MongoDB for emails

[TomBa]

Hi all,

I am currently deciding which NoSQL database could be used for storage
of emails supporing basic operations like insert and retrieve.
(Fulltext would be great, but I've seen it's not currently
implemented). Database must be capable to store approx. 1TB of
documents per day. Does mongodb fits for this case? Or is it more
oriented to other use cases? Does any one have similar experience with
such use case?

Thanks for any answer.

Tomas

[Bernie Hackett]

MongoDB will work fine for this use case. If you are planning to store
mboxes with large attachments be aware that in 1.6.x there is a 4MB
limit to document size. 1.8.x ups this to 16MB (which should be more
than large enough for email). You can also use GridFS to store larger
mboxes.

[Gaetan Voyer-Perrault]

@TomBa:  

E-mail storage is likely a very good fit for MongoDB's document-oriented view of data. Treating e-mails as documents seems like a natural view of the world. GridFS will allow you store attachments.

However, some quick back of the envelope math:

 - 3 TB / node ~= days of data per node

 - 365 days / year ~= 122 nodes per year

 - Plus you'll have to account for any space requirements for index.

MongoDB is easy to use and relatively easy to scale, but working with 100s of TBs of data has pitfalls well beyond the scope you'll capture in a public forum.

I'd like to point you to the 10gen site (MongoDB creators) where you can get professional consulting and support to help with these pitfalls.

http://www.10gen.com/

- Gates

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[Markus Gattol]

You didn't say but just in case you're writting you application in
Python, http://lamsonproject.org/ might be worth a look (MTA framework
written in Python which, amongst others, has a MongoDB backend).