Server Clustering

[Tux.Ice]

I am purchasing the Professional edition of Zimbra Network (Currently attempting a trial version setup) and am wondering about server clustering.

What exactly is Server Clustering? I understand it as linking up a couple servers so that mail distribution, accounts, domains, and workload are shared?

Can it be done on CentOS? (As it is RHEL based)

Can I cluster 2 servers, and later add a third, fourth, etc?

If I cluster servers, does this mean that mail/domains will be spread out accross the servers and that they will all work as one server ?

If I have two zimbra servers clustered, can I create an account on one, and the Zimbra software will decide where to actually put the account, or .. ?

Thanks,
Adam

[bdial]

theres clustering and then theres multiple mailbox servers.

clustering is how you first described where you use more than 1 server that act as one and distribute the workload. that way if one server goes down the others keep going and there is no change for the end user.

multiple mailbox servers would be when you create like zimbra1.domain.com and zimbra2.domain.com and mailboxes exist on one or the other (zimbra will randomly crdeate them on one or the other). this helps distribute the workload too but if one mailbox server goes down, all the users who's accoutn is on that server cannot access tehir mail, but users on other mailbox servers may be fine.

i believe the first option is only supported on RHEL (although others have gotten it to work i'm sure on other distributions)

teh second option works on any supported os.

[Tux.Ice]

I want the second option, how would I accomplish this? (Multiple mailbox servers)

[alexkelly]

Here is a link to Zimbra's Documentation:
http://files.zimbra.com/website/docs...%20Install.pdf

When you install Zimbra on the addtional mailbox, you answer "Yes" to installing all the mailbox server components (store,apache,spell,convertd) and once you point it to your master LDAP server that pretty much links it all together.

One important thing to additionally address is the how access will work with a multi-mail store environment. You basically have 2 options. 1: Make all of your mail servers publicly available as mail1.domain.com and mail2.domain.com (you could round-robin DNS mail.domain.com to both). If a person logs into mail1.domain.com and their mailbox is on mail2.domain.com, they will get redirected on login and will be able to get their mail.

The second options is to install zimbra-proxy. Then that is the only box that needs to be publicly accessible (as mail.domain.com), and it will proxy all requests to whatever mailbox the user lives on

[Tux.Ice]

Hmm

How do I setup round robin DNS?

Although, I think zimbra-proxy is a better idea. Is there any documentation for it?

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by Tux.Ice

Hmm

How do I setup round robin DNS?

Although, I think zimbra-proxy is a better idea. Is there any documentation for it?

"round robin" dns - Yahoo! Search Results

[alexkelly]

There are a few resources on Zimbra's site
The official docs are here: Working with Zimbra Proxy
This wiki post has some additional information:
Ajcody-Proxy-Notes - Zimbra :: Wiki