Exchange 2007 High Availability (25000 Mailboxes)

Jesus Martin · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 15

Hi All,

we are in the process of migrating a disperse Exchange 2003 organization to
a consolidated Exchange 2007 platform. The organization has more than 20000
mailboxes and would like to know your recommendations in terms of setting up
a high available environment.

So far, we have been thinking to deploy a 6 nodes SCC cluster (A/A/A/A/P/P)
with 6000 mailboxes per server and a 2/4 nodes NLB with CAS and HT. then 2
nodes SCR in a second datacenter

My question is sizing the servers to support 6000 mailboxes and the maximum
number of mailboxes recommendation.

We want to implement 4XCores processors and 16GBs of RAM per node, would
this be enough? our users do have an average profile (10 mails sent / 40
received)

any suggestions or experiences?

thanks

Archived from group: microsoft>public>exchange>clustering

Bharat Suneja [MVP] · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 1043

- Are you using some third-party solution for storage redundancy? If not,
with SCC the shared storage is single point of failure, and the reason why
CCR warrants a consideration.
- I would bump up the RAM to 22/24Gigs (3.5Mb/mailbox + 2 Gigs)
- Need 2 x Quad proc using the rule of of thumb calculation of 1 core/1000
users of average profile.
- Make sure you have a backup/recovery mechanism that allows you to restore
a server within the time specified in SLAs or what you're comfortable with.
The down side of server consolidation - any extended outages can be quiet
damaging to the organization and your SLAs.

--
Bharat Suneja
MVP - Exchange
www.zenprise.com
NEW blog location:
exchangepedia.com/blog
----------------------------------------------

"Jesus Martin" wrote in message @TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Hi All,
>
> we are in the process of migrating a disperse Exchange 2003 organization
> to a consolidated Exchange 2007 platform. The organization has more than
> 20000 mailboxes and would like to know your recommendations in terms of
> setting up a high available environment.
>
> So far, we have been thinking to deploy a 6 nodes SCC cluster
> (A/A/A/A/P/P) with 6000 mailboxes per server and a 2/4 nodes NLB with CAS
> and HT. then 2 nodes SCR in a second datacenter
>
> My question is sizing the servers to support 6000 mailboxes and the
> maximum number of mailboxes recommendation.
>
> We want to implement 4XCores processors and 16GBs of RAM per node, would
> this be enough? our users do have an average profile (10 mails sent / 40
> received)
>
> any suggestions or experiences?
>
> thanks
>

Jesus Martin · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 15

Thanks Bharat,

We are considering NetApp solutions for Storage Redundancy but I am
evaluating CCR too, and my question is how many CCR clusters you think we
would need to support 25000 of Mailboxes. Do you think 4 clusters, with 2
nodes each, would work if Memory and Processor are big enough? And as far as
I remember CCR Mailbox DBs can be bigger around 500 GBs.

What about if you setup 4 CCRs clusters and want to deploy standby
continuous replication, should you deploy 4 servers (1 per source cluster)
to support the datacenter failover? in the case of SCC, 1 destination
cluster would be enough, so this impact in the number of servers ...

Thanks

"Bharat Suneja [MVP]" wrote in message @TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>- Are you using some third-party solution for storage redundancy? If not,
>with SCC the shared storage is single point of failure, and the reason why
>CCR warrants a consideration.
> - I would bump up the RAM to 22/24Gigs (3.5Mb/mailbox + 2 Gigs)
> - Need 2 x Quad proc using the rule of of thumb calculation of 1 core/1000
> users of average profile.
> - Make sure you have a backup/recovery mechanism that allows you to
> restore a server within the time specified in SLAs or what you're
> comfortable with. The down side of server consolidation - any extended
> outages can be quiet damaging to the organization and your SLAs.
>
> --
> Bharat Suneja
> MVP - Exchange
> www.zenprise.com
> NEW blog location:
> exchangepedia.com/blog
> ----------------------------------------------
>
>
> "Jesus Martin" wrote in message
> @TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>> Hi All,
>>
>> we are in the process of migrating a disperse Exchange 2003 organization
>> to a consolidated Exchange 2007 platform. The organization has more than
>> 20000 mailboxes and would like to know your recommendations in terms of
>> setting up a high available environment.
>>
>> So far, we have been thinking to deploy a 6 nodes SCC cluster
>> (A/A/A/A/P/P) with 6000 mailboxes per server and a 2/4 nodes NLB with CAS
>> and HT. then 2 nodes SCR in a second datacenter
>>
>> My question is sizing the servers to support 6000 mailboxes and the
>> maximum number of mailboxes recommendation.
>>
>> We want to implement 4XCores processors and 16GBs of RAM per node, would
>> this be enough? our users do have an average profile (10 mails sent / 40
>> received)
>>
>> any suggestions or experiences?
>>
>> thanks
>>
>
>

Bharat Suneja [MVP] · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 1043

- Since SCR supports many (sources) to one (target), there's no particular
reason to have multiple clusters (SCC/CCR - without CMS of course.. ) on the
target cluster, unless you anticipate multiple source servers/clusters
failing.
- If you've already planned for Storage redundancy, and have existing
investments in storage, SCC may be the better option. Starting afresh, I
would consider CCR, but overall CCR does increase the number of servers when
scaling up because of the 1:1 ration of active/passive (or in other words, a
passive node being dedicated to each active node to replicate/perform
consistency checks on logs/DB, etc.. ).

--
Bharat Suneja
MVP - Exchange
www.zenprise.com
NEW blog location:
exchangepedia.com/blog
----------------------------

"Jesus Martin" wrote in message @TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Thanks Bharat,
>
> We are considering NetApp solutions for Storage Redundancy but I am
> evaluating CCR too, and my question is how many CCR clusters you think we
> would need to support 25000 of Mailboxes. Do you think 4 clusters, with 2
> nodes each, would work if Memory and Processor are big enough? And as far
> as I remember CCR Mailbox DBs can be bigger around 500 GBs.
>
> What about if you setup 4 CCRs clusters and want to deploy standby
> continuous replication, should you deploy 4 servers (1 per source cluster)
> to support the datacenter failover? in the case of SCC, 1 destination
> cluster would be enough, so this impact in the number of servers ...
>
> Thanks
>
> "Bharat Suneja [MVP]" wrote in message
> @TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>>- Are you using some third-party solution for storage redundancy? If not,
>>with SCC the shared storage is single point of failure, and the reason why
>>CCR warrants a consideration.
>> - I would bump up the RAM to 22/24Gigs (3.5Mb/mailbox + 2 Gigs)
>> - Need 2 x Quad proc using the rule of of thumb calculation of 1
>> core/1000 users of average profile.
>> - Make sure you have a backup/recovery mechanism that allows you to
>> restore a server within the time specified in SLAs or what you're
>> comfortable with. The down side of server consolidation - any extended
>> outages can be quiet damaging to the organization and your SLAs.
>>
>> --
>> Bharat Suneja
>> MVP - Exchange
>> www.zenprise.com
>> NEW blog location:
>> exchangepedia.com/blog
>> ----------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> "Jesus Martin" wrote in message
>> @TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> we are in the process of migrating a disperse Exchange 2003 organization
>>> to a consolidated Exchange 2007 platform. The organization has more than
>>> 20000 mailboxes and would like to know your recommendations in terms of
>>> setting up a high available environment.
>>>
>>> So far, we have been thinking to deploy a 6 nodes SCC cluster
>>> (A/A/A/A/P/P) with 6000 mailboxes per server and a 2/4 nodes NLB with
>>> CAS and HT. then 2 nodes SCR in a second datacenter
>>>
>>> My question is sizing the servers to support 6000 mailboxes and the
>>> maximum number of mailboxes recommendation.
>>>
>>> We want to implement 4XCores processors and 16GBs of RAM per node, would
>>> this be enough? our users do have an average profile (10 mails sent / 40
>>> received)
>>>
>>> any suggestions or experiences?
>>>
>>> thanks
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

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