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Scott Lowe -> Exchange 2010 - DAGs or HA? (21.May2010 4:56:34 PM)
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All,
Welcome to my first post in the forums! Rather than answering a question, however, I'm going to pose a question to the community to help answer a question for someone moving from Exchange '07 to Exchange '10.
The organization in question currently runs Exchange 2007 on a single server with all mailboxes stored on the SAN. They know that the design does not meet Microsoft official standards, but traffic patterns have meant that the scenario has worked very well for them.
With Exchange 2010 on the scene, they have a dilemma. Do they continue down the single-server path or do they implement a highly available architecture bases on Microsoft's services, such as DAGs and NLB? The organization wants a highly available system, but is wondering if VMware's own HA tools would provide enough of a benefit. In other words, do Microsoft's tools provide enough beyond ESX's tools to justify the additional resource needs - RAM, processor, etc., or are VMware's availability mechanisms good enough?
Further, if they want some semblence of scalability, would it make sense to start with a single mailbox server and two CAS/Hub servers?
The organization in question has about 1500 mailboxes on Exchange '07. About 250 of those are faculty and staff and the rest are students. Of those 250 faculty and staff, 70 or so are not on for good chunks of the day. Of the student mailboxes, most use OWA to check mail and are not in and out of mail all the time. As such, IO load does not really fit MS typical profiles.
Any advice?
Scott
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