[gentoo-server] ldap or mysql?

[paul kölle]

Hi all,

we are in the process setting up a new server (on gentoo) for the usual
web/mail/db stuff with cyrus/postfix/apache/mysql/subversion/... We'd
like to store all accounts in a backend that can be shared by more than
one host and run in an replicated server/slave setup so that one machine
can takeover the service if the other fails.

I've looked around and it seems there is a general choice of using ldap
or mysql for this. I know LDAP and it's shortcomings quite well (hairy
bdb setup, no transactions) otherwise it should be fine for the job. The
other option is mysql. You can have system accounts through pam and nss
modules, there is a backend for SASL, apache can fetch vhosts from mysql
as well as cyrus and postfix can for mail (if not directly it should
always work with nss/pam). Unfortunately I have no practical experience
with mysql for things like that.  I heard about persistent connections,
caches or connections over sockets but haven't tried anything like that
(yet). So I'm really interested in real world experiences...

Does it work reliably?
Does mysql master/slave work reliably?
How do you handle failover?
How does it performs in comparison to LDAP in terms of bind/fetch/unbind
cycle, is that expensive?
Anything I couldn't ask since I'm sooooooooooooo clueless ;)

thanks
 Paul
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