You can't guarantee that an "image-level" backup of Exchange will be recoverable unless the tool you use you use to take the backup has VSS support for Exchange.
Nothing rules out any kind of failure. Splitting mailboxes over two machines, virtualized or not, doesn't change your failure rate. Think of it this way. One server with n mailboxes figures to be out of service say x minutes per year, a total of n*x mailbox-minutes of outage. Two servers with n/2 mailboxes each figure to be out of service x minutes per year each, a total of 2(n/2)*x mailbox-minutes of outage per year, which reduces to the same n*x. The only way this "split-up" method makes any sense is if you have a large number of mailboxes and restoration time could be lengthy. But that kind of issue can be mitigated by other means, such as dial-tone recovery. Having more private stores allows a faster recovery of any one of them because the store size should be smaller. That's a compelling reason for many reasons to design servers based on a maximum size for any mailbox store. I don't see how you can manage a system without quotas. But I've always argued that quotas ought to be based on business need and not on some arbitrary hunch from an e-mail administrator. Charging for quota is a good way to regulate that, but I recognize that few organizations have the stomach for that kind of charge-back. Still, it would make a manager decide on the business value of mailbox quota to his organization. Ed Crowley MCSE+Internet MVP Freelance E-Mail Philosopher Protecting the world from PSTs and Bricked Backups!T -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Hutchings Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 2:30 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Nearly Full Exchange Server/Virtualization Help Accepted and understood. My rationale is that virtualizing the box (feel free to disagree here!) should make maintenance and DR simpler as we do image level VM backups, plus with things like maintenance/hotfixes there is the ability to stop all the services, take a snapshot, and apply the fixes before continuing - I appreciate 100% that this is a not a substitute for a proper exchange aware backups and I'd still be taking these via exchange aware ntbackup. Where I would appreciate a little input is in how I could be smarter about doing things. If you assume VMware's high availability rules out the chances of hardware failure knocking all your VM's out of action, is there any benefit in having say 2 virtual Exchange servers and splitting the mailboxes over those? Is that benefit greater than sticking with a single server and having more than one Storage Group or Private Store? Similar question marks over limits for example, in principle I hate the concept, in practise how else do you stop people hording assuming you can't change their behaviour through education or by throwing money at an archiving package? I have a very good Exchange 2003 book that I shall be referencing, as well as the VMware white papers, but it's never quite the same as advice from people who've been there. Also just to confirm, for the next couple of years I don't see us moving off Exchange 2003, the CAL costs don't seem to make it viable for the benefit so we'll most likely skip and wait it out until 2010/100 or until 2003 no longer does what we need. Cheers, Paul -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Crowley Sent: 27 May 2008 06:22 To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Nearly Full Exchange Server/Virtualization Help A 400-user Exchange server should probably be fine for virtualization, but be aware that virtualization does not do anything for you regarding disk performance, the typical Exchange performance bottleneck. SAN doesn't either by itself; the disks on the SAN still must support the required number of I/Os. However, we're talking about 400 users, not 40,000. Be aware of the support issues. Ed Crowley MCITP MCSE+I MCSE+M MCTS MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Hutchings Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 3:04 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: Nearly Full Exchange Server/Virtualization Help At the current rate of usage, I reckon I have around 3 months until our single Exchange 2003 SP2 Enterprise server is full. Adding more disk capacity isn't an option as there are no more drive bays, plus the box is due to be replaced in around six months so it's not viable to be throwing money at it now. We do have a 2 server ESX cluster sat on a Clariion AX4 FC SAN. Our userbase is diverse, people like to horde and never delete/archive, and I haven't helped us by not having any hard mailbox or message size limits. My rough plan for when the box was due for renewal was to virtualize anyway, and also to add a third box to the cluster. As I see it, one plan to deal with the imminent problem would be to buy some 15k spindles for the SAN and possibly a little more RAM for the ESX hosts and move Exchange onto it, job done, end of story. I'd also like to implement maximum message size limits both internally and externally, whatever you choose someone won't be happy, and my initial thoughts are that 25mb seems a figure where anything larger and you should probably be looking at an alternative means of sending. We have around 400 users and 190gb of mail (140/50 private/public store split) in a single Storage Group. Appreciate any feedback/thoughts/opinions etc. -- MIRA Ltd Watling Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 0TU, England. Registered in England and Wales No. 402570 VAT Registration GB 114 5409 96 The contents of this e-mail are confidential and are solely for the use of the intended recipient. If you receive this e-mail in error, please delete it and notify us either by e-mail, telephone or fax. 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