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Exchange 2010 Highly Available design

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TheHuth

IS-IT--Management
Dec 28, 2011
5
US
I wrote a post earlier, but I have scrapped that design, so I am starting a new thread.

I am working on a project to upgrade our existing Exchange 2003 environment to Exchange 2010. Prior to me hiring on at this new company, my managers purchased their licenses for Exchange 2010. They were purchased over a year ago, so I wont be able to get a refund. At my disposal I have 1xEnterprise Exchange 2010, 5xStandard Exchange 2010, and 600xStandard Cal's. Having done some extensive research, I regret to say I dont think I'll have a need for the Enterprise Exchange 2010 license.

Before I go in the specifics about how I want to lay things out, I need to explain the way mail routes through our network. For incoming mail it goes Barracuda Spam/Firewall to Symantec PGP server to Exchange environment. I didnt design the original network, but I will also state that we only have one MX record that points to the Barracuda. I realize this is a serious design flaw since if our internet connection goes down at the main site, emails will either be delayed or NDR'd. But thats something to look at in the future. For now, my focus is strictly on designing the Exchange 2010 environment.

The main thing I keep reading over and over again is if you want to do High Availability you really should design it that way from the beginning. Since I have all of these Exchange server licenses at my disposal, here is how I plan to set them up.

First I'm looking at buying 2 Kemp Technology load balancers (One active/One hot standby). I will then install 2 Exchange Standard servers and set up them up as a CAS array and hub transport.

Next I will install 2 more Exchange standard servers with the mailbox role, and set them up in a DAG. I havent decided how many databases I will use total, but for design sake, lets plan for 4 Private Stores databases in the Dag. I will also replicate the public folders to both, which will bring me to the 5 maximum databases for the standard license.

That leaves me one left over Standard Server and Enterprise server licenses.

Here are a couple of questions I have.

1) Does the above design look good to begin with?
2) I know that mailbox databases are tied to your cas server or cas array. Is the same true if your CAS server is used for OWA and OMA? The reason I ask, is would it make any sense to create one more CAS server for the OWA and OMA traffic?
3) I know people recommend RAID 10 for the mailbox database storage. Would it possibly make sense to use RAID 6?
4) We will be using 2 different mailbox quotas. One for regular employees, and one for management. I know they removed "Storage Groups" from exchange 2010. What is the best way to implement 2 storage quota's? I presume I would use separate databases for the two user types, but maybe there is something else I need to know.

As always, thank you all in advance for your advice.
 
Since you mention 600 standard CALs, I'll assume that roughly equates to the number of users you have.

That being the case, I don't see the need to separate the Hub/CAS from the mailbox servers. Since you're getting Kemp HLBs, I'd at least think about making all of the servers multi-role.

Depending on what your failover requirements are, you could go with 2 servers, 3 server, or more.

OWA and OMA traffic will be leveraged across all CAS servers in the array. Even if most/all of your users were using OWA or OMA, 2 properly sized servers should be fine.

RAID levels depend on what your hardware supports, and the cost factor. Exchange 2010 supports using JBOD as well, if you have at least three copies of the databases. We've deployed JBOD on servers housing thousands of users each without issue.

Quotas can be defined at various levels, including the database. But I'm not a fan of separating mgmt from line workers in databases. I prefer to mix the two and apply direct quotas to the users.

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Agree with 58Sniper.

600 users can easily fit on 1 server. Go for 2 for redundancy with all roles. Ensure that the HLBs are configured correctly as that is a source of problems!

Make sure that you have 64 bit DCs if at all possible to keep response times good.

Back end disk is basically down to money. Spindle count will really help.
 
Only to add what the others have stated, I have this exact setup but using Barracuda load balancers instead of Kemp and it's worked great for me. I have two multirole installed 2010 boxes (except UM) for about 700+ users and don't even come close to taxing them. They are set up in a CAS array and DAG for mailbox. Also, you might want to look into using the cloud filtering service of the Barracuda...It's free if you are under any of their maintenance plans and mx points to them, they in turn point to you after mail has been cleaned. This is part of their latest firmware release for that alliance and if you use their cloud service, it will spool mail for 96 hours till acces to your system is back up should there be an issue. That new firmware also includes AV software that you can load on your Exchange server(s) directly should you so choose; that's also free as long as your under their maintenance plan.
 
Sorry, just wanted to clarify that the cloud filtering is tied to the SPAM filtering appliance, not anything to with the load balancers....I know Kemp is good stuff also.
 
My management has laid out their concerns on consolidating all of the servers back at the datacenter. So unfortunately this design wont work. Thank you all for your responses.
 
So split the company into 2 and multi role the boxes and push each site to the local-ish Exchange server.
 
How does the user count break down? How many are in these offices? I generally don't start putting servers in branches unless their are a LOT of users. More than several hundred to say the least.

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And if data center consolidation is out, do you have a server room with fire protection, UPS, redundant air con etc in each branch office? Plus someone on site to back it up each day.
 
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