📄️ Overview
This section covers how to effectively deploy Stalwart in a clustered environment, focusing on cluster size, topology options and storage backend recommendations for distributed setups.
📄️ Sizing
One of the most common questions when planning a Stalwart deployment is: How many nodes do I need? The answer depends on several key factors, including expected user load, availability requirements, and system performance targets. Fortunately, Stalwart’s flexible clustering architecture makes it easy to start small and scale horizontally as your needs grow.
📄️ Storage
In a clustered Stalwart deployment, choosing the right storage backends is critical to ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance. Since mail systems operate with a mix of structured metadata, large binary objects, and transient data, Stalwart separates storage responsibilities into four core backend types:
📄️ Topology
In a Stalwart cluster, administrators have full control over how user-facing services are distributed across nodes. This is distinct from node roles, which assign background maintenance tasks such as purging or certificate renewal. Cluster topology focuses on which protocols—such as IMAP, JMAP, WebDAV, and SMTP—each node will serve.