Zimbra

RyanR · #1 (**permalink**) 06-24-2011, 11:10 AM

Little background. I've been running Zimbra for two years now with good results. I'm running on Ubuntu 8 LTS 64-bit.

I recently upgraded from 6.0.10 to 7.1.1 (Release 7.1.1_GA_3196.UBUNTU8_64 UBUNTU8_64 FOSS edition specifically).

I've noticed that my average delay in the Message Delivery section of the Daily Mail Report has increased to 3 times what I used to see. It still isn't high, just about 3 seconds most days, although yesterday is was 8.5 seconds. The worst it ever got before was 2 seconds. I've also noticed that mail going to my local server has max delays of sometimes 15+ seconds. This always used to be sub-second.

It isn't much of an issue as the server sends/receives barely any mail. I'm more just looking for an explanation. Most people seem to be getting performance gains when going to 7.x. I'd also like to know if I messed something up with the upgrade, although, they're very straight forward, so I'm not sure how that'd be the case. I did run the separate DB update.

The box is also barely being utilized (low CPU, memory and disk utilization, like 10%).

Thanks,
Ryan

LMStone · #2 (**permalink**) 06-26-2011, 08:42 AM

How fast are your hard disks?

Amavis processing is very I/O intensive; we typically use a RAM drive for Amavis's temp directory.

Hope that helps,
Mark

RyanR · #3 (**permalink**) 06-27-2011, 11:59 AM

Thanks for the reply.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LMStone

How fast are your hard disks?

The drives are 7,200 RPM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LMStone

Amavis processing is very I/O intensive; we typically use a RAM drive for Amavis's temp directory.

I'm not currently using a RAM drive, although I didn't in the past either.

Thanks,
Ryan

LMStone · #4 (**permalink**) 06-27-2011, 12:10 PM

Wouldn't hurt to try using a RAM drive and see what happens.

It's very safe; Amavis accepts mail on one port from Postfix, processes it through SpamAssassin and ClamAV and then hands the mail back to Postfix on a different port.

The trick is, Amavis doesn't tell Postfix it actually received the email OK until Postfix on that second port tells Amavis it has accepted back the clean email. So, you can lose power to the server, and while you might have other disk-related issues from an abrupt power loss, losing email via a RAM disk won't be one of them.

A good primer is here:
Ralf Hildebrandt: Homepage

Use the UID:GID for the zimbra local user. Find the $TEMPBASE value in /opt/zimbra/conf/amavisd.conf. Stop and start amavisd with zmamavisdctl.

Hope that helps,
Mark