As part of our new domain deployment which consist of server 2008r2 active directory, we intend to configure a new exchange server 2010 installation. The machine we have is a Dell 2950, 8 gigs ram, raid 5 sas drives (total 350 gigs). So far we've installed server 2008r2 on it with a 30 gig windows partition. Our thoughts are to create a second partition(100gGB) and install exchange 2010 on it Our current 2003 exchange server environment only has 40 - 50 gigs of mailbox data Is there any advantages of creating a smaller partition for the transport /client access roles and putting the mailbox role on a third separate partition Note: We intend to keep a virtualized copy of the server for disaster/backup purposes.

If all the partitions are placed on the same disks there is no any difference because Disk I/O si the same for all roles. keep in mind that Server 2008 R2 for OS requieres more than 30GB.CapecolMCSA - MCTS Exchange Server 2007 - 2010

Hi,I would suggest that you split the 100 GB partition into 30 GB & 70 GB.You can have the exchange server installed in the 30 GB partition and databases, system & log files in the 70 GB partition.If you feel that you need to have a good performance of your server, you may bring in a additional drive seperately only for the log files.Your overall server's performance can be fine tuned if you could add up 10 GB more of space in the windows server install drive.- Nagesh

Thank you for all the suggestions. Capecol, thanks for pointing out the R2 OS requirements. It's early enough in my deployment to change it before it becomes a problem (it's now 55GB).

Hi,For windows server 2008 R2:Minimum: 32 GB or greater Foundation: 10 GB or greater Note: Computers with more than 16 GB of RAM will require more disk space for paging, hibernation, and dump files Windows Server 2008 R2 System Requirementshttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/system-requirements.aspx For Mailbox database: Database Size = Number of Mailboxes x Mailbox Size on Disk x Database Overhead Growth Factor Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/09/453117.aspx For Hub, CAS, Mailbox Understanding Memory Configurations and Exchange Performance http://technet.microsoft.com/es-es/library/dd346700.aspx Regards, Xiu