Re: Let's get the ball rolling: Hardware requirements for Zimbra

[Steve Hillman <hillman@sfu.ca>]

----- "Will Froning" <wfroning@aus.edu> wrote:


> >      Generally speaking, though, our backup "goal" for mail is
> > disaster recovery.  Mailbox-level restore is something we've only
> been
> > able to recently consider, thanks to the Zimbra backup engine.
> 
> If you are considering dumping the backups to a SATA shelf on the
> NetApps, would you still be using iSCSI?  I saw some mentions on the
> Zimbra forums of people putting the backups on a NetApp via NFS.  The
> obvious benefit is that you don't even have to touch the Zimbra
> Servers for a backup (NDMP).

This is certainly possible, but a pretty expensive way to store backups. NetApp storage, on a per gb basis, is pretty pricey, considering it only has to stay there long enough to make it to tape.

Of course, if you have space to spare, it's "easy", but almost any storage can be used for that temporary backup space. Note though that the backups are not big zip/tar files, but actual copies of the user's space in Zimbra, which means if a user has 10,000 message, they'll have 10,000 files in their backup space. Make sure the filesystem you use for your backup space can deal with lots of small files

> 
> Also I've noticed a lot of NetApps being mentioned with iSCSI.  I
> guess you all are confident with iSCSI stability on Linux?  Not being
> a Linux guy (FreeBSD & Solaris lover), I'm inexperienced with iSCSI on
> Linux.  My current plan is to run 2 2-way Quad-Core blades with 32GB
> on RHEL-64 with cluster to a NetApp 3020c over FCP for the mailstore. 
> Hearing iSCSI mentioned makes me wonder if the reduced complexity of
> iSCSI shouldn't be considered for our deployment...
> 

We're just putting up our pilot now using iSCSI. To really complicate things, we decided to put one mailbox server on a NetApp and the other on a Sun Thumper to look for differences in performance, etc. Both boxes store /opt/zimbra on NetApp iSCSI mounts, but one has a store/index volume on a Sun, while the other keeps it on the NetApp.

We're not "Linux guys" either - we're a Solaris shop. We really had to grit our teeth to run Zimbra on Linux (I'm already missing all of my Solaris diagnostic tools :(  ). Still, I think Linux is ahead in iSCSI maturity


-- 
Steve Hillman                                IT Architect
hillman@sfu.ca                               IT Infrastructure
778-782-3960                                 Simon Fraser University
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