Many of you have heard about the changes we've made in Exchange 2010 that combine to give you the ability to use less expensive storage and deploy large mailboxes. There have been many discussion...
Updated Jul 01, 2019
Version 2.0
Blog Post
Andrew,
Those blog articles fail to mention a few key points (not to mention the byline of the blog is "rarely factual" which I personally found amusing):
1. a single server vs. multiple servers = multiple servers with multiple isolated copies remove single points of failure.
2. Storage fails and the number one cause? It's not the technology, it's people. You have to buy at least two storage devices to mitigate that (and you need a solution to replicate data).
3. No cost points were provided. Thus the claims are just an opinion.
So here's an example that I recently saw from one of my customers for their E2010 design:
100,000 mailboxes, all 100 message profile. 500MB quotas (though if they go with 1TB spindles obviously they could increase the mailbox sizes without significantly changing the storage numbers). The design was for 3 HA copies.
The SAN storage projected cost (includes SAN licensing and storage) with 1TB 7.2K SATA (RAID-10) was $10 million ($16 million if you went with RAID-5 as it required more disks). This was for 2700 disks. This was the discounted price I should add.
HP sells a 70 disk 5U storage chassis, the MDS-600. Fully populated with 1TB SATA disks, that enclosure goes for $50,500 MSRP. If you keep the RAID architecture it's still the same number disks, so that means you need 39 chassis. That's $2 million for the storage.
If you change the architecture and go without RAID for those 3 copies and deploy on JBOD you cut your storage requirements nearly in half which cuts your cost in half. But heck, let's say to mitigate the move to JBOD you increase your copy count to 4, that's still less disks than the RAID/3copy solution (around 2200 disks) and only around $1.6 million.
And that's only the capital costs. Since both solutions are leveraging SATA, the power costs are roughly the same (the chassis/storage controllers add some additional cost there). Floor costs may be different (depending on rack/space charges) and that obviously has to be factored into the equation (but does that really cost anywhere close to $8 million?).
Ultimately you need to evaluate all the options. Does the model change with more copies and JBOD? Yes. It does mean failovers when disks fails, which may or may not be cool for you or your customers, but that should at least be weighed against the storage options and their associated costs.
For some of my customers they are considering different storage paradigms and more copies to achieve their business goals while reducing costs. Others will leverage existing investments in storage they have. But we should at least help them have an open mind so that they can see where there are potential cost savings.
John
Those blog articles fail to mention a few key points (not to mention the byline of the blog is "rarely factual" which I personally found amusing):
1. a single server vs. multiple servers = multiple servers with multiple isolated copies remove single points of failure.
2. Storage fails and the number one cause? It's not the technology, it's people. You have to buy at least two storage devices to mitigate that (and you need a solution to replicate data).
3. No cost points were provided. Thus the claims are just an opinion.
So here's an example that I recently saw from one of my customers for their E2010 design:
100,000 mailboxes, all 100 message profile. 500MB quotas (though if they go with 1TB spindles obviously they could increase the mailbox sizes without significantly changing the storage numbers). The design was for 3 HA copies.
The SAN storage projected cost (includes SAN licensing and storage) with 1TB 7.2K SATA (RAID-10) was $10 million ($16 million if you went with RAID-5 as it required more disks). This was for 2700 disks. This was the discounted price I should add.
HP sells a 70 disk 5U storage chassis, the MDS-600. Fully populated with 1TB SATA disks, that enclosure goes for $50,500 MSRP. If you keep the RAID architecture it's still the same number disks, so that means you need 39 chassis. That's $2 million for the storage.
If you change the architecture and go without RAID for those 3 copies and deploy on JBOD you cut your storage requirements nearly in half which cuts your cost in half. But heck, let's say to mitigate the move to JBOD you increase your copy count to 4, that's still less disks than the RAID/3copy solution (around 2200 disks) and only around $1.6 million.
And that's only the capital costs. Since both solutions are leveraging SATA, the power costs are roughly the same (the chassis/storage controllers add some additional cost there). Floor costs may be different (depending on rack/space charges) and that obviously has to be factored into the equation (but does that really cost anywhere close to $8 million?).
Ultimately you need to evaluate all the options. Does the model change with more copies and JBOD? Yes. It does mean failovers when disks fails, which may or may not be cool for you or your customers, but that should at least be weighed against the storage options and their associated costs.
For some of my customers they are considering different storage paradigms and more copies to achieve their business goals while reducing costs. Others will leverage existing investments in storage they have. But we should at least help them have an open mind so that they can see where there are potential cost savings.
John