OT - Scalable email server solution needed

[Francisco Reyes]

Bill Moran writes:

> One advantage of Maildir over mbox and the Cyrus db (that, for some reason,
> I seldom see touted) is that you can make a safe backup of a Maildir without
> shutting down the SMTP, POP, or IMAP server.

For a small/simple setup I think Maildir is most definitely the way to go.
>From what I have seen so far working with Cyrus.. and from what I read... 
Cyrus scales far beyond what can be easily done with most Maildir format.

   
>With both mbox and the Cyrus
> mail system, you have to shut the mail system down to back up the mail
> boxes.

Although that is true, using a database such as in Cyrus can in theory be a 
big speed booster.

> it!  With both mbox and Cyrus, if you back up without stopping the server,
> and entire mailbox will be corrupted if the file holding it's mail is in
> use during backup and restoring will be difficult or impossible.

Maildir can also get corrupted. :-(
At least with Courier.. I have seen several folders go bad and Courier did 
not have enough functionality to easily find which folders had problems.

   
> Once you've chosen to use Maildir, you can choose which softwares you want
> to use to get mail into and out of your Maildirs.


Agree 100% that this is one great appeal of using Maildir. The ability to 
easily switch different alternatives. 

> I recommend PostgreSQL for the DB.

Until I started to work for an email provider I had never used Mysql, having 
used PostgreSQL for many, many years.. I must say that after using Mysql... 
I became to appreciate even more PostgreSQL. Coming from database 
administrator background I felt completely at home with PostgreSQL.


   

> For the SMTP system I recommend Postfix.

I find postfix to be easy to use, easy to learn.. and highly stable and 
scalable. Great mailing list too.

> For the POP/IMAP system, I recommend Dovecot.  I've been using it since it
> was beta and it just works.

Does it scale better than Courier?
In particular I find Courier's footprint is about 3 to 5 MB per connection. 
A bit on the high side when one has hundreds of connections per machine.

> over NFS, you can even run multiple computers all off the same backend.

I can attest to that. :-)

> PostgreSQL is a little more of a commitment, but it seems as if support
> for PostgreSQL is growing

It's a good choice. :-)