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Volume Mounts
Question asked by Rod Strumbel - 5/1/2025 at 7:28 AM
Unanswered
Volume Mounts
Can someone from SmarterMail elaborate on this new feature and it's intended purpose?

We for years have been looking for a way to retain more email archive without keeping it on the live server drives but still having it indexed and accessible.  Is that what this is for ?

15 Replies

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2
Kyle Kerst Replied
Employee Post
You are correct, any area in SmarterMail that allows for a path designation can have an associated Volume Mount. You can use the Volume Mounts to mount anything you would normally mount in Windows or Linux including shares, new drives/partitions, iSCSI mounts, etc. I recently used this page to load a new iSCSI mount shared from a NAS, create and format a partition on it, and then mount it as pathing for Secondary Storage which we also recently added to domains. 
Kyle Kerst Acting IT Manager SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
0
Rod Strumbel Replied
But wouldn't that put ALL archives on the specified volume?
I was kind of looking at keeping 3 months locally and say 9 months on an external drive.

It's RARE a client needs emails restored from long ago (but it happens), but having to restore info from the most recent few months is commonplace.
2
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Thats exactly what the Secondary Storage does :)
It works for Email and File Storage atm, recently accessed mail and files will be moved to "active" (current) storage until they fall behind the specified time, and then will be moved to secondary.

Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
0
Rod Strumbel Replied
Ok, I'll have to look into all that.   The Volume Mounts documentation, is kinda lacking in "application". :)
3
Derek Curtis Replied
Employee Post
It's a new feature, and a new way of doing things, so the initial documentation was an explanation of the different settings. Application has been added, it just isn't published yet. In addition, it's difficult to offer a comprehensive list of everything it can be used for. If you've mounted drives, etc. before on a server, then put them into use, this is essentially the same thing, it's just automated through SmarterMail. 
Derek Curtis COO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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David Jamell Replied
What happens if the mounted volume fails?  How Fault Tolerant is this feature?
1
Kyle Kerst Replied
Employee Post
If a volume mount fails to mount we note it as having failed on the Volume Mounts page. This is the case for newly added and existing mounts. If one of your mounts were to be taken offline later - I expect SmarterMail will react the same way it does if a hard drive goes missing in that domains or other data on those volumes will fail to load and generate errors. This is just hooking into the existing mounting functionality built into your server's operating system, so should behave no differently. 
Kyle Kerst Acting IT Manager SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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David Jamell Replied
So, if a Volume Mount fails and then a day later it is brought back online will the Secondary Storage be brought "up to date" to be in a consistent state?
1
Andrew Barker Replied
Employee Post
David,

In that scenario, any domain that uses that mount for secondary storage should be brought back up to date when secondary storage is next processed as part of the nightly tasks.
Andrew Barker Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Sérgio Rocha Replied
Hi,
This is great news, I wanting so long to have Sysadmin new features! really really great.
I will take a look on this. I dont know the detail, but thanks ST to do some sys admin feature.

Regards,
SR
0
Sérgio Rocha Replied

Hello again,

This looks like the feature request I made—brilliant! I do have a few questions, though:

  • Is the email file move handled by ST, or do I need to perform it manually?

  • Could you consider developing native S3 support, to avoid the need for third-party software?

Thanks again!


SR



1
Andrew Barker Replied
Employee Post
Sérgio,

The move will happen automatically. An initial move is processed as soon as secondary storage is configured for the domain, and the domain is checked nightly to see if any more data needs to be moved.
Andrew Barker Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Sérgio Rocha Replied
Thank you very much for listening to the community — I’m very pleased with ST’s work. We still look forward to more features to support system administration, but this functionality is a remarkable step forward.
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Tan Replied
This is really a cool new feature. 👏 

Let's said i have a user that has 40GB worth of email and they are using IMAP. If the secondary storage goes offline, will they still be able to use IMAP on the latest email with just the missing "old" email right?
0
Derek Curtis Replied
Employee Post
That's correct, Tan. Anything stored on the primary path would still be accessible. 
Derek Curtis COO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

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