NFS automounting. Stable for mail servers?

[Francisco Reyes]

Brian Candler writes:

> That's true, but you'd want to be a bit careful with an automounter; you
> don't want your MTA to create /mail-server1/u/s/username/Maildir on the
> front-end's local disk if /mail-server1 was not mounted!

The mail machines are only doing IMAP/POP clients.
 
> What would you expect the front-end to do if a user whose mail is on
> /mail-server1 connects, but /mail-server1 is down?

That connection, for that one user, should freeze or fail.
What I am looking for is to not affect users from /mail-server2 on the same 
mail client. 

> You could add a check to
> the application code to check for this case.

Using Courier.

> myself. I've built clusters around Netapps and they are too reliable :-)

Don't think one of those will fit our current budget ;-)
 
> As for automount, I don't use that either, but I wouldn't expect much
> problem if you were just auto-mounting /mail-server1, /mail-server2,
> /mail-server3 and leaving them mounted.

Another sys admin for another company told me he had issues with the amd 
built in.. but that was likely in 4.X. In addition there is a port too.
I wonder which one is more reliable.