10 misunderstandings about setting up storage on the Exchange Server

Misunderstanding 1: Exchange requires high-performance external storage, and I cannot afford a large mailbox!

Reality: Exchange 2010 can implement large-scale, low-cost mail systems. This product supports General disk storage to effectively control costs. You can refer to Microsoft Exchange 2010 big mailbox vision White Paper misunderstanding 2: Exchange 2010 does not support storage area network (SAN )! Reality: Exchange 2010 does not support network attached storage (NAS). In fact, it supports large-capacity storage such as SAN and DAS. Based on the high availability model selected by the user, the storage can be configured to use RAID or RAID-less (JBOD function) storage. Different customers need different storage as the foundation of the Exchange Mailbox solution, but each user can deploy a low-cost large mailbox. Misunderstanding 3: I already have a SAN (or I just bought one), so it makes no sense to implement DAS. By the way, my SAN can use cheaper SATA disks! Reality: This is the most common misunderstanding and is often misunderstood. The deployment of SAN only creates a high mailbox for low-cost deployment. Remember that Exchange supports SAN and DAS storage. If you are looking for the advantages of using multiple independent Database Replicas, consider spending all your budget for storage. Misunderstanding 4: JBOD configuration is not practical, because the disk failure time after the reset is too long, which will produce too much business overhead! Reality: Microsoft's own JBOD configuration solution is a very successful security solution, which can be a very low-cost solution. However, a very mature operation management level is required in an appropriate environment. Many of them affect the mail sending and receiving throughput, but from the internal structure of Microsoft JBOD, the data throughput can reach 35-70 GB per hour. Misunderstanding 5: the performance of Outlook is affected by large mailboxes! Reality: Exchange 2010 increases the number of folders supported by each user from Exchange 2007 to 20 thousand. In addition, the Exchange cache modes of Outlook 2007 SP1, Outlook 2007 SP2, and Outlook 2010 can support up to 10 GB with excellent performance, or even up to 25 GB, and use 7200 RPM or SSD locally. Exchange 2010 has greatly improved and enhanced storage. The OWA online mode supports a large number of mailboxes (up to GB ). You can also use the personal archiving feature of Exchange 2010 to reduce the size of users in cache mode. Misunderstanding 6: When I migrate to Exchange 2010, the size of my mailbox database will burst, because Exchange 2010 does not have a single instance storage (SIS) feature! Reality: Exchange 2010 adopts the SIS Technology in data storage. SIS can change the data storage mode and access sequence of Exchange Server, which helps reduce the storage space usage by 70%. Exchange 2010 also provides the compression function for HTML/plain text mail data, which can reach a space saving rate of about 20%. For more information about Exchange 2010 and SIS, see-Dude, Where's My Single Instance? Misunderstanding 7: the storage of Exchange requires storage experts to manage and maintain it. The cheap storage solution is too difficult to use, time-consuming, and the management cost is high! Many internal organizations are using DAS, and they do not need any additional people to manage Exchange storage, which does not increase their operating costs. Of course, you can also spend a lot of time and resources to optimize your storage. If we use a low-cost storage, we can still adopt a conservative attitude, and its maintenance is very similar to the server maintenance task, nothing more than updating the driver and firmware. Misunderstanding 8: I can not back up large Exchange databases! Reality: If you use local continuous replication and cluster continuous replication or you have multiple data copies, you can reduce the number of backups. However, we recommend that you perform a full backup at least on January 1, February. Misunderstanding 9: we need a third-party archive solution, but because the cost of data storage and exchange is very expensive, we need to archive data with cheaper storage! Reality: We can use low-cost storage to store all exchanged data, not just archive data. Exchange can effectively use low-cost disks and SIS to optimize storage. Misunderstanding 10: All Exchange storage designs must follow the one-by-one requirements of the Exchange Mailbox role computer, otherwise it will not be supported! Reality: The Exchange Mailbox role demand calculator (Exchange 2010/Exchage 2007) only provides design guidance. The Exchange solution evaluation plan (ESRP) provides more information about Microsoft storage partners.