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Windows Server Forum / Exchange Server / Design / February 2006

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SMTP Queue Disk Capacity

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Doug C. - 10 Feb 2006 03:10 GMT
Quick quetion on disk sizing. Is there a rule of thumb for the disk capacity
on the SMTP Queue disk?

The environment I am sizing has:
4 Storage Groups 175Gb
Logs 67Gb
SMTP-?

4000 users pushing 130 messages per day @ 1.0 IOPS
Bharat Suneja - 10 Feb 2006 16:44 GMT
Depends on how large those messages are (avg message size.. 30k? 50?) and
the max time you'd have those queues backed up in case of a problem - 8
hours? a day?

Also factor in inbound traffic.
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Bharat Suneja
MCSE, MCT
www.zenprise.com
blog: www.suneja.com/blog
-----------------------------------------

> Quick quetion on disk sizing. Is there a rule of thumb for the disk
> capacity
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> 4000 users pushing 130 messages per day @ 1.0 IOPS
Al Mulnick - 10 Feb 2006 22:35 GMT
Another consideration would be look at your timeout value for SMTP and work
backwards from there.  For example, if that's 72 hours and you want to be
able to withstand a worst case delivery outage (this totally depends on your
architecture) + growth, you'd want to have enough space to hold 72 hours
worth of SMTP messages + growth + system overhead + buffer space (in case
you're wrong about how much space you need).

Disk is generally cheap and comes in large sizes by default. You'll want to,
for performance reasons, separate that disk I/O as it is so unless this is a
SAN, you'll pretty much be limited to a 72GB (smallest I've seen lately)
drive size. That's larger than your Logs so I'll have to guess that you're
calculation for logs is based on SAN based storage that you can carve up
into smaller space.

Since Bharat has been kind and pointed out that size matters, you'll have to
dig a little more to work out the amount, but I see no reason to make it
smaller than the log drives. During normal operation you won't need it and
it'll look like it is being wasted.  When delivery stops and mail backs up,
and then dequeues, you'll wish you had used enough space to keep the server
operational until you could give it the attention it needed.

I'm sure I could wander on about this for hours, but I think you get the
idea. :)

Al

> Depends on how large those messages are (avg message size.. 30k? 50?) and
> the max time you'd have those queues backed up in case of a problem - 8
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>>
>> 4000 users pushing 130 messages per day @ 1.0 IOPS
Bharat Suneja - 11 Feb 2006 00:10 GMT
Great post - that (considering SMTP timeouts) makes sense!

If you're on a SAN, you can grow or shrink the volumes as long as you "have
more storage in the pool... " , but it helps to be able to size it right (or
as close as possible) and always get more than you need.
Signature

Bharat Suneja
MCSE, MCT
www.zenprise.com
blog: www.suneja.com/blog
-----------------------------------------

> Another consideration would be look at your timeout value for SMTP and
> work backwards from there.  For example, if that's 72 hours and you want
[quoted text clipped - 37 lines]
>>>
>>> 4000 users pushing 130 messages per day @ 1.0 IOPS
Al Mulnick - 11 Feb 2006 02:53 GMT
Oh, I agree about the SAN.  That concept can work well for slow growing
areas such as the stores, but SMTP Queues have a tendency to be
underutilized for 99% of the time.  It's that 1% that you really need it
that counts and until dynamic allocation of SAN resources is available, I
think it best to go with high-water marks.

In practice, I've also seen where it's far more difficult to acquire an
expensive resource (SAN space) than is thought during design and initial
deployment phase. I agree with you Bharat, that you should get more than you
need out of the gate to save the pain and embarrassment of not having enough
space when you critically need it.

> Great post - that (considering SMTP timeouts) makes sense!
>
[quoted text clipped - 43 lines]
>>>>
>>>> 4000 users pushing 130 messages per day @ 1.0 IOPS
Douglas Collimore - 12 Feb 2006 21:01 GMT
Thanks for the response guys. Lots of good info. In the past, I have used a
rule of thumb of using the same size LUN as my log devices as long as there
are at least 4 spindles in the grouping. However, the client got an outside
recommendation of 275GB for an SMTP LUN!!!! That is REALLY large and I have
not found any reason to use something with that much space unless they had a
requirment to support queueing in the event the SMTP service went down for 3
weeks.

Thaks again for the assistance
Signature

Douglas Collimore
Solution Consultant
New Jersey

> Oh, I agree about the SAN.  That concept can work well for slow growing
> areas such as the stores, but SMTP Queues have a tendency to be
[quoted text clipped - 55 lines]
> >>>>
> >>>> 4000 users pushing 130 messages per day @ 1.0 IOPS
 
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