Re: Can we build a proper email cluster? (was: Re: Why is debian.org email so unreliable?)
On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:35, "Lucas Albers" <albersl@cs.montana.edu> wrote:
> > Machines are cheap enough, wouldn't it be reasonable to throw in
> > redundancy? Unless having 2 machines adds unneccessary complexity to the
> > setup.
>
> Better to have one good machine than three cheap machines. The more machines
> you have the greater the chance that one of them will break.
Just to make it clear, I am advocating two *good* machines.
> > Sometimes I don't even realize one of the external relays is broken for a
> > day...(even though the monitoring tools should tell you.)
>
> Which is another good reason for not having such redundant servers.
Now, that is a bit too far. The correct answer is to monitor the damn
things. And any sort of monitoring that would not catch a problem is not
good enough. A good enough reacive (as opposed to predictive) monitoring
for email is rather easy to do (just send one directly to the MX, and freak
if it does not send it back to you in a given time window).
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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