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A healthy and ideal Exchange Server requires efficient setup of the storage components. It assures that the arranged storage fulfills the current requirement while accommodating the evolving business requirements. Doing this guarantees enhanced functionality of the server.
Being an Exchange administrator, it is crucial to know about storage options and requirements of mailbox servers. Let’s start to learn about the guide to configure storage in Exchange Server to deliver optimized performance and infinite business growth.
Best Practices for Storage in Exchange Server
Here are some top recommended practices to follow for a well-performing server:
Consider Scope of Growth and Expansion
Planning, being the foundation of every strategy, is crucial when setting up storage for the Exchange Server. With efficient planning, you can achieve a healthy and functional server. Primary factors for storage include mailbox sizing, amount of data to be stored, performance requirements, data retention policies, and estimation for scalability.
Determine an average mailbox size to be designated for each user and set up a standard size limit for each mailbox. It plays a crucial role in reducing IT overhead costs while improving productivity. Draft the data retention policies according to the compliance standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc.
Do not forget to have at least 20% additional storage than the current usage to leave room for business growth.
Prepare a Strategy for Database Distribution
Targeting high performance and flexibility is easy with a well-defined strategy for database distribution with high availability. Exchange Server offers two types of licenses: Standard and Enterprise.
Create a plan that defines how your organization’s mailboxes will be distributed. Here’s how to execute this:
Understand your business requirements
Before moving ahead, you must know your current environment and business needs. Analyze based on the following parameters:
- To understand overall storage requirements, check the current number of users and their mailbox sizes.
- Consider the pattern users follow to interact with their mailboxes. Find out if the users have mailboxes with large attachments.
- Identify your budget to find suitable storage and high availability solutions.
- Learn about the existing server & storage along with their capabilities and limitations.
Planning database distribution
Database distribution aims to distribute the input/output load efficiently throughout multiple storage locations. Here’s how to do this:
- Create and split the users into multiple databases across different volumes to avoid a strain on a single large volume.
- Keep track of the database growth and try to maintain all the databases of a similar size.
- Categorize database users based on their roles and usage on the server to optimize storage distribution.
- Arrange the most active database on top in case of storage performance tiers infrastructure (SAS, SSD, SATA, etc.) in place.
Plan for high availability and redundancy
Database Availability Groups or DAG in Exchange Server allow easy database replication among multiple mailbox servers. It assures redundancy and high availability of Exchange Server with all the features as original server.
- Plan for two to three copies of databases (with one active and one passive) stored in different locations for higher resilience.
- Allocate the two copies (active and passive) around mailbox servers in the Database Availability Group to prevent downtime.
- Arrange stable and fast network bandwidth between different members of DAG for smooth data replication.
- Avoid shared storage for the Database Availability Groups, as it can induce a single point of failure. Assign independent storage to each DAG member.
- Get diverse storage options, such as RAID, storage controllers, etc., for different DAG members.
- Try lagged database copies during instances of disaster recovery, but not as a substitute for primary High Availability.
Consider bottleneck prevention measures
Proper planning can help you escape I/O bottlenecks. Follow the below measures:
- Check the disk I/O performance using tools like Windows Performance Monitor (PerfMon).
- Try to project future requirements according to the increasing user base and usage patterns.
- Select appropriate storage from SSDs, HDDs, RAID Configurations, SAN, etc., to meet the input/output requirements.
- Place databases and transaction logs in two different volumes for better performance.
- Manage the database sizes by avoiding extremely large databases. Large databases have an adverse effect on performance and recovery time.
Pick Right Storage for the Server
It is important to pick the right storage for your server as it will influence the performance, efficiency, and cost of the server. To find the right storage, there are certain parameters that you must consider. Let’s dive in to learn about them.
How to find the right storage?
Factors that influence the selection of storage in Exchange Server includes:
- Capacity Before finding the storage, you need to identify the number of expected users and the average mailbox size. This will directly impact the storage requirements for your organization.
- Performance Since Exchange Server is highly Input/Output sensitive, identify the average IOPS for your Exchange environment. Calculate the required databases per server along with the maximum database size. The storage size needs to be large enough to accommodate future users and their mailboxes.
- High availability For Database Availability Groups, you need to replicate databases and create copies, which will demand more storage on the server.
- Budget Budget is an important constraint in determining the storage type. Go for a storage that fits into your budget without putting any strain on the cost of other resources.
|
Storage Type |
Description |
Pros |
Cons |
Access |
| Direct Attached Storage (DAS) | Digital storage that is directly connected to a server or computer without a network connection. | Cost effective and easy to setup. | Risk of creating single point of failure and not suited for DAG members. | Accessed directly by the server. |
| Storage Area Network (SAN) | Connect remote computer storage medias, allowing multiple servers to access the shared storage effectively. | Highly scalable, supports DAG members and offers advanced features. | Can be expensive and is complex to set up. | Accessed by multiple servers. |
| Network Attached Storage (NAS) | Independent computer connected to a network to provide additional storage to other devices in the network. | Economical than SAN and easy to set up. | Offer low performance and not suited for Exchange server databases. | Accessed via NFS or SMB protocols. |
|
Disk Type |
Description |
Pros |
Cons |
| Serial ATA (SATA) or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment | Hard drive interface that reads and writes data to/from the storage. | Higher capacity, moderate performance, and low cost | Low performance and suitable for less active data |
| Solid State Drives (SSDs) | Non-volatile storage device to store data permanently. Replicates the interface of a hard disk drive. SSDs are available with different capacities and performance. | High performance and low latency | Quite expensive |
| Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) | Use a point-to-point serial protocol to transfer data digitally between devices connected through a physical cable. | Moderate capacity, high performance, and cost effective | Higher cost as compared to SATA. |
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)
RAID helps to improve the performance traits and safeguard individual disks from failures. For standalone mailbox servers, RAID technology is essential for mailbox database and log volumes.
- RAID 1 (Mirroring): Data is imaged across disks (usually two or more). Best for transaction logs. Support high redundancy and optimized read performance. Expect lower usable capacity and poor write performance.
- RAID 5 (Striping with Parity): Fast, reliable, and secure disk configuration suitable for databases. Requires 3 to 16 disks. Deliver high read performance with balanced redundancy and capacity.
- RAID 6 (Striping with Double Parity): Uses two parity strips to endure two consecutive disk failures. Right fit for databases that requires critical data protection. Redundancy is higher than RAID 5, and the risk of data loss is low.
- Raid 10 (Mirrored Strips): Nested or hybrid level where two disks (RAID 0 and RAID 1) are combined. High redundancy as well as performance, but low usable capacity.
Storage Spaces Storage solution that supports virtualization capacities in Windows Server. Allows easy organization of physical disks into storage pools connected through USB, SATA, etc. It works just like physical disks but with abilities such as thin provisioning and resiliency to failures.
Storage Tiers Combination of different storage types to achieve optimized performance at comparatively lower cost. However, it is not recommended as it can severely impact the system’s performance.
Optimize storage with partitioning & formatting
Partitioning and formatting the storage drives help with better disk space management, quick data access, and other performance benefits.
It is recommended to use NTFS (New Technology File System) to format a drive due to the offered security and reliability for Exchange Server data. Formatting a storage drive with a 64 kB allocation unit size is suggested for optimized input/output performance of the server.
Plan for a standby storage
When you plan to get storage, always have 20 to 30% of supplementary storage along with the existing mailbox requirement. As the mailbox size or number of users increases, this space will act as a standby storage to save the new data. It will save the server from corruption and data loss incidents.
Regular monitoring is the key
Regular monitoring always helps you be proactive in your game plan. With this, you can easily figure out when the drive needs an upgrade or reconfiguration. Organizations often skip this step; however, it is crucial to prevent unfavorable circumstances like corruption in the Exchange Server.
Conclusion
Following the best practices mentioned in this article will help you configure storage in Exchange Server. With so many storage technologies, consider the factors and business requirements to find a suitable one. However, there can be issues when the server fails or crashes.
In such instances, you can use an EDB repair tool to remove corruption from the server and recover the Exchange database. Kernel for Exchange Server recovers data from offline, orphaned, damaged, or corrupted databases smoothly. You do not need to have technical skills to access this software, as it comes with a user-friendly and self-descriptive user interface.
Use the EDB to PST converter to recover the database with complete integrity and zero downtime.
