My Exchange 2007 hardware choices....

What a great time I had with this phase of my Exchange 2007 project. I studied, and studied, and studied the guidance from the online TechNet Exchange documentation as well as from the Exchange team blog. Here's a couple of the particularly helpful articles...

• Exchange 2007 Processor and Memory Recommendations


• Configuring, Validating and Monitoring Your Exchange 2007 Storage


• Understanding Exchange Server 2007 I/O Improvements from 64-bit


• Exchange Server 2007 High Availability Storage Considerations

I finally came up with the following as my hardware solution for this installation:

1. Mailbox server - I will be setting up a CCR Mailbox using locally attached SAS storage. I went with 2 HP DL585 (quad processor AMD Opteron 8220SE 2.8GHz; 32GB RAM) with 3 MSA 70 SAS storage enclosures per server with 25 2.5" SAS drives per enclosure. Two of the enclosures on each server are filled with 146GB 10K drives which will be the database LUNs, and the other is filled with 72GB 15K drives which will be the Log LUNs.


2. Hub Transport server - For this role I chose the HP ML370R (dual processor Intel 5150; 16GB RAM) with 16 internal 2.5" SAS drives.


3. Edge Transport server - For this role I chose the HP DL380 (dual processor Intel 5160; 8GB RAM) with 8 internal 2.5" SAS drives.


4. Client Access server - And for this one I chose the HP DL360 (dual processor Intel 5160; 10GB RAM) with 4 internal 2.5" SAS drives.

For all of my servers I will be using RAID 10 (1+0) in some form or fashion. This seems to be Microsoft's new general recommendation for storage where possible. It is a costly RAID setup, as you lose half the drives to redundancy, but the performance benefits should be worth it - especially considering it is for Exchange 2007, and that deserves nothing but the best!

This was a massive amount of hardware, not just monetarily, but physically as well. However, it all condensed down very nicely into a single rack. And so, without further delay, may I present my Exchange 2007 system hardware....