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Zimbra Collaboration Server (ZCS) mount points (2021190)
Symptoms
Inability to create a hard link or quick renames via a move operation
During some standard operations, in the mailbox.log file you see an error similar to:
java.io.IOException: Unable to rename current redo log to /opt/zimbra/redolog/archive/redo-20120510.143433.054-seq2666.log
Poor disk performance when transferring data from one location to another
Permission errors
Incorrect mount options
Purpose
This article describes best practices for Zimbra Collaboration Server mount points.
Resolution
Mount points on Zimbra Collaboration Server (ZCS) should be set up via (in order of preference):
Bind mounts
Direct mount points
Here are some mount point guidelines to consider for your installation:
/opt
This is a good choice for most small to medium-sized nodes; preferably used for mounting RAID10 partitions.
/opt/zimbra
VMware does not recommended mounting /opt/zimbra full path, because this forces the sysadmin to use the LUN entirely for Zimbra only. Although this is a best practice, this choice lacks flexibility. If there is a temporary need to relocate data within the LUN, a ZCS upgrade processes could wipe everything, so only use this option with caution.
/opt/zimbra/store
This contains the blobs for the whole mailbox node.
/opt/zimbra/index
This contains the indexes created and updated on every mail delivery for the user.
/opt/zimbra/db
MySQL data is stored here. Because this is a critical system, it should be as performant as possible.
/opt/zimbra/redolog
This contains binary dumps of every transaction which occurs within mailboxd.
/opt/zimbra/backup
This is the only mount point which can be mounted via NFS. It can become very large, so a dedicated mountpoint is almost mandatory.
Generally speaking, it is better not to mount lower folder levels (for example, /opt/zimbra/redolog/archive).
For example, given the java.io.IOException reported in the Symptoms section, we can see that the issue is about renaming a file. The system relies on File.renameTo, which fails if the source and destination filename reside on different file systems.
Therefore, the mount output must not show:
/zimbra-iscsi/archive on /opt/zimbra/redolog/archive type none(rw,bind)
This is the desired/correct output:
/zimbra-iscsi/redolog on /opt/zimbra/redolog type none (rw,bind)
