OCFS2 for a GroupWise 7 Post Office for about 700 users. The post office stores mailboxes (header information) as small database files (~30mb each). And individual messages as many small files (~2kb each). In total, the file system has about 1 million files in it.

We have run into some trouble when trying to preform heavy I/O operations on the file system such as a backup or file indexing (updatedb). Our solution was to do incremental hot copy of the message store to reduce load during a backup. Also, you could use snapshot technology if you have such a thing on your SAN. We have a NetApp FAS3020 and use "SnapDrive" to mount a snapshot as a volume and preform a tape backup.

- Andy
-- 

Andrew Kipp
Network Administrator
Velcro USA Inc.
Email: akipp at velcro.com
Work: (603) 222-4844
 
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>>> On 3/13/2007 at 7:42 AM, in message
<17910.36381.40065.998298 at localhost.localdomain>, Sergio Lopez <slopez at efor.es>
wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> First, thanks to all the people who helped to license this software under
> the GPL. This is a very important piece of work for the Free Software in the
> Enterprise Market.
> 
> Just a few newbie questions. We've been thinking about implmenting a mail
> cluster with a Fiber SAN (IBM DS-4000) and OCFSv2 as the storage
> backend. The information on this volume will essentially be Postfix
> Maildirs, about 20.000 accounts. I've heard some complains about the memory
> usage and stability problems under some environments. At this time, do you 
> think that OCFSv2 is suitable for this purpose? Should we wait a little and 
> stick with NFS for a time?
> 
> On the other hand, I'd like to use SLES10 and the OCFSv2 version that ships
> with it for our machines. Are there some recommendations about a preferred 
> distro and OCFSv2 version to use (apart from the "ORACLE SUPPORT AND 
> CERTIFICATION" section found in the website, which seems to be only for 
> database use)?
> 
> Thanks in advance! :-)