Exchange 2003 and hard drive space?

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benutne

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 15, 2001
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I've got two 15K SCSI drives on the system I'd like Exchange 2003 to go on. Trouble is, they only have 18GB each. What is a good suggestion for hard drive usage in a company of 20 people?
 
It totally depends on how much space you want to allow them. If you set mailbox limits to 50MB, then you should only need 1GB of space. That of course doesn't include the OS, or application data which can easily account for another Gig. If you strip them, which of course you should never do with an enterprise server, then you are looking at 36GB which is plenty. Mirrored I would think you'll still be fine, but keep an eye on it.

We are implementing Exchange 2003 right now and to back up the data store with only a few (<5) users on it we are all ready over 700MB. So it will chew up space quickly. We are putting 500 accounts on it in the end, but we also have 300GB to start with a mini-SAN attached for future increases.
 
as long as you are backing all that up on a nightly basis and purging the log files it shouldn't be a problem.
 
Do you have a RAID card? If not, then you are going to be limited to MIRRORING those two drives as you can not use software RAID under W2K3 to stripe these drives. If you don't want to run any type of RAID (or can't) then I would make sure your backup solution is tip top and use one drive for the OS and PUBLIC data and the other drive for APPS and PRIVATE data.

My recommendation would be to get a RAID card (if you don't already have one), a 3rd drive, and run RAID 5. You will not gain any usable space, but you will gain some peace of mind.
 
Nope...no RAID card. I dont really want or need one. This will pretty much ONLY be an Exchange server. Maybe a SQL server as well.
 
If its for work or someone elses.....i'd stongly reccomend a raid card. not that much to add a raid card and a 3rd 18gb drive and go raid 5. if its home use up to you really.
 
I run a Domain of a little over 200 users and I set them to 30 megs a piece, and Admin level people get 50. When they start bitching about mailbox size, I have them setup personal folders on their mapped drives. That way, they don't bog down my Exchange Box, and they get to keep whatever the hell they want in their personal folders.

36 Gigs will be fine. Put it this way. My EX2K box is 3 9.1Giggers in RAID-5.. That = 18 gigs, and this box is a DC too, with plenty of space. :p

If users would just learn once a week to empty their sent folder and THEN empty their deleted folder, the world would be a better place for you and I ;)
 
You'll like Exchange 2k3... lots of nice new features, and a "pretty" web access.

As for RAID... that's a must in almost any enterprise environment.... even my cruddy 1U backup web servers have RAID. It's not an expensive option to add (for a hardware controller), and as was mentioned, provides a LOT of piece of mind....and if you're even thinking of having a SQL server on there, it's no longer a matter of "this would be nice"... it's now a question of "do we go with RAID-0, 5, or 10?"... I like RAID-10 for databases, along with a hot spare....sure, you're buying extra drives, but that extra drive will save your ass someday, and quite possibly your job.

And with "only" 36GB.... If you're lookin to buy new drives, 73GB drives aren't much more these days (I just got a new server today actually 5x73GB...RAID-10+hot)... I think going from 36 to 73 for the 5 drives was only about $250 more. Once your users figure out that they can have public folders and such, you'll be wishing you had that extra drive space =) The other nice thing about public folders is that it allows for quick/easy file access through the web interface for people on the road.

Since you're in a small office.... be nice... give the users a lot of space.... with only 20, I would hand out 200MB or so easily... I mean, 200MB * 20 people = 4GB.... that's nothin.... why create headaches for yourself with everyone telling you that they keep getting mailbox size warnings? Also, with only 20 people, it's much harder to hide behind "IT policy"... mostly because there probably isn't any policy to hide behind. =)

TrueBuckeye: How much was your SAN solution? Is it fiberchannel?
 
Originally posted by marshac
TrueBuckeye: How much was your SAN solution? Is it fiberchannel?
Click to expand...

It is fiberchannel. It is HP/Compaq storageworks with 2 1u servers in a cluster for the exchange. I think all told the servers + SAN was around $12,000 but I'm not sure. I didn't get to order it, just do some grunt work with the migration.
 
I think I was was probably chceckin out that exact same SAN (SAN Array 1000) about a year ago.... I got a quote for $31k (for the SAN + HBAs).... at which point I thought "screw it" and moved on.... If you get into any drive virtualization, let me know how it goes. Did you guys get the integrated fabric switch, or an external switch like a brocade silkworm?

Either way, cool stuff..... and with iSCSI on the horizon, the blending of networks and storage will only happen quicker =)
 
Seeing this post makes me want to install Exchange 2003 on my server for the sheel hell of it. Thanks a lot. :D
 
I have an exchange2k3 server hosting 15 mailboxes on a 30 gig 10000rpm drive and still havent used 10% of the disk space yet
 
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