This may give you guidelines to how you should configure your servers to host Exchange databases.
http://www.exchangeadmin.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=23109 Brian -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edgington, Jeff Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 4:32 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: A benchmark if you have time... I know this subject has been brought up before (and yes, I've looked through the archives), but I'm looking for a little more detail. Our current exchange environment is as follows: - 9600 mailboxes (spread evenly over the servers) - most quotas are 50/55/65 (warn/prohibit send/prohibit send/receive) with about 5 percent exceeding this (some upwards of 600MB) - 3 Protocol servers (running NLB) - 1GHz w/ 1GB RAM - 6 Mailbox Servers (in-house built) - Dual PIII 866 - 2GB RAM - 3Ware 7000-8 IDE RAID Controller (7200 rpm drives, 3 mirrors - OS/TLOGS/Store - 1 hot spare) - 1Gbit NIC - 1 Standby Mailbox Server (empty) that is same as above configuration. This is an _OK_ configuration... it's been stable, but lacks some speed (disk queue lengths on the storage mirrors will reach 80+ at times and I can correlate the 'waiting on server' message with these queue lengths)... the advantage of the multiple servers is that if an outage occurs, it affects only 1/6th of the people... we are looking at purchasing a SCSI disk subsystem for the current servers and are also going as far as looking at purchasing name-brand servers with a SAN. I have been able to test (using HD Tach 2.61) 10,000 rpm SCSI drives, 7200 rpm SCSI drives, 7200 PATA IDE drive.. I'm waiting on a SATA drive (already have a controller)... so far all have performed very close to each other... it's not clear to me that the test I'm using is giving me information that I can use to base my decision on. What I'm looking for is what are others with similar mailbox environments using?. What do you like about your config? What do you wish you could change? If you are using a SAN, which brand/model? Thanks for your time! --------------------------------------- Jeffrey Edgington Systems Administrator University of Missouri - Rolla Are you a Spectator or a Participant? --------------------------------------- _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&; lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
