Posts Tagged cluster

Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve just turned up our latest batch of upgrades on our Mail Server Cluster.

As of now, all of the InfoWest inbound and outbound email requests are served by four separate servers. These servers are similar to that which we’ve turned up in the past (DNS, Webmail, etc), in which they’re behind a Load Balancer. If one machine were to die, need maintenance, or become unresponsive, the Load Balancer will automatically pull it out of the queue and requests will be directed towards the other three. Once it is operational again, our Load Balancer will run a few tests for a few minutes and determine if it’s ready to be dropped back into the queue with the others. This also means splitting the load amongst four gives our clients faster email access and response times. You may notice a significant increase in speed when searching your IMAP folders in your email client or via our Webmail.

Sending email through our mail servers, as well as checking via POP3/IMAP means you’re automatically benefiting from the additional redundancy of our front-end load balanced cluster. We’ve deployed two of these servers at our Dixie Drive Data facility, and the other two in our racks at the Tonaquint Datacenter. Should one site go offline, your email will still flow and be reachable.

We’ve also recently deployed redundant load balancer cards in our diversely located Cisco 6500 switches. In the event one of the Load Balancer cards needs maintenance or becomes unresponsive, the other will take over immediately for all requests. Zero downtime is the goal.

Finally, with the above upgrades, we’ve enabled ManageSieve access for all of our email accounts. We imagine 99.5% of our users won’t be using this advanced feature, but for some it’ll be a neat way to create some filters and vacation messages on your own which are stored in your mailbox.

One way to access the filters is through our Roundcube Webmail program. In Roundcube you’ll now find a “Filters” tab. Within this tab, you will be able to create custom rules on our mail server to be processed when messages arrive. For instance, “Automatically Reply with a custom message to all messages sent to sales@mydomain.com”, or “Automatically move all messages from me@mydomain.com to the ‘MessagesFromMe’ folder”. I end up using my sieve filters to pre-filter messages sent from or to specific addresses into appropriate labels mailboxes, rather than let my email client handle it when I download the messages. This lets me know that wherever I check my email (home, work, phone or webmail), I’ll know the messages are already pre-filtered for quicker viewing by me.

If you have a “ManageSieve” plugin installed or available in your email client (Thunderbird plugin available here, but the webmail roundcube option is much simpler for the inexperienced), then simply point your ManageSieve access to ‘mail.infowest.com’ port 2000 to start setting up your own sieve filters.

Again, not everybody will use the ManageSieve option, but it’s there for those that want the advanced access and control that comes with creating your own custom filters.

We have plenty more great upgrades in the pipeline.

Stay tuned!