Re: [exim] exim using intensive hdd access

W B Hacker wrote:
> But I would perosonlly not go with a mine os bigger' server... Too many
> eggs in too few baskets, as 'no fail' is too costly even on military bugets.

Since it appears I/O speed is the bottleneck with most applications and
I am certain with smtp, wouldn't it be feasible to put a not so
new/older IBM mainframe to good use serving as an MTA? Since about
everything that can fail is hot swappable on these machines you don't
have to mess with failover mechanisms such as heartbeat, drdb etc.

On above mentioned military budget that should work... just a thought.

> [1] Some can use a raw block device directly, DB2, and/or IMS IIRC. Or
> the Pick Operating System, where the DB *was* the OS, or Forth, where

I believe Oracle can, or could at some point. I don't think it is deemed
very useful anymore, since disks and filesystems have improved so much
using raw disk access adds little to no speed increase, but does add a
higher chance of lost data. Since you're dealing with disk access
outside the OS "framework". It's also very inflexible of course.

Greetings,
Jeroen