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This article will explain in detail how to use virtualization to optimize Exchange 2010. The editor thinks it is very practical, so I share it with you as a reference. I hope you can get something after reading this article.

Since the launch was announced last November, we have seen a lot of users interested in Microsoft Exchange 2010, some of whom are Exchange 2003 users. As Exchange 2003 is phased out, many of its users are planning to upgrade directly to Exchange 2010.

Exchange 2010 also provides some important new features that will undoubtedly stimulate user interest, including:

Schema / structure change

Ipaw O improvement

Improvements to database caching

A New Storage Mode for optimizing Spatial adjacency and Spatial efficiency

Online maintenance function

Major changes to high availability

Of course, there are other new features, but many of the features outlined earlier have a direct impact on storage. As a result, NetApp has also made a large number of updates to Exchange's * practices. In this article, I will introduce three issues that are critical to deploying Exchange 2010 with NetApp storage:

High availability

Virtualized Exchange Server

Achieve high storage efficiency

You can find more details on these and other topics (including storage layout, sizing, and capacity planning) in the recently released technical report "Storage Efficiency and Best Practices for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010" (storage efficiency and * practices for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010).

High availability

Microsoft has made significant changes to the high availability architecture of Exchange 2010. Local continuous replication (LCR), Cluster continuous replication (CCR), standby continuous replication (SCR), and single replica Cluster (SCC) in Exchange 2007 are no longer available.

To replace the server and data resilience options of earlier versions of Exchange, Microsoft implemented a database availability group (DAG). DAG uses the same log shipping feature that was used in CCR. DAG contains 2 to 16 Mailbox servers. Each Mailbox server can hold one or more active or passive database replicas. Each database has a separate state, so a server can host multiple copies of the database and make only some of them active at a time.

DAG uses a new Exchange component called Active Manager. Active Manager can speed up the failover and recovery process. In the event of a failure, including an underlying storage or storage connection failure, Exchange 2010 "promotes" a copy of the database to active, and the mailbox role takes on the task of acting as a mailbox for that database. The failover process does not exceed 30 seconds.

NetApp has established a number of practices related to deploying DAG:

Microsoft recommends that you keep a minimum of three copies of each mailbox database to reduce the risk of potential storage failures, including dual disk failures. NetApp recommends using RAID-DP to deploy NetApp storage, and RAID-DP can avoid dual-disk failures and reduce the number of mailbox database replicas. When replicas are on RAID-DP, we recommend keeping two replicas for each mailbox database.

Every copy of DAG is *. To achieve point-in-time recovery, Microsoft also recommends keeping an additional "lagged" copy of the database so that point-in-time recovery can be restored up to 14 days ago. As an alternative, NetApp provides SnapManager for Exchange for users to create space-saving Snapshot â "copies and can revert to any point in time without creating lagged copies.

The storage used for active and passive copies should be the same in capacity and performance.

Active and passive copies should be placed in separate volumes.

Perform a backup of one of the passive nodes.

HA deployment scenario

If your company has a single location or you are deploying Exchange 2010 for a single site, NetApp recommends using a two-node DAG and keeping at least two copies for each Mailbox server. This provides high availability for a single site.

In cases where DAG is extended between multiple sites, NetApp recommends using at least three Mailbox servers and keeping at least three replicas for each Mailbox server, with two replicas in the primary site and one in the secondary site. This enables high availability and disaster recovery for the primary site. This can be achieved by using a three-node DAG or a two-node local DAG plus NetApp SnapMirror configuration to replicate Exchange data to a remote location. With the help of SnapMirror automatic thin replication technology and network compression, this method can be used as an alternative method when the network bandwidth is limited or the delay is too high. (for DAG, the delay must be less than 250ms.)

Figure 1 combines dual-node Exchange 2010 DAG with NetApp SnapMirror for high availability and DR.

Virtualized Exchange

Virtualizing an Exchange environment can bring significant benefits, including reducing server hardware costs, saving power and space, improving server utilization, quickly configuring servers, increasing availability, and increasing efficiency. When virtualizing Exchange 2010 roles, NetApp recommends that you separate each role on a different physical server so that it does not cause any specific roles to fail in the event of a host-server failure. For example, deploying one CAS, one hub, and two Mailbox servers for each host server can achieve a good mix of role assignments.

The Tech OnTap article of * * provides design guidelines for virtualized Microsoft Exchange and other Microsoft applications. For additional information and suggestions on virtualizing Exchange 2010 services, you should also see this Microsoft TechNet article.

Virtualizing your Exchange environment gives you more options to protect Exchange availability and makes high availability (HA) more cost-effective because it reduces server deployment costs. With proven storage efficiency, NetApp storage in a virtual Exchange environment can further reduce costs.

Improve storage efficiency and reduce cost

Optimizing the use of your storage is always important. Because Exchange 2010 requires multiple copies of Exchange data for HA and disaster recovery (DR), you will need to ensure that these replicas are stored as efficiently as possible.

Whether you implement Exchange 2010 NetApp storage on a physical server or a virtual server, it provides a number of storage efficiency techniques to significantly reduce the amount of storage required for an Exchange environment. The more you use these technologies, the greater the cumulative benefits in terms of storage savings.

RAID-DP . As mentioned earlier, RAID-DP provides better protection from disk failures than mirroring (RAID 10), and because it is tightly integrated with NetApp WAFL (write file layout anywhere), it does not have the performance problems of other RAID 6 implementations. (for a comparison of RAID types, see Table 1.) you can learn more about using RAID-DP with Exchange in this technical report.

SATA disk. Although not an efficiency technology in the strict sense, there is no doubt that SATA disks can greatly improve the economic benefits of some appropriate applications. Although SATA drives are usually not as fast as fibre Channel or SAS disks, SATA drives can be paired with NetApp flash memory, greatly improving the performance of large working sets and reducing read latency associated with high-capacity drives.

With the trend of increasing mailbox size and shrinking the Exchange Server 2010's I SATA O profile, SATA may be a workable solution in many Exchange environments. Although SATA disks may be a good choice in terms of performance and capacity, NetApp recommends that when using SATA disks for Exchange deployments, they should be used in conjunction with flash memory and placed in a DS4243 disk rack.

Table 1 possibility of data loss due to the use of SATA disks and various types of RAID.

The possibility of RAID type causing data loss within five years the associated risk of data loss compared with RAID-DP

RAID 10 (1 data disk) 0.333

RAID 5 (7 data disks) 6.0% 3955

RAID 6 (7 data disks) 0.002% 1.0

RAID-DP 7 (7 data disks) 0.002% 1.0

Automatic streamlining configuration. NetApp Auto-thin configuration allows storage space to be configured, but does not occupy storage space until data is written to the space (instant storage). Traditional configuration models often overconfigure LUN because it is sometimes difficult or impossible to understand the amount of space required for the creation of storage volumes. Unused space remains free until the application uses it, if it has been used. By automatically streamlining configuration, multiple application LUN can share the same pool of free space, thus greatly improving space efficiency.

Deduplication. NetApp deduplication technology enables you to eliminate large amounts of duplicated data that is common in any messaging environment. Deduplication can reduce the storage required for Exchange by 10 to 30 percent, depending on your messaging profile. Exchange 2010 removes the single-instance storage feature of Exchange, which increases Exchange storage. NetApp deduplication can also help eliminate other duplicates caused by this change.

In a virtual Exchange environment, this technology brings more benefits. Because the virtual server environment has many identical copies of the same operating system, applications, and other objects, there is always a lot of duplicate data in this environment. NetApp storage eliminates most of the redundant data by using deduplicated or auto-thin clones with NetApp FlexClone technology. In fact, NetApp guarantees a 50% reduction in the amount of storage required to use NetApp storage in a virtual environment compared to the benchmark for traditional storage.

Snapshot . Your Exchange environment must be backed up quickly and efficiently. NetApp Snapshot technology provides zero-cost, near-instantaneous backups and point-in-time copies of volumes or LUN by creating WAFL consistent points (CP). Using Snapshot saves storage costs for backup and recovery and opens up many possibilities for efficient data management.

In order to simplify the management and data protection of Exchange environment, NetApp developed SnapManager for Exchange software. SnapManager for Exchange automates the complex, manual, and time-consuming processes associated with backing up, restoring, and validating Exchange Server databases, and uses Snapshot technology to reduce backup time to seconds and restore time to minutes. NetApp Single Mailbox Recovery software enables quick recovery of individual mailboxes, messages or attachments without interrupting other Exchange users. SnapManager for Exchange provides the ability to quickly and easily recover to different points in time, eliminating the need to keep "lagging" database copies, resulting in additional storage savings.

This is the end of this article on "how to optimize Exchange 2010 with Virtualization". I hope the above content can be of some help to you, so that you can learn more knowledge. if you think the article is good, please share it for more people to see.

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