New Exchange Install 1

[hande]

Just a quick one, how many drives should I configure on a new server running raid5 and what size should they be

Many Thanks


Dominic

 

[anawrocki]

Depends on how many users and how much data. Minimum for RAID 5 is 3 drives.

 

[hande]

Max 20 users not very much data no huge attachments

Friend has reconmended

16gb for the o/s

67gb for the logs

136gb for the exchange mailbox and public folder store

?? I have three 73gb drives

 

[sicktrick]

3 73GB drives in raid5 is 146GB's of usable space.

that's a lot of space for logs, which will collapse if you plan on doing nightly backups.

 

[hande]

Thanks for this advise how would you configure the drives?

Thanks again?

Hande

 

[dkediger]

Since you're looking at 20 users, I assume you will be using Exchange Standard rather than Enterprise. If this is the case, Standard has a 16GB limit each on the Private and Public ISs.

No sense in 136 GB for the IS's. Make a partition of 18-20GB for each of the Public and Private IS's, and keep 18-20GB free elsewhere for offline defrags.

Ditto the recommendation on the logs. If the IS is getting backed up regularly, the logs get flushed and "emptied" during the backup.

20GB OS
20GB Private IS
20GB Public IS
20GB "defrag" Space
20GB Logs
20GB Misc Apps
26GB Misc Data

The OS, Misc Apps, Misc Data could be combined. If your RAID controller will support it, you could leave ~10GB undesignated as a reserve for drive/partition expansion if needed in a pinch.

 

[hande]

Thanks very much Dkediger

On the installation of exchange 2003 server where do I tell it put the Private and Public etc ?

Also is one Raid 5 set ok?

Yes its the standard version

Also if I have configured the 20 drive as 16gb should I expand it using partition magic or something?

Thanks Once again

Hande

 

[dkediger]

If you already have the 16GB created, that's fine the way it is. I just used 20 as a nice round number.

The IS database and log files locations can be adjusted after Exchange installation. In Exchange System Manager, expand the Organization, then the Admin Group, then Servers, and then your server object. The log file locations are associated with the Storage Group object. You can right click on that to set the location.

The IS locations are adjusted under their respective Public or Private objects in the Storage Group tree.

With just 3 drives, one RAID unit partioned into several drives as above is fine. In a heavier used Exchange environment, you need more advanced RAID features; for 20-50 users though, your setup is fine.

 

[hande]

Thanks again, we will have 20 users max in the first year then we will have webmail for the 80 - 100 remote sites however even though this is a larger number the emails do not need to be retained for a long period of time 30 days max then the the remote sites can have there boxes cleared out, each remote site will get the same email so its not like we are sending different emails etc. Besides anything we send them as an attachment they can save to there desktop or we can set there outlook up to save the mailbox locally

Does exchange 2003 Std have something like mailbox manager?

Thanks again

Hande