As most of you know, Exchange servers utilize the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) database. As you have told us loud and clear, Exchange rocks from a performance, scalability, and availability stan...
Published Jul 16, 2009
Version 1.0
Blog Post
Being both an Exchange admin since version 5.5 and SQL DBA since SQL Server 6.5, I can bring up valid points for both sides of the argument (although I see more points towards SQL storage for those very large or public organizations that have to deal with terabytes of data and compliance issues). I believe that this debate has been going on since the late 90's as one of the people here had mentioned. But I was more curious about the detailed findings of the Exchange Team, such as performance data etc.
What disturbs me even further is the ambiguity about the future of Exchange's database storage. When consulting as an analyst, I have to sometimes give recommendations 5 years ahead or even more, which would affect many decisions such as budgets and purchases (relevant example is allocating more money to expand the SAN storage for Exchange versus piggy-backing off the existing SAN reserved just for SQL databases). Then what happens when the Exchange team does a complete 180 ?!? (remember the IM chat/then no IM chat, collaboration portal/then no collaboration portal, M: drive/then no M: drive, public folders/then no public folders/then public folders again).
What disturbs me even further is the ambiguity about the future of Exchange's database storage. When consulting as an analyst, I have to sometimes give recommendations 5 years ahead or even more, which would affect many decisions such as budgets and purchases (relevant example is allocating more money to expand the SAN storage for Exchange versus piggy-backing off the existing SAN reserved just for SQL databases). Then what happens when the Exchange team does a complete 180 ?!? (remember the IM chat/then no IM chat, collaboration portal/then no collaboration portal, M: drive/then no M: drive, public folders/then no public folders/then public folders again).