White Paper Announcement - CCR and DAS

Missy Koslosky — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:28:48 GMT

My new white paper on CCR and DAS is now available!!

Continuous Cluster Replication and Direct Attached Storage: High Availability Without Breaking the Bank can be found on 3Sharp's Notable Accomplishments page, or downloaded directly from the link I've provided. Here's a quick synopsis of the paper:

The days of 2GB drives, tiny user mailbox sizes, and limiting Exchange Server to run on a single database have long since passed; storage options now abound, and disk space is cheap. Over the past ten years, storage area networks (SANs) have become ubiquitous, and IT management has often been persuaded that all data should reside on the SAN. However, the idea that the SAN is the best option for Exchange Server storage needs to be revisited; there are other options available today that provide the necessary reliability at greatly reduced cost.

The choice of building Exchange Server 2007 as a 64-bit architecture, and the availability of massive, cheap RAM, leads to greatly-reduced input/output operations per second (IOPS) for disk access. The synchronicity between this fact, and the availability of cheap disk space allows organizations to rethink their approach to storage. In this whitepaper, we explain the benefits of using Direct Attached Storage (DAS) as opposed to a SAN for Exchange Server Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR). We argue the use of DAS for CCR clusters, and provide a counterpoint to the idea that a SAN is the best storage option for CCR deployments.

New Version of Exchange 2007 Storage Cost Calculator

Missy Koslosky — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:11:08 GMT

W00t! A new version of the Exchange Server 2007 Mailbox Server Storage Cost Calculator (sheesh, that's a lot of words) has been released, and the Exchange team has updated their original blog post on the subject to reflect the changes in the tool. (The calculator can be downloaded here.)

Why am I so excited? Well, I've been doing a lot of work around clustering and storage as of late (and having a lot of fun with it), and the work Microsoft has done for the calculator helps back up some of the work that I've done. Also, there seems to be a feeling among much of the Exchange community that SANs are best for Exchange, and I disagree with that viewpoint - I think a solution that the Exchange administrator can remain in control of is the best solution. Storage administrators don't really get Exchange, and have a tendency to say stuff like, "disk is disk", which drives me right up a tree. So my preference has always been to let the storage folks play with their bits, and have other folks let THEIR stuff reside on the SAN, and to keep Exchange away from their unappreciative hands. The storage cost calculator shows that there really are HUGE savings to be gained by following my preferred model, so I dig that too.

Anyway, the storage cost calculator is pretty cool stuff, and it definitely worth an afternoon's time to play with!