Oh, also note that given the model number of a disk drive, you can almost always find the spec sheet online. If not on the manufacturer's website, then on a number of industry websites.
________________________________ From: Michael B. Smith [mich...@owa.smithcons.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 11:19 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Exchange 2007 John - It's a current Wiley softback, so I hope so. Sean - Yes, I've seen that change in performance profile. To quote a paragraph from my section on storage performance: "The numbers ... are typical, and they represent true IOPS, not sustained read performance. To calculate the IOPS for a particular physical disk, you will need the specification sheet from the manufacturer. On the spec sheet, hunt for the number for latency (usually between 1.0 and 2.0 ms) and the number for average access (usually between 10ms and 20ms). Add the two together. Divide 1,000 by that value to get the IOPS for completely random access." For example, if you have a disk with a latency of 2ms and average access of 20ms, then the IOPS for random access is 1000 / (20 + 2) = 45. Note that sustained read access on the same disk may have a read access as low as 10 ms; giving a sustained read performance of 1000 / (10 + 2) = 85 IOPS. That's a 89% improvement from random-I/O to sustained-read. (That particular example is from a 10K RPM SATA disk. The change in performance is fairly typical.) ________________________________ From: John Cook [john.c...@pfsf.org] Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:27 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Exchange 2007 Will they have that at the book store at the Connections 09 LV conference? I noticed you’re doing several sessions, way to go Mikey! John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP4, VTSP4 From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@owa.smithcons.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 12:59 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Exchange 2007 Yes, Exchange 2007 claimed 73% reduction over 2003. Microsoft has stress-tested their configuration in their l...@edu<mailto:l...@edu> labs. They have millions of mailboxes already running Exchange 2010. The point you may be missing here is that the I/O profile has changed. That is, not only does Exchange perform fewer overall I/O's, Exchange has also switched from being a "read-heavy" application (that is, it reads a whole lot more than it writes) to being a "random-I/O" application (that is, reads and writes are pretty closely balanced). So, it may be great that you can usually get 180 IOPS out of a 15K RPM SAS disk - when 90% of them are reads. But how does that performance profile change (and it does, rather dramatically) when you have 50% read I/O and 50% write I/O ?? [Not mention any particular manufacturers here, but a typical value is around 100 IOPS.] <advert> I cover this concept, in detail, including how to size and calculate IOPS for various types of disks and determine IOPS requirements, in my book "Monitoring Exchange Server 2007 with Operations Manager 2007" in sections named "Storage Performance" and "Storage Architecture". You can use the material in that section, regardless of whether you are on 2003, 2007, or 2010 to determine your required disk farm. Just plug in the appropriate IOPS/user into the formulas. </advert> ________________________________ From: Sean Martin [seanmarti...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 19, 2009 6:49 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Re: Exchange 2007 Didn't E2K7 claim a 70% reduction in disk IO over E2K3? Don't most people still recommend high performing disks in an optimal RAID configurations for E2K7? I haven't dug into any of the documentation regarding what stress testing Microsoft conducted to come up with those numbers for E2K10, but I would be curious how closely it resembles actual medium to large installations. For example, I only host about 2500 mailboxes in my environment. However, we see a tremendous amount of IO which is largely due to other integrated applications such as Symantec Enterprise Vault, CRM, RightFax, ActiveSync and Good Mobile Messaging, Cisco Unity, etc. Even with Microsoft's push towards SATA, I'm inclined to consider the application improvements as a way to minimize the number of dedicated 15k drives I need to provide versus making the switch to a JBOD configuration using SATA. As I stated in a previous post, we've already become accustomed to previous hardware requirements in regards to Exchange, so we have the back-end infrastructure to support. Just because the latest version can run on less doesn't mean we're going to implement it on less. - Sean On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 2:06 PM, James Hill <james.h...@superamart.com.au<mailto:james.h...@superamart.com.au>> wrote: The push for SATA is really a selling point thanks to the “up to 50% reduction in disk IO”. http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/storage.aspx We have a HP-EVA as well and to me it means we may look at purchasing slower but larger disks for it. #4 though is definitely an issue. From: Sherry Abercrombie [mailto:saber...@gmail.com<mailto:saber...@gmail.com>] Sent: Tuesday, 20 October 2009 1:47 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Re: Exchange 2007 #4 & #7 will be a deal breaker for me. We are very heavily invested into an HP-EVA SAN (which is quickly running out of room), and I have a very large chunk of that reserved for the LCR portion of my Exchange 2007 environment. LCR is my primary reason for moving to E2K7. Primary E2K7 box will be physical, and the LCR will be virtual on the SAN. I was going to do both on virtual but we just don't have the space on the SAN for 2 copies of the data. Looking as if this will be another skipped version for me. (I skipped E2K and went from 5.5 to E2K3) On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 9:48 AM, Michael B. Smith <mich...@owa.smithcons.com<mailto:mich...@owa.smithcons.com>> wrote: Now that it's RTM'ed, I can express my opinion publically. I've got a couple of bad things to say about it: 1] Lots of normal functionality (i.e., things your average admin will need to do) isn't in the GUI console. You have to do it in PowerShell. 2] Retention Policies are a step backwards from Messaging Records Management. 3] The implementation of the Archive Mailbox is half-baked, at best. 4] All of the Continous Replication solutions are gone - I'm most disappointed with the removal of SCR and LCR which did not require Windows Enterprise. The only HA solution is DAG (based on failover clustering, which requires Windows Enteprise). In USD, this puts about a $6K licensing premium on HA. 5] STILL no two-box HA solution. While you can colocate CA/HT on MB now, for that to be a HA solution, you have to have a clustered LB solution sitting in front (if the LB isn't clustered, then you don't have a HA solution - you just have a resilient backend). With the cost of that, you might as well have two more CA/HT boxes sitting in front running Windows NLB. 6] No method of doing an upgrade without either: a] breaking HA of an existing installation, or b] purchasing new hardware. 7] Microsoft is pushing SATA for storage HARD. People using SAN are now at a price/feature disadvantage. Not using SAN is going to be a hard-sell for a lots of techies, I think, when just one release ago they were pushing management for lots of expensive SAN disk. Not to say that there aren't lots of good/great features - there are. As always - you should evaluate the features/functionality for each company, one by one. ________________________________________ From: Jason Gurtz [jasongu...@npumail.com<mailto:jasongu...@npumail.com>] Sent: Friday, October 16, 2009 10:31 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Exchange 2007 > If you're about to deploy an Exchange server and can wait, I am hearing > only good things about Exchange 2010. Finally, useful cross-browser OWA! It was about time :) ~JasonG -- Sherry Abercrombie "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke ________________________________ CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: The information transmitted, or contained or attached to or with this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain Protected Health Information (PHI), confidential and/or privileged material. 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