Hi,I have an iscsi SAN with 6 fast SAS disks dedicated for an Exchange deployment. The Exchange (2010) will be running on Hyper-V and want to know the best way to configure the disks. capacity is not a real concern at this stage. I think it would be best just to create a single raid 10 array using all the disks. I can split the array into LUN's for logs and databases but as it is all running in a virtual server on the same array I presume that does that give any real advantage.So am I best just to create the Exchange virtuakl server as 1 large hard disks and have logs/db etc on the C drive?

You're just creating one server and not using a DAG, right? If so, then you will definitely want to separate the databases and transaction logs on separate physical volumes to ensure recoverability in the event that either fails. You will also want to use RAID since you won't have multiple copies of your data. If capacity is no issue, you might consider three RAID-1 pairs, one for the OS, one for transaction logs, and one for databases. But the question does depend on the number of users you are going to host and what their profiles are, along with the performance specs of the drives.-- Ed Crowley MVP"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems.". "smg1966" wrote in message news:9080c14e-f222-4324-8a34-23556de9857e...Hi,I have an iscsi SAN with 6 fast SAS disks dedicated for an Exchange deployment. The Exchange (2010) will be running on Hyper-V and want to know the best way to configure the disks. capacity is not a real concern at this stage. I think it would be best just to create a single raid 10 array using all the disks. I can split the array into LUN's for logs and databases but as it is all running in a virtual server on the same array I presume that does that give any real advantage.So am I best just to create the Exchange virtuakl server as 1 large hard disks and have logs/db etc on the C drive? Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

As Ed alluded to, how many users, how big are the mailboxes, awill you be using Blackberry with a percentage of them or only mode clients, and define the disks - speed and size.Active Directory, 4th Edition - www.briandesmond.com/ad4/

the disks are 450GB SAS 15K drives. There will be no blackberry and very little external access for OWA/OMA. There are likely to be a maximum of 200 users who will mostly be meduim use profiles. The virtual server host is a new DL380 G6 with 36GB of ram so it should easily cope. Although what you mentioned about using 3 different raid sets makes sense it is a bit of a waste to use a 450Gb raid set just for logs. Would I not get the same performance benefits on iscsi if I created a raid 10 set with 6 disks and then carved it up seperate luns for logs, DB etc. We may use the hosts for other servers as well depending on performance which is why i am hesitant to waste 450Gb on logs.If you think it is better to have 3 raid 1 sets rather than a single raid 10 i could of course do this and then create lun's on each set to allow for other apps to use it.

As I pointed out in my response, there are two issues, performance and recoverability. If you put all the databases and transaction logs on one RAID set and that set fails, you will lose all data since your last good backup. For 200 users, I see the following viable options. 1: One RAID-1 set for OS and programs, one RAID-1 set for transaction logs, and one RAID-1 set for databases. 2: One RAID-1 set for OS, programs and transaction logs, one RAID-1+0 set for databases. 3: One RAID-1 set for OS, programs and transaction logs, one RAID-5 set for databases. I think any of them will work fine for you. Option 1 wastes space since you surely don't need 450GB for transaction logs. Option 2 doesn't give you as much space as Option 3 for databases, but do you need 900GB? For 200 users I don't believe that performance will be an issue with any of the above configurations, but you're welcome to use the tool Microsoft provides to work out a solution. Since you have an HP server, HP has a very nice "Configurator" tool on its website I recommend to give you peace of mind.-- Ed Crowley MVP"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems.". "smg1966" wrote in message news:282e2f15-5462-43c3-8ef5-3539811a66f5... the disks are 450GB SAS 15K drives. There will be no blackberry and very little external access for OWA/OMA. There are likely to be a maximum of 200 users who will mostly be meduim use profiles. The virtual server host is a new DL380 G6 with 36GB of ram so it should easily cope. Although what you mentioned about using 3 different raid sets makes sense it is a bit of a waste to use a 450Gb raid set just for logs. Would I not get the same performance benefits on iscsi if I created a raid 10 set with 6 disks and then carved it up seperate luns for logs, DB etc. We may use the hosts for other servers as well depending on performance which is why i am hesitant to waste 450Gb on logs.If you think it is better to have 3 raid 1 sets rather than a single raid 10 i could of course do this and then create lun's on each set to allow for other apps to use it. Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Thanks for your advise on this. Will have a look through and run the tests for performance checks.