Re: Ideal Hard Drive configuration

Hi,

Thank you for posting here!

According to your description, I think that this question is for
consultative assistance with design, and deployment issues instead of a
problem resolution issue. Thus, it is suggested that you contact our
Advisory Services support team for an thorough solution.

For more information on Advisory Services, please see:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=fh;en-us;advisoryservice

However, I would still like to provide some info on this issue:

Although you would like to deploy internal server with more than 4 GB which
may be more stronger, I would like to let you know that servers that
implement hot-add memory or that are configured with more than 4 gigabytes
of physical RAM can require large amounts of additional kernel memory to
support these resources. This reduces the kernel memory available for
applications. Even though disk, network and processor bandwidth may be more
than adequate, lack of kernel resources can be the bottleneck that limits
application scalability.

If kernel memory issues are not adequately addressed, it may be necessary
to reduce the server load by removing large numbers of mailboxes or to
reduce the number of concurrent client connections to the server.

Symptoms of kernel memory exhaustion include:

- Slow performance
- Server crashes or cluster failovers
- Errors that report complete exhaustion of system page table entries
(PTEs) or kernel pool memory

So please not configure the Exchange Server with more than 4 GB RAM. More
info here:

Configuring Hot-Add and Large Memory for Exchange 2003
http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2005/12/14/416065.aspx


Meanwhile, no matter as a FE or BE Server with more than 1 GB physical RAM,
please follow article below to optimize Memory Ssage in Exchange Server 2003

How to optimize memory usage in Exchange Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815372




I have included some articles about Windows 2003 planning and deployment
for your reference:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/plan/default.
asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/deploy/defaul
t.asp

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/reskit/deploykit.mspx

Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit: Designing and Deploying Directory and
Security Services
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6cde6ee7-5df1-4394-
92ed-2147c3a9ebbe&displaylang=en


"Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange 2000 Server Front-End and Back-End
Topology"
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E64666FC-42B7-48A1-
AB85-3C8327D77B70&displaylang=en


For more detailed configuration, I believe that our Advisory Services
support team can assist you based on your requirement.

If you have any concerns, please feel free to let me know!

Have a great day!



Best Regards,

Chace Zhang (MSFT)

Microsoft CSS Online Newsgroup Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security

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--------------------
| From: "Ed Crowley [MVP]" <curspice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| References: <#0fkTwN2GHA.4632@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<ub8bQIO2GHA.4648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| Subject: Re: Ideal Hard Drive configuration
| Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 10:30:24 -0700
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| Having a separate physical volume for the logs is not only for
performance, but for recoverability. If you have two physical volumes and
one of them fails, you should be able to restore to the point of failure.
With one physical volume, you will be able to restore only to the point of
the last backup.
| --
| Ed Crowley
| MVP - Exchange
| "Protecting the world from PSTs and brick backups!"
| "Ben Winzenz [Exchange MVP]" <ben_winzenz@nospamdotmessageonedotcom>
wrote in message news:ub8bQIO2GHA.4648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| Your current setup would likely be fine if you had 2 more drives. The
main problem is likely that you only have 1 RAID array (split into 2
partitions). Keep in mind the following.
| Exchange transaction log files are just a bunch of sequential writes,
thus RAID1 usually offers the best performance.
| Exchange databases are a mix of random reads and writes. RAID5 usually
offers the best tradeoff in terms of performance/price. RAID10 will offer
better performance, but is more costly in terms of disks.
| If you are combining sequential writes with random reads/writes, then
disk performance is not going to be optimal.
| In the above example, at a MINIMUM, there should be 2 separate arrays.
Better case is that each array would be on it's own separate channel. Best
case would be that there is a separate RAID controller for each array,
though the last case is probably overkill :-)
| As far as your original question, wouldn't it perhaps make more sense
to troubleshoot WHY you are having performance problems? Have you run the
Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant and/or the Exchange Best Practices
Analyzer? If not, I'd suggest doing so.
| http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/analyzers
| --
| Ben Winzenz
| Exchange MVP
| MessageOne
| Read my blog!
| http://winzenz.blogspot.com
| http://feeds.feedburner.com/winzenz (RSS Feed)
| <davidhc25@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%230fkTwN2GHA.4632@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| This might seem like a basic question, but I think it gets
complicated when you put into consideration value, RAID levels, hardware,
software, hard drive numbers.
| So, my question actually has 2 levels
| what would be the ideal (dream lets name it) configuration, and what
would be the budget (real) configuration
| Having in consideration an estructure like:
| - Hard drive type
| +hard drive quantity
| *hard drive arrangment (RAID level and type, ie: RAID 5
hardware)
| @ Partitions
| $ use of hard drive (ie. Operative System and
program instalation, or Database)
| % Notes (optional)
| To give a nice example, we have some Oracle servers and I have them
configured this way
| a.. - SCSI3 15K rpm 76 GB
| a.. + 2 Hard drive
| a.. * RAID 1 Hardware
| a.. @ /
| a.. $ Operative system
| b.. @ /var/log
| a.. $ for System logs
| c.. @ /home
| a.. $ for user files
| b.. - SCSI 3 15K rpm 146 GB
| a.. + 4 Hard Drives
| a.. * RAID 10 Hardware
| a.. @ /var/oracle01
| a.. $ Database 01
| b.. @ /var/oracle02
| a.. $ database 02
| This is a Linux-Oracle example, but it is the closest well desing
server that we have :p And Exchange uses a database, so it will help better
to spec out a server having this kind of layout for example.
| Our current setup is RAID 5 hardware, with 3 hard drives 146 GB, and
2 partittions C and D, with the Store in the D drive and everything else in
C. Our database is about 40 GB, and we have 2 GB of RAM. But the server is
quite slow, and there seems to be some misconfigurations, so we are
thinking of putting a new server (well configured) and set the new one as
backend, and our current one as a front end (for OWA and ActiveSync), or
maybe create some redundancy.
|

.