Re: Exchange 2007 CCR design

There's no question that there is a lot of value add to using SAN storage.
Exactly what that value add is depends on the specific SAN, and how that
applies to you organization depends on your organization's specific needs.


"Brian Henderson" <BrianHenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:9282A489-641B-4EB2-A1D7-D95C45489211@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
No one really answered your question "Should we move from DAS to SAN?"

I'd say Yes. Here are the benefits:

Centralized Management Allows for Higher Capacity Utilization.

Instead of managing each server's utilization separately, a free space
pool
can be managed from a central location to accommodate greater scalability
and
constantly changing requirements.

Greater Resiliency to Failures through Shared Resource Distribution.

Disk failures on a direct-attached-storage (DAS) array are widely "felt"
by
users who reside on that mailbox server. When databases are stored on a
storage area networks, users are distributed across fault-tolerant
architectures that are able to withstand various types of outages that
other
customers have faced before. so that when failures do happen, users are
likely to not even notice.

LAN-Free Snapshot Backups and Replication Can Eliminate Backup Windows.

Streaming backups often take many hours and consume the majority of CPU
operations during the backup process. SAN-based snapshot technologies
allow
Exchange to be backed up with little to no downtime or impact to
production
servers. Depending on the SW, it is simple to add snapshots into your
current backup architecture - without throwing away your existing backup
software. Replication software can also be combined with these snapshot
technologies to deliver a LAN-free offsite backup.

Synchronous Replication Allows for Automated, Intelligent DR with Zero
Data
Loss

Some of the built-in replication features for Exchange are good enough for
small environments, but these features also require a lot of disk space,
consume host CPU resources, and network bandwidth. They also put companies
at
risk of losing data (the amount of data in uncommitted log files). Today,
only SAN-based synchronous replication offers the ability to have a
failure
and not lose any data in transit. In addition, you have some stuff like
EMC's
Cluster Enablers which can be combined with synchronous replication
technologies in order to provide a zero-data loss solution with automatic
failover.

Enable Advanced Capabilities Such as Virtualization, Global Archiving,
Single Mailbox Restore, Image Provisioning, Zero Data Loss Replication,
and
More

Companies that consolidate onto a SAN immediately see a wide-variety of
benefits they hadn't seen in distributed (DAS) environments. A SAN can
provide an optimal framework for a virtualized infrastructure utilizing
VMware ESX or Microsoft's upcoming Hyper-V. Archiving can be set up to
eliminate PST files and enable true SIS (single instance storage) across
all
mailbox servers. Dedupe technologies can allow incremental-forever
functionality so that only the smallest changes ever get sent across the
network. There are also some cool technologies that can open up restored
single mailboxes from a snapshot copy of Exchange - without requiring
another
Exchange license - or performing brick-level backups. Snapshot copies are
also useful for keeping gold copies of server images and for testing
service
pack upgrades.

Lower Overall Costs of Management and Operation

Although cutting out the SAN from the budget will certainly save some
money,
the operational costs of an environment utilizing a SAN are actually lower
than deploying direct attached storage (DAS). Exchange CCR and SCR still
require significant amounts of servers, disk space, floor space, power,
and
cooling. It takes more time and effort to manage an environment like
this -
higher operational expenses. With a SAN, a single person can manage more
terabytes, and handle advanced features in a centralized location as
opposed
to small islands of server-attached storage. This is much more efficient
and
results in much lower overall costs.

HTH
B

"Chris" wrote:

We are currently running Exchange 2003 two node cluster (A/P) using EMC
SAN.
Moving to Exchange 2007 we plan to achive the same availbility by using
CCR.
The question is that whether we should SAN to DAS? Besides the cost (SAN
is
expensive since we need to add new DAE) what are the pros and cons?

Thanks.


.

Relevant Pages

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