25GB was available ages ago within Exchange Online:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/cloudservicesexperts/archive/2010/03/17/exchange- online-updated-to-provide-25gb-mailbox-by-default.aspx A few considerations are things like the OST size and performance on some older hardware, and also the consideration if, say, a laptop is lost or stolen and a full resync must be performed. From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@smithcons.com] Sent: 22 July 2010 17:12 To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Guidance on disks for Exchange 2010 MSFT Online will have 25 GB mailboxes this fall, when they upgrade the infrastructure to Exchange 2010. I have historical reservations about it, and backups are a concern; but disk is cheap. Much cheaper than the loss of productivity that can ensue because a user has to delete everything to stay under an artificial limit. Regards, Michael B. Smith Consultant and Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: sms adm [mailto:sms...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 12:08 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Re: Guidance on disks for Exchange 2010 I would be interested in anyone doing this or thinking about doing this in an EMC storage environment. Just attended a 1/2 seminar by EMC where they espoused virtual disks that could/would expand when needed. One thing shown was disturbing (to me at least). They said MS was targeting 25GB mailboxes in 3 years (effort to keep up with Google). Comments? Thx in advance On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Michael B. Smith <mich...@smithcons.com> wrote: Note: I am not recommending you go against published guidance from MSFT. That being said - that recommendation is primarily against the original Hyper-V. VHDs created by the original version of Hyper-V, or disks that have been upgraded from Virtual Server or Virtual PC, expand quite slowly. Disks that are created by Hyper-V R2 are only a couple of percentage points slower than fixed size VHDs. Negligible. I know a number of companies that are running Hyper-V R2 installations with variable disks. So far, at least, it hasn't been an issue. I don't know how (or even if) this impacts VMware or XenServer. So..to tie this back to your question, if the storage virtualization causes Exchange to notice whenever the disk expands, it's not a good fit. Regards, Michael B. Smith Consultant and Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: Sobey, Richard A [mailto:r.so...@imperial.ac.uk] Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 6:35 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Guidance on disks for Exchange 2010 In the virtualisation guide for Exchange 2010, in the section on storage this is written: Virtual disks that dynamically expand aren't supported by Exchange. Does anyone know if this also applies to a disk presented to a physical server via some form of storage virtualisation appliance? Said disk would be presented as 100GB, for example, and the OS would see 100GB, but would grow to reach this size at the storage level. Thanks Richard -- smsadm
