[Dovecot] NoSQL Storage Backend

[Marc Perkel]

The way I do MySQL backups is that I do a slave on another server. When 
I need to backup I stop the slave - back it up - then start it again.

On 2/8/2011 12:56 PM, Robert Brockway wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2011, Marten Lehmann wrote:
>
>> The problem with traditional filesystems is, that they are very 
>> limited. You cannot easily extend it, even with RAID 10 all messages 
>> may be lost due to a RAID controller failure and just-in-time backups 
>> of a heavy loaded system with consistently changing messages folders 
>> are virtually impossible.
>
> Hi Marten.  There are many options that allow you to snapshop an 
> active filesystem and guarantee a consistent backup.  Eg LVM on Linux 
> or many other OSes. WAFL on a NetApp, etc.
>
> In my experience a lot of high end mail systems store mail on the 
> filesystem in Maildir format.
>
>> Modern object stores like Scality, CouchDB or MongoDB can be very 
>> handy, as they easily allow to keep an arbitrary amount of copies of 
>> each message on
>
> This is certainly an interesting idea.
>
>> different servers, you can simply add a storage node and new storage 
>> is immediately available and mailboxes aren't bound to a certain 
>> server any longer, but messages are evenly distributed across all 
>> storage nodes, thus distributing load as well.
>
> Being able to easily rebalance load would be useful.  I've known of 
> several well known companies with a lot of mail users where mail was 
> stored on filesystems across many systems and significant imbalances 
> developed over time.  There was no easy way to rebalance them without 
> causing an outage for at least some users.
>
>> Isn't this option of big interest for every bigger mailbox provider? 
>> How hard would it be to develop? Would it be possible to get this 
>> developed on a paid basis by the dovecot core team?
>
> In my experience OSS developers are quite open to being paid to add 
> features :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rob
>