[SOLVED] affect moving emails on number of copies stored

[amarshall]

I understand that when zimbra receives an email to one user and copied to 9 other users in the office, only one copy of the email is stored with appropriate links.

We have several accounts that are each used as a repository of emails to be shared on a project basis. If all 10 of the recipients move the received email into a shared folder on a different account, will there still be a single copy saved? If some copies of the email go into one subfolder of the shared project folder and other copies go into a different subfolder of that project folder, what effect will that have on the number of copies that zimbra maintains?

Also, how does this affect the number of copies of any attachments involved?

This may sound silly, but getting people to look for duplicates before moving emails happens about 10% of the time!

[mmorse]

Still a single copy if all those users are on the same mailstore. Your not moving the blobs around, simply the pointers to them.

In a standard ZCS/postfix install, if you send a message to a distribution list and all of those sers are on the same MBS server, postfix creates a single LMTP transaction to deliver them. You get one blob file with hardlinks for the different users, one copy in the redologs, ie message is written at most twice.

When you share a folder with a user on another mailstore the mountpoint is just accessed remotely, still one instance. Unless that user on mailstore2 drags/moves/copies an email from the share (on srv1) to one of their own folders (on srv2) - then you have a new blob.

Zimbra doesn't use any traditional mailstore like mbox or maildir. It uses a proprietary file-per-message in a hashed-like dir hierarchy linked to a MySQL database for metadata, so it is much more efficient than either. Each message/attachment/etc is represented by a file blob. Checkout Account mailbox database structure - Zimbra :: Wiki for more info. As discussed above, we also make use of hard links for identical messages that come in at the same time/ID to multiple recipients if the accounts are on the same mailstore (aka single instance storage). I seem to remember SMTP clients who hit default_destination_recipient_limit of 50 (ie: split up delivery of larger messages into new sessions when sending), or when they get 450 error 'try again later' upon hitting the receiving servers smtp_recipient_limit/smtp_recipient_overshoot_limit (1000), end up creating a new blob (have to check if it's also a new message ID).

[amarshall]

Thanks so for the info. We are a small business so none of the 'unless' situations apply to us. I'm relieved to know that I can stop worrying about something I really can't control.
Anne