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Overview of piler enterprise edition#

This documentation applies to Piler enterprise edition 2.0.0

Revision #1

Publication date: 2025-SEP-21

Piler architecture overview#

Piler is flexible enough to support several configurations and layouts. Use one of the following layouts matching your environment.

Single node layout#

Figure 1. Single node installation

This is the simplest layout, when you have a single node running piler enterprise. It allows you to start small, and expand later as you grow.

Piler receives the emails directly, and archives them. The Piler node also runs the UI. To restore the emails it uses the smtp smarthost to deliver emails to the users’ mailboxes.

Multiple nodes layout#

Figure 2. Multiple nodes layout

A typical installation contains the following nodes:

MX server: receives emails from the mail server, and distributes them among the worker nodes based on your preferences

Smarthost: receives emails to be restored from the UI node, and delivers them to mail server

Worker nodes: run the Piler daemons and archive the received emails

UI node: runs the Piler UI allowing users to view their emails

Archive components#

Figure 3. Components on the archive host

Piler enterprise features the following components:

  • piler binaries and daemons: archiving emails
  • web appp: display the UI the REST API
  • mysql: store crucial metadata
  • manticore: search index and audit logs
  • redis/valkey cache: store user sessions and other user data
  • reverse proxy, eg. traefik, nginx: provide https entrypoint

Platform requirements#

Supported platforms:

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble)
  • Centos 10
  • Docker compose (on any Linux ditro)

Note that piler supports both x64 and arm64 platforms.

Hardware requirements#

Piler can be installed on physical hardware, virtual machine (VMware, etc), in the cloud (AWS, etc) or in a Docker container. Piler requires:

  • 2+ GB memory
  • 2+ (v)CPU
  • 200+ GB disk space

Note that piler stores data in /var/piler/store and /var/piler/astore directories. Expect to have several millions of files in various size ranging from few kB to several MB.

See the email archive sizing calculator for more

Piler also supports S3 compatible object stores, see section S3 object store for more details.