I am needing to setup a new Exchagne 2007 server with typical installation (All Roles 1 Box.) The Server i will be using has 6 Hard Drives. obviously i know the Best practices when dealing with more drives and seperating the roles, but in this situation does anyone have any suggestions for the best drive configuration (seperating logs/databases)? For example 3 Raid 1 Sets, or 1 Raid 1 Set and 1 Raid 5 Set. This server will only be hosting around 20 Mailboxes. Thanks

For 20 mailboxes you kinda need to ask yourself how important they are. Ordinarily I'd say three RAID1 pairs. But then you're back to 20 mailboxes. Are these mailboxes utterly critical to the business and must never be unavailable (probably not since you're not clustering in any way)? Are they sending and receiving gargantuan amounts of email per day? I would just go for two RAID1 pairs and use the other two disks for something else, maybe store your backups on them somewhere. "morriz1" wrote in message news:e570072a-5a43-4281-b137-79ba5f3d1b93... I am needing to setup a new Exchagne 2007 server with typical installation (All Roles 1 Box.) The Server i will be using has 6 Hard Drives. obviously i know the Best practices when dealing with more drives and seperating the roles, but in this situation does anyone have any suggestions for the best drive configuration (seperating logs/databases)? For example 3 Raid 1 Sets, or 1 Raid 1 Set and 1 Raid 5 Set. This server will only be hosting around 20 Mailboxes. Thanks Mark Arnold, Exchange MVP.

This new server is for a company that is splitting of of a larger company. So for this new small company the mailbox's are important. I was thinking a Raid 1 for the system partition, Raid 1 for logs, and Raid 1 for Databases since i am limited on the amount of disks. Thanks for your update.

Hello You can create seperate Partitions for OS, Exchange setup files, Exchange Logs and Exchange database. If you have less resource i would recommend you to go RAID 1 For OS and Exchange Setup files RAID 5 For Exchange Logs and Exchange database. You can check this link also for the RAID configuration http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb738146(EXCHG.80).aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124518(EXCHG.80).aspx http://www.mmcug.org/blogs/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=41d6c66e-7ea5-471b-89f4-c83b5185f1ba&ID=16 Thanks Mhussain

Hi morriz1, Agree with MMHussain, you could use two hard drive disks configured raid 1, and the the rest four hard drive disks configured raid 5. You could use differernt partition for echange logs and database. You'd better have backup plan for your exchange data for the disaster recovery. Regards! gavin