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Can SmarterMail storage be installed on a NAS?
Question asked by Speednet - 3/9/2019 at 7:46 AM
Answered
I have been unable to find any definitive info about this topic.  I would like to do a SmarterMail 15.x install, and instead of storing the setup as C:\SmarterMail, I would like to install the entire structure on a NAS.

Is this possible?  If so, could I install as a UNC path name, or does it need to use a mapped drive letter?  Obviously, a UNC path name is preferable.

I did ask this as a 15.x install, but it would also be useful to confirm whether or not it is also possible in version 17.x.  (Or whatever the version after 16.x is called.)

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Speednet Replied
Anyone?
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echoDreamz Replied
You'd have to configure SM for that, though I've never done it with UNC paths, we've always used "local drives" through iSCSI over infiniband.

As well, I believe that you may have to adjust what user SM is running as to make sure it can access the network share.
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Kyle Kerst Replied
Employee Post Marked As Answer
This can be done, but is not recommended due to network latency frequently seen on NAS devices. If this has been accounted for it should work pretty well though. SmarterMail can suffer during mail spooling if IOPS climb too high (disk latency becomes extreme) which can lead to the server eventually failing to spool mail as these back up in the queue. So, if this NAS is backed by a fiber connection or similar you can likely get away with this. I'd recommend deploying in a dev environment first so you can complete load testing on it before rolling it out to production.
Kyle Kerst
System/Network Administrator
SmarterTools Inc.
(877) 357-6278
www.smartertools.com
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Speednet Replied
Thanks for the replies.  The NAS would be a high-end Synology rack system (SAS drives) with two bonded 10Gb ports (for 20Gb total bandwidth).  The mail server is for one company with maybe a dozen domains (brands) so the bandwidth requirements are not super-high.  (Like they would be for a hosting provider, for example.)
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echoDreamz Replied
We've used 40Gb infiniband/VPI links and had no issues with latency.

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