Re: NFS and MIX ?

Andrew Daviel wrote:
>
> I have read much of the imapd docs, and some of the email threads on 
> this list, so yes, I've seen "NFS is bad".
>
> However .. we bought a fancy expandable storage system from Sun which 
> has a native ZFS filesystem exported as NFS, CIFS, HTTP, iSCSI.
> We'd like to use it for email from a Linux client (i.e. the mailserver 
> uses it for user mail directories), as our in-chassis array is full.
> We tried Linux XFS over iSCSI on RHEL4, which crashed and burned quickly.
> Then we used Linux ext3 over iSCSI, which seemed OK for a couple of 
> weeks but then bombed. It's possible the iSCSI support in RHEL5 is 
> better; we have other machines running with that, but not doing mail 
> with that kind of load pattern.
We use EXT3 over iSCSI on RHEL4 back to a NetApp storage system. That 
configuration has been bulletproof for over 2 years now. It is quite 
possible the fault lies in Sun's implementation of iSCSI. I have been 
told by other colleagues I work with that iSCSI in RHEL5 has better 
performance. That may also work better with Sun's implementation of iSCSI.
> If we used NFS, then it might (?) be more reliable, and the device 
> could use snapshotting for backups, which is built into its management 
> interface.
>
> What are the chances of this working ? There would be no sharing of
> files with any other NFS clients, just the one disk mount.
I had this conversation with Mark some years back, let me summarize, 
there's no chance it will work reliably.

David