Review of new design - Please

Have been pulling my hair out trying to design a new Exchange enviroment
based on best practices from Microsoft. This is enough to drive someone nuts!
We currently utilize pop3 mail thu a Linux box with about 500 users. Will
setup and install an Exchange enviroment with the mailbox count for users
moving to approximately 1400.
Overall plan is to setup an FE/BE config utilizing ISA 2004 out front w/ FE
residing in internal network. Have already purchased ISA and FE hardware and
am now grappling with best setup for BE. My current idea is to set up an
Active/Passive Cluster with a small SAN using the HP packaged cluster which
is (2) DL380 with a MSA1000 Fiber storage controller.
Here is where I get confused. Microsoft best practice recommends: ( Raid 1
for OS)-(Raid 1 for page file????)-(Raid 1+0 for SMTP queues)-(Raid 1 for log
files)-(Raid 1+0 for DB). Questions are as follows:

Why would you mirror the page file?
Do I need separate physical disks for each of the above sets?
Is an array neccesary for the SMTP que?
If I have more than one storage group do my trans logs have to be on
different physcial drives that are mirrored?

According to MS Optimizing Storage doc my layout would be as follows:
C:\OS, Exchange - Raid 1 - direct attached storage
D:\Page File - Raid 1 - direct attached storage
E:\SMTP and MTA queues - Raid 0+1 - SAN
F:\log files for Group1 - Raid 1 - SAN
G:\DB for Group1 - Raid 0+1 - SAN
H:\log files for Group2 - Raid 1 - SAN
I:\DB for Group2 - Raid 0+1 - SAN
Thats 4 physical drives in each server and a minimum of 16 drives in the SAN
- I only have 14 bay available in the SAN.
I would greatly appreciate any help.
Thanks,
Ron

.

Relevant Pages

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