RE: Implementation of gigabit infrastructure
- From: KBing <KBing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 19:43:01 -0700
Roman: I've been thru this challenge before. Here's how I found the answers
to the questions. See in-line comments below prefixed with KB:>
"Roman" wrote:
Hi all,
Please advise with the following generic question. Any ideas would highly
appreciated.
We host small LAN with ~100 workstations powered by Windows XP + Domain
Controller (MS Server Ent 2003) + MS Exchange 2003 + File Server (MS Server
2003). The network infrastructure is Ethernet 100mbps (all LAN switches are
10/100mbps-based).
Currently, Exchange's message store is 70GB (with the potential grow up to
200GB), which is being backed up over the network to the File Server using
Veritas software. All users are connecting to Exchange using Exchange Native
Mode (with Cached Exchange Mode enabled).
File Server contains ~40GB of data with the potential grow up to 60GB.
We were also planning to implement roaming (floating) profiles so all user's
profiles will be kept on File Server, and any time user logs in/out the local
profile is synchronized with File Server's one. This will increase the amount
of data located on a File Server up to 250GB.
Now we are evaluating the possibility to implement gigabit infrastructure
(invest into 1000mbps-powered switches). All servers and 90% of desktops are
already equipped with 1000mbps network cards and cabling was certified to be
gigabit compliant.
From my understanding I see two strong justification points for upgrade:
1. Backup from Exchange to File Server is really taking a lot of time to
complete. It takes us ~14-15 hours to backup 70GB of data. However, this can
be resolved by investing into regular 10/100mbps switch with two 1000mbps
interfaces and moving servers in question to gigabit interfaces.
KB:> How long does the Information Store backup take? How long does the
mailbox level backup take? I would bet that the mailbox level backup is
taking the majority of this time. The information store backups usually are
very quick. Mine is backing up 70GB (Store and Public combined) in ~30
minutes. Now my brick-level backups are taking 10-14 hours.
Gigabit isn't going to resolve that issue. I would recommend to monitor your
NIC utilization during your backup process. How much NIC utilization do you
see during an active backup? Monitor the switch port SNMP for bandwidth (use
MRTG) to see how this performs over a 1 week period. You might find that the
network bandwidth will usually never exceed 50% or more. It might I don't
know but MRTG graphing will answer that question.
MRTG
http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/
I moved to a model where I backup the information store during the week and
perform the information store + brick-level backups on weekend when there's
plenty of time to complete.
For mail recovery during the week I use the recovered items feature in
Outlook and OWA with a retention policy of 30 days.
Last resort, restore the information store to the recovery group and use
EXmerge to get the individual mail files back if it is really important.
2. Implementation of roaming profiles could significantly increase the
amount of data traversing the LAN. Here we might need to invest into
gigabit-only switches to increase throughput.
KB:> Roaming profiles won't put a heavy stress on your network throughout
the day. It will only cause significant network traffic pending on the timing
of when the users login for the day. If everyone logs in at 8AM at the same
time...you'll see delays - probably due to memory/processor or diskspeed
issues on the host file server. You might want to estimate how many users you
expect to logon at the same time, use perfmon to watch NIC bandwidth
utilization while you test load 1 profile and calculate the estimated
utilization from there.
According to the information provided could you please advise does it make
sense to implement gigabit LAN? I understand that it might be difficult to
decide but general ideas, hints or URLs for further reading would be highly
appreciated. I’m willing to provide more detailed information if necessary.
Anyone with the similar setup willing to share?
KB:> We have GB on our network using Dell switches. We print very large
materials that end up making the newspaper for our regional area. These print
jobs vary from normal size ~100k up to 800MB from what I've seen so far.
Watching network utilization during these print jobs I can see the network
utilization on the network switch port reach ~10-60Mbps for a few seconds to
30 seconds or so - meanwhile the servers involved are still very responsive
to other systems.
I'm not sold on gigabit networking but the price of network switches are
going down where we consider them commodities - especially if you buy Dell
managed switches. Cisco is very expensive otherwise I'd have those.
.
Thank you very much in advance.
- Prev by Date: Re: IP Problem
- Next by Date: Re: IP Problem
- Previous by thread: Re: Implementation of gigabit infrastructure
- Next by thread: Two different ISP's connected to network for failover. Is this possible?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
