Exchange 2007 Storage Design and Hardware Selection
jodelvalle
I would like to start by making clear that I am not an Exchange guru. I work
for a small but very busy company as one of the System Admins. I need some
input on possible storage designs and hardware selection for Exchange 2007
migration. I am in the process of getting quotes from our server vendor and
want to make sure I order the right stuff.
We are not into spending 20K on a server, but if we need to spend 12-15K to
get the best performance, we'll be able to justify the amount.
We currently have about 50 employees and 120 mailboxes. Our average
sent/received is 30/120. We currently have a quota of 3GB per mailbox and
some member of management have 6GB. The average message size is 200KB but it
can go up to 50MB or even more some times.
We are not planning on having an edge server or using the UM role, so the CAS,
HUB and Mailbox roles are going to reside on the same box.
I have a few questions about the partition design and array sets:
I know is recommended to have the exchange logs, system partition and
databases on their own separate disks.
Is a design like this a good design or can it be improved?
1 Raid 1 set for OS (2 x 146GB)
1 Raid 10 set for Logs ( 4 x 146)
1 Raid 10 set for DBs (6 x 146)
I am planning, and I am opened to other ideas, to create 2 storage groups and
put a database on each SG that way I can place 60 users on one DB and 60 user
on another DB.
Should I create two LUNs on the DB Raid 10 disk set, one for each SG?
The same question applies to the Logs. Should I create a LUN for each db
logs?
or
Should I create 4 disk sets and isolate the DBs and Logs for each SG.
What about the TEMP folder? Should I create a LUN for it?
Also, I am going to need multiple Raid controller to be able to create
multiple types of array sets?
Ex. Raid 1, 10, etc. on the same server.
Currently I'm looking at a Dell PowerEdge T710 with this specs as an option
and would like to know your opinion about it.
-2 Intel® Xeon® E5630 2.53Ghz, 12M Cache,Turbo, HT, 1066MHz Max Mem (Quad
core)
-16GB of memory
-the chassis can hold up to 16 HDs.
-If I need to go with 16 146GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 6Gbps 2.5in my
quote still under 14K which is OK if I have to.
Your help will be really appreciated.
J.D.
oz casey, Dedeal
will be wrong move, don’t do it, move into E2010. As far as your design goes
I think it is overkill. Since there is huge I/O reduction on E210 compare
the E07.
--->I know is recommended to have the exchange logs, system partition and
databases on their own separate disks. ( this is no longer true with E210),
I would do fallowing
Raid 1 for OS , Raid 10 ( one partition for Exchange binaries, logs and
databases) , for RAID 10 you will loose 1 disk for parity , so if you have 8
disk 300 Gig , your total space will be 2400 Gig but actual usable space
will be 1200 Gig, since each disk needs a peer.
your OS HD are redundant in case HD fails, and you can create up to 5DB
with standard version of Exchange 2010. If you want to bring redundancy and
can eat the cost, your option is to create DAG ( you will need two
Enterprise OS license for fail over clustering, lets say Win08 R2=
Enterprise= 2 License) also you need two standard license E 2010, and your
hardware cost gets doubled but you can change the configuration since the
databases will be redundant.
you either keep the same configuration ( RAID 1 for OS, RAID 10 for
Exchange, logs ,and databases) for both servers
or you can do one RAID 10 set partition it , install OS and Exchange 2010
or you can do one RAID 5 set partition it , install OS and Exchange 2010
Or forget about DAG go with RAID 5 with single server to reduce the HD cost.
All these are possible configurations, as I would go with
OS= RAID 1 ( 2 SAS Drive 10K anything bigger than 50 GIG)
Exchange,logs,Databases- RAID 10 , size of the drives up to your
requirements , the speed I would go with would be SAS 10K
as an option cheap SATA drives with Exchange should be fine as well (-:
good luck
ocd
"jodelvalle" <u59517@uwe> wrote in message news:a6ddf18189372@uwe...