Multi Server flow chart

[mhammett]

I saw a flow chart once upon a time that showed how mail flows through the Zimbra system, but I can't find it.

I see that I made 5 VMs on an old virtual server for Zimbra, but I can't figure out how I was dividing up into 5 systems. I'm hoping that chart refreshes my memory.

Looking at the multiserver installation guide now, I see 4: Master LDAP, replica LDAP, MTA, and Mailserver. I'm not sure if I had another MTA, mailserver, or some other component sat on that other VM.

[raj]

if you going for redundency then you need 2MX (MTA) making it 5
Many people setup a seprate proxy but you only have 1mailbox so that wont help

by the way if all vm's on same host then physical redundeny is not there but its a good scalable setup where you could move a vm out to better host for scalability.

Raj

[mhammett]

Right, understood. All are on the same physical host for now. I'm certainly not limited in the number of VMs I can make, so maybe I will make 7. 2x MTAs, 2x mailservers, and a proxy. Then I can later put the second LDAP, MTA, and mailbox on another physical host at another site another time.

I put every service in its own VM for scalability. Much easier to migrate a VM to a new physical host than to rebuild something on a new host and hope you set it up correctly, avoiding data loss. I use OpenVZ, so there's minimal overhead from having all these VMs.

Maybe my original 5th VM was DNS, since I am building a new DNS architecture as well. A lot of the things I run are just on a hosting control panel now, so I'm breaking my own stuff out into different parts.