I don't think its valid to benchmark single drive performance and expect those numbers to translate directly to a RAID configuration.
Were I to wager a guess, I'd say that the RAID1 mirror your store is sitting on is the bottle neck. Spreading out the array (ie into RAID5 or RAID10) helps increase the drive concurrency, and therefore the potential throughput, of your disk subsystem. That being said, SCSI and Fibre Channel are built from the ground up for a single controller to manage multiple (>2) drives. IDE (in any variety) isn't. I doubt dropping a RAID5 ATA array would significantly improve on that issue. Personally, if you're going to the expense of running 9 Exchange servers, at least 3 of which are Enterprise Edition, I find it hard to rationalize buying low end hardware. -------------------------------------------------------------- Roger D. Seielstad - MTS MCSE MS-MVP Sr. Systems Administrator Inovis Inc. > -----Original Message----- > From: Edgington, Jeff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 5:32 PM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: A benchmark if you have time... > > > I know this subject has been brought up before (and yes, I've looked > through the archives), but I'm looking for a little more detail. > > Our current exchange environment is as follows: > > - 9600 mailboxes (spread evenly over the servers) > - most quotas are 50/55/65 (warn/prohibit send/prohibit send/receive) > with about 5 percent exceeding this (some upwards of 600MB) > - 3 Protocol servers (running NLB) > - 1GHz w/ 1GB RAM > - 6 Mailbox Servers (in-house built) > - Dual PIII 866 > - 2GB RAM > - 3Ware 7000-8 IDE RAID Controller (7200 rpm drives, 3 mirrors - > OS/TLOGS/Store - 1 hot spare) > - 1Gbit NIC > - 1 Standby Mailbox Server (empty) that is same as above > configuration. > > This is an _OK_ configuration... it's been stable, but lacks > some speed > (disk queue lengths on the storage mirrors will reach 80+ at > times and I > can correlate the 'waiting on server' message with these queue > lengths)... the advantage of the multiple servers is that if an outage > occurs, it affects only 1/6th of the people... we are looking at > purchasing a SCSI disk subsystem for the current servers and are also > going as far as looking at purchasing name-brand servers with > a SAN. I > have been able to test (using HD Tach 2.61) 10,000 rpm SCSI > drives, 7200 > rpm SCSI drives, 7200 PATA IDE drive.. I'm waiting on a SATA drive > (already have a controller)... so far all have performed very close to > each other... it's not clear to me that the test I'm using is > giving me > information that I can use to base my decision on. > > What I'm looking for is what are others with similar mailbox > environments using?. What do you like about your config? What do you > wish you could change? If you are using a SAN, which brand/model? > > Thanks for your time! > > > --------------------------------------- > Jeffrey Edgington > Systems Administrator > University of Missouri - Rolla > Are you a Spectator or a Participant? > --------------------------------------- > > _________________________________________________________________ > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > Web Interface: > http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&t ext_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
