Exchange Servers, Best practices

Ruckus

Hey all, I've got an exchange 2k3 server I'm supposed to be testing and I've got a two part question here:

Part 1: I was wondering what the recommended setup was for the mailstore and transaction logs.

This is how I have it setup right now:

250GB RAID1 Volume, Controller1
---C: (50GB)

---

WINDOWS
---D: (remainder)

---

storage, backups

750GB RAID1 Volume, Controller2
---M: (100GB)

---

mailstore
---T: (100GB)

---

transaction logs

I was wondering if I would get better performance by moving the transaction logs to a dedicated partition on the 250GB Volume. Addendum: which actually has more I/O action, the translogs or the mailstore?

Part 2: I think the 750GB drives are excessive for just a mailstore or just a mailstore and translogs. What is your opinions on using the 750's for the System partition and possibly storage and just use the 250 for mailstore (or mailstore + translogs)?

PirateJon

Typically the t-logs have less activity than the database - views vs changes. I don't think you'd get more performance moving the logs to the first controller.

The size is excessive only depending on the load - my store is just under 100GB and you have to allow room for growth.

I'm a bit confused about the "storage" description. You using the box as a file server too?

You can read more about disk configs here, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124123.aspx.

Ruckus

PirateJon wrote: »

Typically the t-logs have less activity than the database - views vs changes. I don't think you'd get more performance moving the logs to the first controller.

The size is excessive only depending on the load - my store is just under 100GB and you have to allow room for growth.

I'm a bit confused about the "storage" description. You using the box as a file server too?

You can read more about disk configs here, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124123.aspx.

Since we had so much extra space, we thought we may use the spare for long term storage for the IT department, that doesn't need to be accessed during normal business hours. Sort of digital Cold Storage, if you will. The WAN link for it is about 4.5Mb/s and it's got a gigabit internal link, plus four processor cores a 4GB of RAM. When you compare that to our ~150 users spread across five timezones, we should have some spare headroom for non-critical off-hours stuff.

VThornheart

I think it'll be good for you to have that extra room personally... especially since, depending on your field of business, you may be required to keep those E-Mail records for years now. Ever since that Enron scandal, companies have been required to keep this stuff for much, much longer than before. So you may be doing yourself a favor by planning to have big hard drives on it.

PirateJon

Thread Necro!

VThornheart wrote: »

I think it'll be good for you to have that extra room personally... especially since, depending on your field of business, you may be required to keep those E-Mail records for years now. Ever since that Enron scandal, companies have been required to keep this stuff for much, much longer than before. So you may be doing yourself a favor by planning to have big hard drives on it.

TALK. TO. LEGAL.

I can't say that hard enough. Email retention is a very good point to address, and every company should have a solid policy and STICK TO IT. But VT's point about storing stuff for all time is contrary to everything I've seen on it - ie as short a time as legally required, but long enough so you can't be slapped with 'destroying evidence'. Example - our legal gets a pass due to confidentiality. users get almost no retention. managers get more. top exec's get lots - over a year.


Legal department, talk to them.

VThornheart

Aye, I didn't mean 'for all time', if it sounded like that I apologize. I meant generally for a long time. For example, many companies still don't retain it at all... but I know that there are rules at least in some industries that require you to save it for a number of years. Definitely not indefinitely, but certainly longer than no time at all.

But indeed, legal department will be your best bet. It's well worth asking.