New Exchange 2007 How many Groups

[people3]

I am getting specifications together for our new exchange server (exchange 2007), to be installed in the next couple of months.

I have been through all the tools and wizards available on line to work out the number of Hard disks required which is fine.

It will be configured as a single exchange (with OWA)

- 200 Users

-Mailbox size max 1.5gb (2 day email retention)

-Fairly heavy use

-All clients running outlook in cached mode.

-20 Blackberry's using BES (on seperate server)

The spec of the servers come back fine but both HP and Dell tools recommend that I set up 3 storage groups (and 3 information stores, each store about 134GB)

Is there a reason why they don’t recommend just 1 storage group and 1 store?

Is that just due to the amount of time it would take to restore if there was a failure, Could I just have 1 storage group and 1 store?

Many Thanks

 

[baddos]

That is because you're very generous on your mailbox size limits.

If all of your mailboxes were to become full, that would be a ton of mail for 1 store.

 

[Zelandakh]

Exchange 2007 is recommended with a 100GB mail store maximum or 200GB if using clustering.

You *could* ignore it and put all of your eggs in one basket but 3 stores would be a worthwhile investment of your time. Try to break the users logically.

 

[58sniper]

As the others said, plus, look at backup/restore times for a single SG. With smaller SGs, the restore time is much smaller. If a mailbox database goes belly-up, you're affecting a smaller number of users than if they're all in one.

2 day retention? That's pretty short, IMHO. The longer the retention, the less likely you'll need to go to tape to restore things. True in that your databases will be bigger, but....

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/

 

[people3]

HI,

Thanks for all the replies.

I think i will stick to the best practice and have 3 stores. (how do people work out which store to put each user in, sort on names ect?)

I’m not too worried about the retention or even the amount of time to bring the store back online (within reason 1 day). We use an email archive service to archive all the mail for backup and disaster recovery, this has an outlook plug-in so even if the server goes down people can still send and receive mail.

Many thanks for the replies

 

[58sniper]

You would somewhat evenly distribute mailboxes over the three. This can be based on any number of fields. There are even PowerShell scripts floating around that will evenly spread them out.

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/

 

[Zelandakh]

I use a 91 day retension period so that if everything goes pear shaped, I can restore any email you want from your bin back to the last tape backup kept going back forever.

Disribution means single instance. Group departments together. Group similar departments together.

 

[people3]

HI,

Again thanks for the replies.

one final question,

If i create 3 seperate groups with 1 inforamtion store in each, can they all share the same public folders that i need to install in 2007.

Also are all users visable in the same GAL. or any other things i should look out for.

Many Thanks

 

[58sniper]

Yes to both questions. They can all use the same PF database (if you must have PF). And they all appear in the same GAL.

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/