Re: e3k upgrade - hardware spec

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 02:01:01 -0700, George
<George@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I just joined a company that is running E3k SP1 on a single CPU box with
>Xeon 2.8Ghz processor with 2Gb of RAM. Trend Micro Scan Mail is also
>installed on the box as well as iHateSpam. TrendMicro is reporting between
>45000 and 85000 messages scanned per day. This is on the backend server.
>The front end one is a slower machines which is currently setup to send all
>outbound mail and handle few OWA users...
>
>I'd like to replace both machines, but am unsure of the spec and
>configuration of the new machines. I'd like to have a cluster to increase
>availability, but am not sure whether I need the front-end - we haven't got
>many OWA users and more powerful machine should be able to handle the
>outbound mail. We also have NetApp IP SAN so the new cluster will have its
>data on it. The exchange store is split up in two storage groups with five
>stores - all about 80Gb. Both machines in the cluster will be xeon maybe with
>4Gb RAM, but I would appreciate any advise from techies who have been down
>this road before.

Well, the backend looks fine apart from the lack of a 2nd processor.
Can you get another processor for that box?
Alternatively get another box, twin processor this time with the
processors and memory that you can afford (as much as, but don't break
the bank on the latest chips etc.) and use that as the BE. Make the
original box an FE. Use the slower system for some other task, if it's
up to it.

Think very carefuly about a cluster. A cluster doesn't necesarily
increase uptimew for you or your users. If you have a business
requirement then ok, but most folk don't.

Rather than use two SG's that are packed with stores, separate all the
stores evenly across all four SG's that you can create. This is a not
the same advice as for an E2K system, it's specific to E2K3 because of
the memory optimisation.
.

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