Redundancy/Multi-Server ?

[ShakataGaNai]

I have a client (I am a consultant) that would like to move to Zimbra (from just plain exim). Part of this move involves setting up geographic redundancy for all services. Now, I'm trying to figure out what the options are involved with Zimbra, and the wiki makes this look extremely grim.

Now, it might be from too much time spent with Exchange, but my basic assumption is: 1) Setup 2 identical machines in diverse locations 2) Install mail software on both machines. 3) Configure mail servers to cluster/sync/chat/whatever.

So far on the Wiki, I have found ZERO documentation that even indicates it is possible to have 2 Zimbra servers in the same "group" if you will. So... if I had a _ton_ of users, I'd have to go buy a single IBM Mainframe to run them all?

On "Ajcody-Notes-ServerPlanning" it says:

One might ask, "Is there any other way to have redundant zimbra email servers?"

The short answer is No

Is there seriously no way to setup any sort of redundancy to Zimbra? If it is running on MySQL, can't I at least setup at least a read-only slave instance? Log shipping? Rsync? Anything?

[bdial]

the closest thing is [SOLVED] Zimbra on DRBD which probably wouldn't be adviseable over a wan

[ewilen]

I'd suggest searching the forums. This issue has been discussed many times.

Options, off the top of my head:

DBRD (which I agree, using over a WAN seems iffy, but one poster on the forum says it works fine for him)
Cold standby via rsync of Network Edition backup data
Virtualization with some sort of VM backup (unclear how appropriate for WAN backup)
LVM snapshot (ditto)

There are also at least two RFEs in bugzilla.zimbra.com that pertain to redundancy.