Exchange 2007 Servers

Deathwish · 18 Aug 2008 at 21:34

Got the job of figuring out the best hardware for our upcoming Exchange 2007 project and so far I have come up with:

HP ProLiant ML370 G5 458342-421
- 2x Quad-Core 3Ghz
- Memory Board 403766-B21
- 4Gb System Memory
- 4Gb Add System Memory
- 4Gb Add System Memory
- 4Gb Add System Memory
- P400 RAID w/512Mb BBWC
- P800 RAID w/512Mb BBWC 381513-B21
- P400 RAID w/512Mb BBWC 411064-B21
- SAS Drive Cage 401415-B21
- 2x 146Gb 10k rpm SAS 418367-B21
- 6x 72Gb 15k rpm SAS 418371-B21
- 14x 72Gb 15k rpm SAS 418371-B21
- StorWorks MSA70 AG767AM

And for the HUB/CAS combined role:

HP ProLiant DL360 G5 470064-615
- 1x Quad-Core 2.83Ghz
- 2Gb System Memory
- 4Gb Add System Memory
- P400 RAID w/256Mb BBWC
- 4x 146Gb 10k rpm SAS 418367-B21

We have approx 2200 email users and doing some analysis and some usage of the Ex2007 spreadsheet planner from MS we need about 900 IOPS for the DB and 400 for the Logs (Outlook 2007 Cached Mode, and no Crackberry).

Any thoughts?

oddjob62 · 18 Aug 2008 at 21:47

No need for HA?

Teledude · 18 Aug 2008 at 22:02

Put it on ESX and save some cash ;-)

Nikumba · 18 Aug 2008 at 23:12

Where can I get the spreadsheet you metioned?

Kimbie

Deathwish · 19 Aug 2008 at 09:01

oddjob: This is half of a CCR setup

Teledude: No virtualization here yet, and it would probably be Hyper-V when it does appear.

Nikumba: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=84202

Deathwish · 19 Aug 2008 at 18:40

Any other opinions?

morfmedia · 19 Aug 2008 at 18:56

Not specced Exchange recently but we got some cracking deals on ML570's recently, came with 64GB ram (used with ESX). If you can afford it / OS will support it, prob get more RAM.

Other than that looks quite tasty.

bigredshark · 19 Aug 2008 at 19:02

900 IOPS sounds light for that size to me, we're blessed with 'power users' but we have 5500 IOPs for 1200 users (specified for 5500, it'll do far more rather pleasingly). I'd add a big safety margin to Microsoft's calculations, they were a bit light in our experience.

Deathwish · 19 Aug 2008 at 19:05

I thought it was light as well, but I was trusting it

We cap our users to 100mb Inbox size and have Email Achieving in place. I'll have another look into it, thanks

Stolly · 19 Aug 2008 at 22:58

Have 2 hub servers. If you have one hub and it goes down users can't even email each other on the same mailbox server.