Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.3 Administration Guide

12.8.2.3 Using NFS-based File Systems for Defragmentation and Vacation Caching

NFS-based file systems are often used for defragmentation and vacation caching. One application is to share the defragmentation database between the multiple MTA systems by having them all share the same defragment cache. This is done by making a link from the msg-svr-base/config/defragment_cache on each system to the file on which you wish to have be the shared defragment database, which will be on the shared NFS disk.

In any case, NFS servers that support proper NFS file semantics (specifically those that honor lock requests, like Solaris NFS) can be used for vacation and defragmentation caches. If NFS is used, use a soft mount option. (A hard mount is the default.) Setting a relatively short timeout value controlled by the mount timeo option (see the mount_nfs(1M) man page) is also a good idea.

With an NFS hard mount and NFS going down, what one would see is the defragment channels on the various systems hanging. With a soft mount, the defragment channels wouldn't hang, but since they would be failing to open the defragment cache, they wouldn't be able to coordinate with defragment channels on other hosts. In the unlikely case that all of a message's fragments happened to first arrive at the same host, then that host's defragment channel would presumably be able to reassemble the message and send it onwards, properly reassembled. More likely, fragments would be on different hosts, would never get reassembled, and would get sent onwards as separate fragments once a relevant defragment channel's retention time expired.