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Re: HP 3PAR 7200 thin provisioned disk for Exchange 2013

 
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gafoorgk
Occasional Contributor

HP 3PAR 7200 thin provisioned disk for Exchange 2013

Hello All,

I got a HP 3PAR 7200 Storage. Need to install Exchange 2013 in a VMWare environment. Configured 2 thin provisioned disks, which are added as RDM disk in Exchange 2013 VM for database and log. Exchange will contain around 400 mailboxes.

Want to know if this is a good practice or I must configure disks as thick provisioned. Will there be a considerable performance drawback between these two types of provisioning for an Exchange 2013 environment?

Thank you,

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Sheldon Smith
HPE Pro
Solution

Re: HP 3PAR 7200 thin provisioned disk for Exchange 2013

Please take a look at the HPE 3PAR StorageтАФAdaptive Data Reduction Technologies whitepaper (a00006358ENW). In addition to talking about deduplication, compression and deduplication and compression (sometimes referred to as DECO), it repeatedly notes
"For maximum performance, consider using thin- or full-provisioned volumes."

Most of your volumes can be thinly provisioned. If you need a "circular" volume for journals (where new files are being written, processed, older ones being deleted, and so on), that would be a good time to make a fully-provisioned volume, and appropriately sized for just those files. And, for high write ratios, also consider making that volume RAID1.


Note: While I am an HPE Employee, all of my comments (whether noted or not), are my own and are not any official representation of the company

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Cali
Honored Contributor

Re: HP 3PAR 7200 thin provisioned disk for Exchange 2013

Nearly no Performance drop on Thin Volumes with 3PAR.

But don't use RDM, use Datastore and VMFS Volumes.

With RDM, you can not Backup the VM and have no Storage Migration.

Since ESX 5.5 RDMs are no longer needed.

ACP IT Solutions AGI'm not an HPE employee, so I can be wrong.
gafoorgk
Occasional Contributor

Re: HP 3PAR 7200 thin provisioned disk for Exchange 2013

Thanks Cali. I got following questions;

  1. Are you suggesting not to use RDM only for a concern of not able to take full VM backup? If yes, is it suggested to take full VM backup of a DAG member servers, each having total of 1.5 TB mailbox databases? Or is it suggested to take mailbox databases separate and member servers separate without mbx dbs?
  2. What do you mean by "Since ESX 5.5 RDMs are no longer needed"?

Thank you

Cali
Honored Contributor

Re: HP 3PAR 7200 thin provisioned disk for Exchange 2013

Why use RDM?

In the Past RDM have a advantage in: Performance and Disk Size > 2TM

This is no longer vaild.

Today I only see disadvantages in using RDM.

With RDM: No VM Snapshots, No Agentless Backup, No Storage VMotion, No Instant Restore, No RMC Backup, .....

ACP IT Solutions AGI'm not an HPE employee, so I can be wrong.