Edit File: PerformanceTuning.txt
Dovecot performance tuning ========================== Disk I/O optimization --------------------- Usually heavily loaded IMAP and POP3 servers don't use much CPU, but they use all the disk I/O they can get. So reducing disk I/O is probably the most useful optimization you can do. * See <MailLocation.LocalDisk.txt> for generic disk I/O optimizations. * See <MailLocation.Mbox.txt> for mbox-specific optimizations. * See <MailLocation.Maildir.txt> for Maildir-specific optimizations. * See <dbox> [MailboxFormat.dbox.txt] for Dovecot's own high-performance mailbox format. It usually gives much better performance than mbox/Maildir. * See <full text search indexes> [Plugins.FTS.txt] for optimizing IMAP SEARCH command. * See <POP3Server.txt> for POP3 optimizations, especially 'pop3_no_flag_updates=yes' * 'mailbox_list_index=yes' can help a lot by replying to IMAP STATUS (and similar) lookups from a single index without having to open each mailbox index separately. This is the default in v2.3+. * Also 'mailbox_list_index_very_dirty_syncs=yes' makes Dovecot assume that the list index is up-to-date. * 'mail_prefetch_count' setting may be helpful with some mailbox formats * 'mail_location = ...:VOLATILEDIR=/tmp/dovecot-volatile/%2.256Nu/%u' moves e.g. lock files to the volatile directory. This is helpful especially if mail_location otherwise points to a remote filesystem like NFS. (v2.2.32+) * If acl plugin is used, but only global ACLs are needed, set 'acl_globals_only=yes' (v2.2.31+) CPU usage optimization ---------------------- * See <LoginProcess.txt> for optimizing CPU usage caused by logins * See 'auth_cache_size' setting for caching passdb and userdb lookups * Services having client_limit>1 and process_limit>1, set process_min_avail to the number of CPU cores * To reduce forks by reusing existing processes for new requests increase 'service { service_count }' from 1 to higher (e.g. 100) for imap and pop3 services. It's better not to set it too high or unlimited (0), because different users use different amounts of memory, and it's wasteful when a lot of processes end up having a lot of "free" memory. Memory usage optimization ------------------------- There aren't many settings which affect Dovecot's memory usage. In general Dovecot uses as much memory as it needs, which is usually quite little. * 'auth_cache_size' controls maximum memory size for caching passdb/userdb lookups * <High-performance mode for login processes> [LoginProcess.txt]. * 'imap_hibernate_timeout' controls when to move IDLEing IMAP connections to wait for changes in a shared imap-hibernate process. This frees up the imap process. Note that these settings do not directly affect the memory usage: * 'service { vsz_limit } ': These are simply safe guards against potential memory leaks. If the process's virtual size reaches the limit, the process is killed by the kernel. * 'service { process_limit, client_limit } ': These are mostly to avoid DoS attacks using up all your memory. (This file was created from the wiki on 2018-02-28 04:42)