Building Exchange 2k7 server

[mspain]

Hello all,

I was hoping for some feedback. I am looking at replacing my aging Exchange 2003 server.

Currently I have about 50 mailboxes that total around 25GB.

I think given our company size and not wanting to spend a money on another server, I'll just be putting together one Exchange 2007 server with all the roles on one box.

Here's what I'm looking at so far:
2x Xeon 5506
12 GB RAM

For storage I'll be using SATA. SAS would be too expensive:
2 250GB drives in RAID1 - For OS and page file
2 250GB drives in RAID1 - For transaction logs
4 250GB drives in RAID10 - For Exchange DB

I'm looking at the LSI 9260-8i Raid Card. Would it be better to get two cards or would this suffice?

Any feedback would greatly help. Too much, too little? Of course I want a little flexibility for future expansions and upgrades.

Thanks a lot.

 

[ShackDaddy]

For 125 mailboxes or more this would be a good spec.

For 50 mailboxes, your drive spec seems overkill. Even if you plan for 100gb in mailbox storage, you still have very little I/O, and to be honest, you'd probably be fine dropping the RAID10 altogether. Also, you don't need 8 cores here. Having a single quad-core processor would be plenty.

For so few mailboxes, it's not that imperative to put the transaction logs on separate spindles from the databases, especially on E2007, which has decreased disk I/O significantly. If you want to spend the extra money, bring your RAM up to 16gb, and you'll probably increase performance more than putting the db\logs on different spindles would have.

Now if this were an SBS 2008 box, then you might want to divy up the storage like you've described above, since you'd have all sorts of other things in play, like WSUS and such, but if this is more or less a dedicated server, my advice stands.

Why don't you look into going with Exchange 2010? Check out the minimum requirements for that?

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[mspain]

Hmm..thanks Dave.

I have considered 2010, but there a few considerations that would not make that a good choice. Firstly, the anti-virus I am using is not compatible at the moment. Secondly, I am going to be using Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 which is not compatible with Exchange 2010, and I cannot upgrade to Backup Exec 2010 at this moment.

I should also mention, this box will be running GFI MailEssentials as well for anti-spam filtering. Not sure how much impact that will make.

I choose RAID 10 because I've had the unpleasant experience of losing 2 of 3 drives in my current RAID5 setup before, so I figured it would be nice to have the extra fault tolerance.

I may do like you say though and drop the CPU down to a single quad-core E5520 instead.

 

[PaulGillespie]

I'm installing an E2007 server at the moment for 50 mailboxes and 150GB of stores. Spec is a single Xeon QC, 8GB Ram, 2 x 250 SATA RAID 1 for OS and 4 x 750GB SATA RAID 10 for trans logs and stores, Perc H700 RAID card.

Watch out, Backup Exec 12.5 does not support Exchange 2007 with SP2 installed. You can only install SP1. I'm in the same boat as you. I was also using GFI but have dropped it in favor of Sophos PureMessage.

It sounds like you're building your server. I've found that using Dell or HP can almost be almost as cheap. less hassle and the warranty is better. YMMV though. I'm using a Dell T410.

 

[58sniper]

this box will be running GFI MailEssentials as well for anti-spam filtering

Why? Exchange 2007 and 2010 have excellent antispam features built in. No need for GFI.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[mspain]

Watch out, Backup Exec 12.5 does not support Exchange 2007 with SP2 installed. You can only install SP1

This is the first I've heard of this. Are you sure? According to Symantec, SP2 is officially supported by BE 12.5

http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/backupexec-and-exchange-2007-sp2

Why? Exchange 2007 and 2010 have excellent antispam features built in. No need for GFI.

Thanks for the input sniper. I currently have Brightmail Anti-Spam Message Filter which has worked wonders at catching spam that got through the IMF in Exchange 2003 SP2. But I need a solution that can be installed on the Exchange Server and Brightmail can't be installed on a 64-bit platform hence why I was going to switch to GFI.

So do you feel the antispam capabilities of Exchange 2007 would be an effective alternative to a 3rd party solution like Brightmail?

Thanks again for your input.