Exchange Storage (yeah, another one)

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Scott - 18 Feb 2005 21:13 GMT

I have a Dell 2850 with the following disk drives:

Raid 1 (2 + 73GB) - System Partition
Raid 5 (4 + 146GB) - Raid Containter

Considering an installation for 200 users.
The questions I have are:
1) Do I need to break the RAID 5 container into multiple
volumes to store the logs, binary and databases?
If so, what would be the optimal setup?
2) Is it more efficient to create multiple containers, all
using the same controller, or just break divide the
container into mulitple volumes within the OS?
3) Being that the system partition is mirrored, would it
be better to change the size of the RAID 1 container, and
move the pagefile onto the other volume, or is it sixes
because the container uses the same controller?

Thanks!

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Don Wilwol - 18 Feb 2005 23:51 GMT

I put this together a short while ago.
http://spaces.msn.com/members/wilwol/Blog/cns!1pJhYIW7R6HVEEKz9wQ2vdnQ!117.entry
It is geared more toward a cluster, so you can ignore the quorum and MTDTC,
but everything else should be the same. In short, you want to split the
binary (they go local) and split the logs and the databases. You will get
better performance if the logs are on mirrored sets and the databases on
raid 5 for most Exchange installs.

Signature

Hope it helps...........

dw

Don Wilwol
Blog - http://spaces.msn.com/members/wilwol/
Web - http://capital.net/~wilwol/dw.htm
DonWilwol(REMOVE)@yahoo.com

>I have a Dell 2850 with the following disk drives:
>
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>
> Thanks!

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Al Mulnick - 19 Feb 2005 01:10 GMT

For 200 users, unless they absolutely kill the system with volume and size,
will likely be fine on two disks let alone that setup.

Your best bet is to separate log file spindles from db file spindles. Not
so much for performance as much as for some measure of recovery if you lose
one or the other (preferably the db files).

My thoughts anyway.

Al

>I have a Dell 2850 with the following disk drives:
>
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
>
> Thanks!

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