Single Mailbox To Multi Mailbox Migration

[dosmage]

I'm planning to migrate to a multiple mailbox Zimbra system. I've setup a Zimbra proxy in preparation. What I want to do, before I swing all the accounts to the proxy, is to check the difference of performance of the proxy vs the mailbox server.

I used a tool called imaptest to try and get a feel for the performance of the mailbox server vs the proxy server with limited success. Does anyone have any suggestions for benchmarking or load testing Zimbra?

[Klug]

Welcome to the forum.

I don't understand at all what you're doing.

In a multi-servers setup, the proxy should be a stand alone server, with no accounts on it. It's just a proxy, it's not a mailbox server.

[dosmage]

Hi, thank you for your reply. I will attempt to better explain my situation. I have nearly 20 servers in our existing single mailbox system, where there are around fourteen mail exchanges, two mail relays and two ldap servers. I am introducing a new mailbox server to decrease IO on the existing mailbox server. I've created an Nginx proxy via the zmproxy command on a new system. I want to deploy this proxy, however, I am concerned about its own performance. I want to check the performance of the proxy vs the performance of the mailbox servers and make sure the proxy isn't unacceptably slower than querying the mailbox servers directly. I guess I am wondering what other Zimbra admins are running to load test before deployment.

[Klug]

If you want to test, test on another setup (not your production one)...

After you've setup your proxy server, you have to tell each mailbox server (one by one) that they'll be accessed through a proxy.
Once a mailbox server is setup on reverse-proxied mode, it can not be accessed directly anymore (well you can but some things won't work such as documents, briefcase, password changes, etc).

From my tests, access through a proxy server is faster than direct access, because the proxy also caches data (especially for IMAP).

[dosmage]

I am not deploying the proxy on production hardware. All my connection tests show that Nginx is handling the proxy properly. I am at the phase now where I simply need to flip the proverbial switch. The only thing stopping me is the concern that our average traffic will be too great for the proxy to handle. I am searching for other users who might have suggestions how to preform load tests on the installation...

[Klug]

IIRC, there are people here who are proxying 60.000 users (6 or 8 mailboxes servers) over a pair of proxy without any issue...

[uxbod]

650,000 Mailbox Migration Qmail-LDAP 2 Zimbra NE - so proxy seems to handle load just fine

[dosmage]

I understand Zimbra's proxy software works perfectly fine. I know there are plenty of success stories, but my question is not being addressed. Let me completely restate what I am asking...

Hypothetically speaking, let's say I install my Zimbra proxy on our 4x86 DX4 server with 32 megs of ram and I thought that would cover the load requirements or all of our users.

Now, let's hypothetically say that just because I use a 4x86 DX4 system with 32 megs of ram that I am still not stupid. I whip out my trusty Zimbra test suite and load test the server's capabilities and find that it obviously won't work and rethink the architecture.

Now, clearly I am over exaggerating and my proxy is in fact on a Xeon, but still; my questions is still sound... what test suite or procedure does the Zimbra community like to use for load testing. The only test suite I've heard of is imaptest and I am having problems running it against Zimbra. I just want to make sure my 4x86 DX4 has the capacity to handle our 50,000 user base? I mean, it does have a math co-processor and is capable of some floating point arithmetic.

[dosmage]

My project is over and I thought I'd post what I found that gave me piece of mind.

I opened a ticket with the Zimbra Engineers and this is what they suggested to load test my proxies to ensure they would work with the amount of load I will be throwing at them.

MStone - Mstone performance testing tool - The modern version of the application that Netscape Messaging Server shipped with that could load test their product. It's pretty slick with its graphing support.

They also suggested to read ajcody's wiki entry on the subject, which by the way he has many amazing entries in the Zimbra wiki. Be sure to check out what he has to offer.

Ajcody-Testing-Debugging - Zimbra :: Wiki

I found this tool to be very useful and my original question to be answered. Slán.