RAID config question
Exchange is mission critical for our 90 user company. We have 25 docs and 25 nurses who see patients with their laptops and use Misys EMR, which uses Exchange for message sending.These messagesometimes are signed by docs and become an index/medical record in EMR.... I just built a new exchange server, it's a PE2950, 4gb RAMwith 5 drives (currently). 2 - 36gb drives for the OS/Logs and 3 73gb drives for the database. I have 1 unused hard drive slot. Current server is a PE2550, with 4 drives RAID 5 ( built by previous sys admin),performance isn't too bad... I don't getany complaints... so PE2950 should do fine Question is: Would you do a 5 drive config , RAID 1 , RAID 5 with OS and Logs on RAID 1 , and database on 3 drive RAID 5...with a hot spare.... or 2, 2, 2, OS RAID 1, Logs RAID 1, Database RAID 1? After built, I will start researching redundancy, our data center offers a wansync HA service... I might look into a spare and use some sort of continuous data protectionservice... all depends on the conversation with the mananging practicitoner and what his expectations are for downtime....
October 19th, 2007 9:08pm

This is a great read with pictures. It applies to smaller offices such as yours: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998073.aspx how big is your database(s)? for just 90 users i'd probably do raid 1 for the os and page file, then raid 5 for the transaction logs and database. not "officially" recommended, but you dont want to put 7 drives together for this small user base.
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October 19th, 2007 9:46pm

thanks for the link... 7 isn't possible since the 2950 only holds 6 drives... it's not a big deal either way, since an older 2550 is fine for us now.... it's just the little decisions like this that drive me crazy.... neither make me giddy... my last job I had exhcange on a SAN, with RAID 10 for logs and 5 drive RAID 5 for the database... that made me happy...lol database is 12gb right now.. but i'll be moving everyone over to a new domain and email server in the next few months... and i'm going to FORCE some mailbox cleanup before the move. I'm guessing the database will be 8-9 gb after the move.
October 19th, 2007 9:55pm

if you wanted to, you could get a DAS for that server, and add more drives (the pv220s), but for that size there is absolutley no need. i'd read over the earlier link but then just do raid 1 for OS and raid 5 for everything else. pop a hot spare in that last slot if you wish.
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October 19th, 2007 9:58pm

I agree, although not best practices given the size and what you have to work with for hardware I'd go with RAID-1 for the OS and 3 drives in a RAID-5 array for the database and log files with a single hot spare. In the event that you grow and you need improved I/O performance you could move to DAS easily enough at a later date. FYI this is also a good reason to consider Exchange 2007, since it's x64 you can stack it with much more RAM which would reduce your I/O load (more memory cache =less trips to disk). Erik
October 20th, 2007 12:57am

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