From: Nikos George (nikosjimmy.harvard.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 01 2007 - 16:27:07 CDT

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Hi to all, this is my first post here so please be gentle :)

My setup :
A) Single postfix server for incoming/outgoing mail (works fine since 2005)
kind of underpowered by today's standards (has only *one* disk)
B) multiple unix devices (100+), where users can use mutt/pine and access
their nfs mounted mail
C) 4 imap servers (uwashington) that sit in front of a perdition server so
that I can distribute the imap load.

(everything is solaris 8,9)

Everything works fine, but I'm starting to see some excessive iowait which I
was expecting since I have only one disk on my postfix server.

The quick fix is to have /var/mail on a netapp that I have (raid5). Then all
my servers (postfix, imap, unix clients) will have /var/mail nfs mounted
from the netapp. Is anyone seeing any problems with this approach?

The second more long run solution is to upgrade my postfix server to a more
current machine (say a V220) connected to a fiber SAN (that I have)

What I'm really thinking though is the following: If instead of nfs-ing
/var/mail to my imap servers I can relay using postfix (smtp:[imap1]
smtp:[imap2],...), then I remove the nfs bottleneck from my imap servers
which my majority of users use nowdays (I still use mutt :))
Is this something people do in general or am I way off here???
I looked around but couldn't find anything relevant (maybe my search words
are wrong). I compiled and installed postfix in one of my imap servers and
changed the transport file on my mail postfix server but got an error about
duplicate entries. It is hard to experiment on a live server :(
If indeed this solution is common, then can someone point me to the right
direction??

Thanks in advance!

/Nikos

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