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Ubuntu Server 22.04: ZFS vs btrfs, each with compression for heavy use email server - which has a lower memory and CPU footprint?

bd flag
ylluminate

I'm deliberating a situation where I need to use Ubuntu 22.04 for a rather heavy use email server with "infinite" storage for users via Dovecot + maildir.

A lot of the users live in the era of exchanging very large attachments (PDFs, spreadsheets, docs, etc.) and are entirely stuck in this pattern with no chance of change. I'm left with a task of providing quota-less email for around 50 users that have mailboxes that are already around 10-30gb a piece.

After doing some digging it appears that Dovecot with the more desirable maildir has a big problem with high inode usage, but both ZFS and btrfs seem to mitigate this issue. I have reviewed mdbox and won't be using it.

The next and only remaining problem it seems to me is to decide whether or not to use ZFS or btrfs with transparent compression so as to make the compression situation simpler and seamless vs using some of the other compression options for Dovecot.

I'm leaning towards ZFS with either zstd or lz4.

Can anyone recommend which filesystem would behave better on a virtual machine on a deployment such as Linode with Ubuntu 22.04 in terms of a lower memory and CPU utilization footprint?

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in flag
matigo
If you plan on running the mail server on Linode, you may want to ask their support team which would be better. File system memory usage is different when operating inside a VM depending on the file system used by the host OS. If Linode is using ZFS, then ZFS on ZFS would be ideal. If they are using something else, then perhaps their support team would have an answer based on real-world usage patterns
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paladin avatar
kr flag
paladin
Personally I would prefer BTRFS over ZFS. One of the most distinguished differences between both filesystems are their support utilities. Some admins prefer the ZFS way, some admins prefer the BTRFS way. You may read this fine article about BTRFS, ZFS and mdadm+dm: [Battle testing ZFS, Btrfs and mdadm+dm-integrity](https://unixsheikh.com/articles/battle-testing-zfs-btrfs-and-mdadm-dm.html#introduction)
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bd flag
ylluminate
@paladin then perhaps I should go with ZFS since I've been using ZFS for production for well over a decade. Just concerned, myself, about the layering of Linode tech stack with this, which they feel I need to obtain more experiential comparisons from those who have used `btrfs` and done some comparing.
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paladin avatar
kr flag
paladin
Sure, there is nothing wrong with ZFS, besides its astronomic giant 128bit pointer. ;-) In the end it's way more important that an admin may be able to comfortable administrate his/her computer systems than to use a specific technology. Cause, time is money. If you can do the job faster with ZFS, cause you are familiar with it, it's the way to go. Keep it simple.
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