Robert's Rules of Exchange: Storage Planning and Testing

Cracking article, just what we need as we are about to make the SAN decision or not for a 2007 to 2010 upgrade. For an SME, the SAN is expensive and it doesn't just stop at Exchange, but handles the entire organisation data including document files as well as db files.

So, my question is, how do we go about solving the file server misery of pruning back and moving data around to free up [current] DAS disk space in the same way as you have described here? We've tried using DFS to point to various file shares hosted on different servers, but its not a management solution for disk space. Disk quotas are the same as users not only have their own user documents but also departmental ones scattered in different places. I see that quotas have improved to be folder based now, but still see the need for a SAN for continual storage growth.

Finally, JBOD seems an excellent solution [we use cheap Drobo storage here currently], but it still needs backing up, so the stubbing systems (Enterprise Vault for example) win here with a managed solution designed to help not only the management of files but also the reduction in backup time/cost.

If I should post this elsewhere, please advise.

Thanks for you time though.