GFS instead of clustering?

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6549dray
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:55 pm

GFS instead of clustering?

Post by 6549dray »

Would it be possible to make Zimbra utilise the Global File System (GFS) from RedHat in order to allow multiple backend servers simultanious access to the message store?
If used with a SAN, iSCSI and some form of layer-4 load balancing, you could eliminate the need to run clustering services to get redundancy. You then don't have to try and split mailboxes across muliple stores in order to try and get quasi load balancing. You can scale the system just by adding an additional backend server without having to try and shuffle mailboxes around stores.
Cheers,

Dray.
17629anand
Zimbra Alumni
Zimbra Alumni
Posts: 273
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:53 pm

GFS instead of clustering?

Post by 17629anand »

we chose multiple mailbox servers by design. Having a huge filesystem shared across all nodes in the cluster is not really necessary - why file lock when you can have (for this mailbox partitioning problem anyway) nodes in the cluster access their own partition. Failing node can have it's partition(s) taken over by another node through SAN/cluster. For high performance and increased robustness, even if you had data of a particular mailbox accessible from all nodes, it is better if only one node at any time was mutator of that mailbox. Also, atleast in the short term, and purely as side effects, the multiple-independent-mailbox-servers architecture is more portable and works with everyone personal favorite filesystem. :-)
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