I have a stand alone mail server and it's local storage capacity is sufficient for the OS and MTA / MAU applications however not for the storage of the users /home directory. I have over 500+ users and normally via Postfix they store all their email in their /home/user/mail directory (Maildir/ style). My question is we now have a 8TB NAS from Sun Mirosystems and would like to know how most recommend I configure the mail server to run on the physical stand alone server yet attach to the NAS for the storage of the user's mailboxes.

Do I simply create a share on the NAS called /home for the mail server and just attach it via NFS mount?

Thanks for any help. This is my 1st experience with a NAS so please pardon my ignorance in this...

To my mind, NFS is the way to go, it's the simplest and most transparent method, plus it should be well supported by a sun NAS. It means moving the users home directories over to the NAS whilst maintaining permissions etc.
You probably are doing that anyhow..

OK - thats what I assumed but just wanted some advice from the LQ community. So does my physical server that is going to run all the mail applications like Postfix, Dovecot, & ClamAV need to run

- nfs-common - NFS support files common to client and server
- nfs-kernel-server - support for NFS kernel server

Do I need both of the above? Or just nfs-common to map to a NFS share being the Sun NAS...

You will only need it will install all dependencies that you require. If you need any more help, let us know.