RAID setup for exchange 2010

exchange-2010raid

I am going to order a new exchange server soon and want advice on the RAID setup. My current plan is as follows. Is my idea sensible?

This will be a single server housing the Mailbox, CAS and Hub transport roles. We're not using Unified Messaging.

Server is a HP DL380 G7 and has 8 disk drive slots.

Disks 1 & 2 (146GB) – RAID1, Operating System (Windows Server 2008 R2)
Disks 3, 4, 5 & 6 (300GB) – RAID5, Exchange Databases
Disks 7 & 8 (72GB) – RAID1, Exchange transaction logs

TIA

Best Answer

If you've got a heavily used Exchange server with lots of mailboxes, mobile access (Blackberry, Windows Mobile, etc.), and\or Outlook plugins then I'd suggest configuring 4 drives as RAID10 instead of RAID5. If there's heavy disk I/O then RAID5 is going to kill your performance and you'll have users complaining constantly about their email client being slow.

Related Solutions

Can Exchange 2010 high availability be achieved with only 2 servers

Yes. It can be done quite well. Do a basic Exchange install on each server (Mailbox, CAS, and Hub). Setup a CAS Array and assign it to the mailbox

New-ClientAccessArray –Name “CAS Array” –Fqdn “exchange.domain.com” –Site “Default-First-Site-Name”
Set-MailboxDatabase DatabaseName -RpcClientAccessServer “exchange.domain.com”

Setup a DNS record pointing exchange.domain.com to your hardware load balancer. Then setup your DAG, create mailbox copies, and you're all done.

You also might want to check out yesterday's Exchange team blog. It doesn't talk about a single server but does go over your options for load balancing your CAS servers with ISA (now called TMG) and HLBs. http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/07/20/455575.aspx

Exchange 2010 Hub cannot deliver to Exchange 2007 Hub – “451 5.7.3 Cannot achieve Exchange Server authentication”

Finally tracked down the cause. Our Cisco ASA firewall was to blame.

From http://jamesosw.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/exchange-hub-transport-unable-to-communicate-at-different-active-directory-sites/:

If you happen to be deploying Exchange 2007/Exchange 2010 Server in a multiple sites environment and using a Cisco ASA Firewall as your VPN tunnel, you’ll likely encounter issues below:

Users are only able to send emails within the same Active Directory site

When users attempt to send an email over to the next hop/Active Directory Site, under the Exchange Queue, you’ll see a Retry status: 451 4.4.0 Primary target IP address responded with “451 5.7.3 Cannot achieve Exchange Server authentication” SMTPRelay to remote AD Site

When you attempt to telnet from the Exchange Servers from both site, you’ll get such response from the telnet command: 220*************

The only way to fix this is to use the Commandline Interface (CLI) and type in this command:
telnet YourCiscoManagementIP

device password (default is usually cisco)

en

password (Management password)

no fixup protocol smtp 25

write mem
Remember to run these command all firewalls at each site. Once is done, telnet to the Exchange server with port 25 and you should get a normal response:
 220 ExchangeServerHostName.Domain.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Day, Date Month Year, Hour:Minute:Seconds +TimeZone

As soon as we did this on the ASA, mail started flowing without hassles.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Can Exchange 2010 high availability be achieved with only 2 servers

Exchange 2010 Hub cannot deliver to Exchange 2007 Hub – “451 5.7.3 Cannot achieve Exchange Server authentication”

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