EMC VSPEX FOR VIRTUALIZED MICROSOFT … · Contents . EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 . Enabled by EMC VNX Family and EMC Powered Backup Design Guide . Overview

DESIGN GUIDE

EMC VSPEX FOR VIRTUALIZED MICROSOFT EXCHANGE 2013 Enabled by EMC VNX Family and EMC Powered Backup

EMC VSPEX

Abstract

This Design Guide describes how to design a Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 solution on an EMC® VSPEX® Proven Infrastructure with Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere. The guide also illustrates how to size the solution.

January 2015

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Enabled by EMC VNX Family and EMC Powered Backup Design Guide

Copyright © 2015 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.

Published January 2015

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Contents

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Enabled by EMC VNX Family and EMC Powered Backup

Design Guide

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction 7 Purpose of this guide .................................................................................................. 8 Business value ........................................................................................................... 8 Scope ......................................................................................................................... 9 Audience .................................................................................................................... 9 Terminology.............................................................................................................. 10

Chapter 2 Before You Start 11 Deployment workflow ............................................................................................... 12 Essential reading ...................................................................................................... 12

VSPEX Solution Overviews ................................................................................... 12 VSPEX Implementation Guides............................................................................. 12 VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides ..................................................................... 13 EMC Powered Backup for VSPEX guide ................................................................. 13 EMC best practices ............................................................................................. 13

Chapter 3 Solution Overview 15 Overview .................................................................................................................. 16

EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructures ....................................................................... 16 Solution architecture ................................................................................................ 17 Key components ....................................................................................................... 18

Introduction ......................................................................................................... 18 Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 .......................................................................... 18 EMC VNX .............................................................................................................. 19 EMC VNXe3200 .................................................................................................... 22 EMC Powered Backup solutions ........................................................................... 25 VMware vSphere 5.5 ............................................................................................ 25 Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V ................................................. 26 MPIO and MCS ..................................................................................................... 26 EMC XtremCache ................................................................................................. 27 EMC PowerPath/VE .............................................................................................. 27

Chapter 4 Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure 28 Overview .................................................................................................................. 29 Step 1: Evaluate the customer use case.................................................................... 29

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Contents


Overview .............................................................................................................. 29 VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet ............................. 29

Step 2: Design the application architecture .............................................................. 30 Overview .............................................................................................................. 30 VSPEX Sizing Tool ................................................................................................ 30

Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ............................................... 33 Overview .............................................................................................................. 33 Considerations .................................................................................................... 33 Examples ............................................................................................................. 33

Chapter 5 Solution Design Considerations and Best Practices 38 Overview .................................................................................................................. 39 Network design considerations ................................................................................ 39

Overview .............................................................................................................. 39 Network design best practices ............................................................................. 39

Storage layout and design considerations ................................................................ 41 Overview .............................................................................................................. 41 Example architecture with vSphere and VNX ........................................................ 41 Example architecture with Hyper-V and VNXe ....................................................... 43 Storage design best practices .............................................................................. 45 Storage layout examples...................................................................................... 48 FAST Suite design best practices.......................................................................... 50 XtremCache design best practices ....................................................................... 51

Virtualization design considerations ........................................................................ 52 Overview .............................................................................................................. 52 Virtualization design best practices ..................................................................... 52

EMC Powered Backup design considerations ............................................................ 53

Chapter 6 Solution Verification Methodologies 54 Overview .................................................................................................................. 55 Baseline hardware verification methodology ............................................................ 55 Application verification methodology ....................................................................... 55

High-level steps for application verification ......................................................... 55 Jetstress overview ................................................................................................ 56 Key metrics for Jetstress testing ........................................................................... 56 Determining the architecture for the Exchange Server solution............................. 56 Building the infrastructure environment ............................................................... 57 Using the Jetstress tool ........................................................................................ 57

EMC Powered Backup verification methodology ....................................................... 57

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Contents


Design Guide

Chapter 7 Reference Documentation 58 EMC documentation ................................................................................................. 59 Other documentation ............................................................................................... 59 Links ........................................................................................................................ 60

Appendix A Qualification Worksheet 62 VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet .................................. 63

Appendix B Manually Sizing Exchange for VSPEX 64 Overview .................................................................................................................. 65 Manually sizing Exchange 2013 for VSPEX ................................................................ 65

Using the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet .............. 65 Sizing the Exchange server virtual machines ........................................................ 66 Sizing the storage for Exchange Mailbox server .................................................... 68 Selecting the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ................................................... 72

Figures Figure 1. VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ................................................................ 16 Figure 2. Architecture of the validated infrastructure .......................................... 17 Figure 3. VNX with multicore optimization .......................................................... 20 Figure 4. Active/active processors increase performance, resiliency, and

efficiency ............................................................................................. 21 Figure 5. New Unisphere Management Suite ...................................................... 22 Figure 6. VNXe3200 with multicore optimization ................................................ 24 Figure 7. Exchange 2013 storage elements on a vSphere 5.5 and VNX platform . 42 Figure 8. Exchange 2013 storage elements on a Hyper-V and VNXe platform ..... 44 Figure 9. Exchange Jetstress database initialization process .............................. 47 Figure 10. Storage layout example: Exchange small organization for VNXe .......... 49 Figure 11. Storage layout example: Exchange medium organization for VNX ........ 50 Figure 12. Printable qualification worksheet ........................................................ 63

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Contents


Tables Terminology......................................................................................... 10 Table 1.

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013: Deployment workflow ............... 12 Table 2.

Exchange 2013 server roles ................................................................. 19 Table 3.

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013: Design process ......................... 29 Table 4.

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet guidelines29 Table 5.

VSPEX Sizing Tool output ..................................................................... 31 Table 6.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure: Selection steps ...................................... 33 Table 7.

Example of VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification Table 8.worksheet: Small Exchange organization ............................................. 34

Example of required resources: Small Exchange organization .............. 34 Table 9.

Example of additional storage pools: Small Exchange organization ..... 34 Table 10.

Example of VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification Table 11.worksheet: Medium Exchange organization ......................................... 35

Example of required resources: Medium Exchange organization .......... 35 Table 12.

Example of additional storage pools: Medium Exchange organization . 36 Table 13.

Exchange-related storage pools on VNX ............................................... 43 Table 14.

Exchange related storage pools on VNXe ............................................. 45 Table 15.

Exchange data storage pools: Small Exchange organization ................ 48 Table 16.

Exchange data storage pools: Medium Exchange organization ............ 49 Table 17.

High-level steps for application verification ......................................... 55 Table 18.

Key metrics for Jetstress verification .................................................... 56 Table 19.

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet ............. 63 Table 20.

Example of VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification Table 21.worksheet ........................................................................................... 65

Exchange manual sizing procedure ..................................................... 66 Table 22.

Summary of virtual machine resources ................................................ 67 Table 23.

Number of disks required for IOPS and capacity .................................. 71 Table 24.

Exchange data storage pool configuration ........................................... 71 Table 25.

VSPEX storage model support matrix ................................................... 73 Table 26.

Storage system support matrix ............................................................ 73 Table 27.

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Chapter 1: Introduction


Design Guide

Chapter 1 Introduction

This chapter presents the following topics:

Purpose of this guide ................................................................................................. 8

Business value ........................................................................................................... 8

Scope ......................................................................................................................... 9

Audience .................................................................................................................... 9

Terminology ............................................................................................................. 10

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Purpose of this guide

EMC® VSPEX® Proven Infrastructures are optimized for virtualizing business-critical applications. VSPEX enables partners to plan and design the assets required to support Microsoft Exchange 2013 in a virtualized environment on a VSPEX Private Cloud.

The EMC VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 architecture provides a validated system, capable of hosting a virtualized Exchange 2013 solution at a consistent performance level. This solution has been designed, sized, and tested to be layered on an existing VSPEX Private Cloud using either a VMware vSphere or Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V virtualization layer, and uses the highly available EMC VNX® family of storage systems.

All VSPEX solutions are sized and tested with EMC Powered Backup products. EMC Avamar® and EMC Data Domain® enable complete infrastructure, application, and Exchange backup and recovery.

The compute and network components, while vendor-definable, are designed to be redundant and are sufficiently powerful to handle the processing and data needs of the virtual machine environment.

This Design Guide describes how to design the resources necessary to deploy Microsoft Exchange 2013 on any VSPEX Proven Infrastructure that uses the EMC next-generation VNX family of storage arrays.

Business value

Email is an indispensable lifeline for communicating within your business and connecting you with customers, prospects, partners, and suppliers. IT administrators supporting Microsoft Exchange Server are challenged with maintaining the highest possible levels of performance and application efficiency. At the same time, most companies struggle to keep pace with relentless data growth while working to overcome diminishing or stagnant budgets. Administering, auditing, protecting, and managing an Exchange environment for a modern geographically dispersed work force is a major challenge for most IT departments.

EMC has joined forces with the industry’s leading providers of IT infrastructure to create a complete virtualization solution that accelerates the deployment of private cloud and Microsoft Exchange. VSPEX enables customers to accelerate their IT transformation with faster deployment, greater simplicity and choice, higher efficiency, and lower risk, compared to the challenges and complexity of building an IT infrastructure themselves.

VSPEX solutions are validated by EMC. This ensures predictable performance and enables customers to select technology that uses their existing or newly acquired IT infrastructure while eliminating the planning, sizing, and configuration burdens that are typically associated with deploying a new IT Infrastructure. VSPEX provides a validated solution for customers looking to simplify their system—a characteristic of truly converged infrastructures—while at the same time gaining more choice in individual stack components.

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Design Guide

Scope

This Design Guide describes how to design an EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange Server 2013 environments on a Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere platform. The guide describes how to:

• Size and design an Exchange 2013 solution

• Allocate resources according to best practices

• Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure on which to layer Exchange 2013

• Use all the benefits that VSPEX offers

This guide applies to VSPEX Proven Infrastructures virtualized with VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V and deployed on either the EMC VNX series or EMC VNXe® series of storage arrays. The guide assumes that a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure already exists in the customer environment.

The EMC Powered Backup solutions for Exchange data protection are described in a separate document—EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Design and Implementation Guide.

Audience

This guide is intended for internal EMC personnel and qualified EMC VSPEX partners. The guide assumes that VSPEX partners who intend to deploy this VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 solution are:

• Qualified by Microsoft to sell and implement Exchange solutions

• Certified in Exchange 2013, ideally with one or both of the following Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE)certifications:

Messaging—Core Solutions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 (Exam: 341)

Messaging—Advanced Solutions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 (Exam: 342)

• Qualified by EMC to sell, install, and configure the VNX family of storage systems

• Certified to sell VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

• Qualified to sell, install, and configure the network and server products required for VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

Partners who plan to deploy the solution must also have the necessary technical training and background to install and configure:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 operating systems (OS)

• VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platforms

• Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

• EMC Powered Backup products, including Avamar and Data Domain

This guide provides external references where applicable. EMC recommends that partners implementing this solution are familiar with these documents. For details, see Essential reading and Chapter 7: Reference Documentation.

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Terminology

Table 1 lists the terminology used in this guide.

Terminology Table 1.

Term Definition

Bursty Data that is transferred or transmitted in short, uneven spurts.

rpm Revolutions per minute.

SP Storage processor. The compute component of the storage array, which handles all aspects of moving data into, out of, and between arrays.

VHDX Hyper-V virtual hard disk format—a new, enhanced format available in Microsoft Windows Server 2012.

VMDK Virtual Machine Disk format.

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Chapter 2: Before You Start


Design Guide

Chapter 2 Before You Start


Deployment workflow .............................................................................................. 12

Essential reading ..................................................................................................... 12

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Deployment workflow

To design and implement your VSPEX for virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 solution, refer to the process flow in Table 2.1

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013: Deployment workflow Table 2.

Step Action

1 Use the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet to collect user requirements. Refer to Appendix A of this Design Guide.

2 Use the EMC VSPEX Sizing Tool to determine the recommended VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for your virtualized Exchange 2013 solution, based on the user requirements collected in Step 1.

For more information about the Sizing Tool, refer to the EMC VSPEX Sizing Tool portal.

Note: If the Sizing Tool is not available, you can manually size the application by using the guidelines in Appendix B.

3 Use this Design Guide to determine the final design for your VSPEX solution.

Note: Ensure that all application requirements are considered, not only the requirements for Exchange.

4 Select and order the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. Refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide in Essential reading for guidance.

5 Deploy and test your VSPEX solution. Refer to the appropriate VSPEX Implementation Guide in Essential reading for guidance.

Essential reading

EMC recommends that you read the following documents, which are available from the VSPEX space on the EMC Community Network or from the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure pages on EMC.com. If you do not have access to a document, contact your EMC representative.

Refer to the following VSPEX Solution Overview documents:

• EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization for Midmarket Businesses

• EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization for Small and Medium Businesses

Refer to the following VSPEX Implementation Guides:

• EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 with Microsoft Hyper-V Enabled by EMC VNX Family and EMC Powered Backup

• EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 with VMware vSphere Enabled by EMC VNX Family and EMC Powered Backup

1 If your solution includes EMC Powered Backup components, refer to the EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Design and Implementation Guide for detailed information about sizing and implementing these components in your VSPEX solution.

VSPEX Solution Overviews

VSPEX Implementation Guides

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https://community.emc.com/community/partner/vspex?view=overview

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Design Guide

Refer to the following VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides:

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 200 Virtual Machines

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V for up to 200 Virtual Machines

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines

Refer to the following EMC Powered Backup for VSPEX guide:

• EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013

Refer to the following best practices guide:

• Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices and Design Guidelines for EMC Storage

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides

EMC Powered Backup for VSPEX guide

EMC best practices

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14

Chapter 3: Solution Overview


Design Guide

Chapter 3 Solution Overview


Overview .................................................................................................................. 16

Solution architecture ............................................................................................... 17

Key components ...................................................................................................... 18

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Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 and the key technologies used in this solution. The solution has been designed and proven by EMC to be layered on a VSPEX Private Cloud, which provides storage, compute, network, and backup resources.

The solution enables customers to quickly and consistently deploy and protect a virtualized Exchange organization in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization and the VNX family of storage systems provide storage and server hardware consolidation.

EMC Powered Backup solutions provide essential Exchange data protection and are described in a separate document—EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Design and Implementation Guide.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructures, as shown in Figure 1, are modular, virtualized infrastructures validated by EMC and delivered by EMC partners. VSPEX includes virtualization, server, and network layers, and EMC storage and backup, designed by EMC to deliver reliable and predictable performance.

Figure 1. VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

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Design Guide

VSPEX provides the flexibility to create a complete virtualization solution using the network, server, and virtualization technologies that best fit a customer’s environment. VSPEX delivers faster deployment for EMC partner customers, with greater simplicity and efficiency, more choice, and lower risk to a customer’s business.

Solution architecture

Figure 2 shows the architecture that characterizes the validated VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange 2013. All Exchange servers are deployed as virtual machines on a VMware vSphere 5.5 or Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V cluster. Any VNX or VNXe model that has been validated as part of the VSPEX program can be used to provide the back-end storage functionality.

We2 used the VSPEX Sizing Tool for Exchange to determine the number of Exchange Server virtual machines and the detailed compute resources for each Exchange Server role, as well as the recommended storage layout for Exchange 2013.

Figure 2. Architecture of the validated infrastructure

2 In this guide, "we" refers to the EMC Solutions engineering team that validated the solution.

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Key components

This section provides an overview of the key technologies used in this solution, including:

• Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

• EMC VNX

• EMC VNXe3200™

• EMC Unisphere

• EMC Powered Backup solutions

• VMware vSphere 5.5

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V

• Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) and Multiple Connections per Session (MCS)

• EMC XtremCache™

• EMC PowerPath®/VE

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 is an enterprise email and communication system that enables businesses and customers to collaborate and share information. EMC enhances Exchange Server 2013 with a selection of storage platforms, software, and services.

Exchange Server 2013 builds upon the Exchange Server 2010 architecture and has been redesigned for simplicity of scale, hardware utilization, and failure isolation. Exchange 2013 uses Database Availability Groups (DAGs) and mailbox database copies, along with other features such as single item recovery, retention policies, and lagged database copies, to provide high availability, site resilience, and Exchange native data protection. The high availability platform, the Exchange Information Store, and the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) have all been enhanced to provide greater availability and easier management, and to reduce costs.

Improvements with the application database structure and I/O reduction include support for a larger variety of disk and RAID configurations including high-performance flash, Fibre Channel (FC), and serial-attached SCSI (SAS) drives, and slower-performing Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) and near-line serial-attached SCSI (NL-SAS) drives.

Exchange 2013 reduces the number of server roles to three—the Edge Transport server role, the Client Access server role, and the Mailbox server role—as described in Table 3.

Introduction

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

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Design Guide

Exchange 2013 server roles Table 3.

Role Function

Mailbox server The Mailbox server handles all activities for active mailboxes on the server. It provides:

• Client Access protocols

• Transport service

• Mailbox databases

• Unified Messaging (except SIP redirection)

Client Access server The Client Access server, a thin and stateless server, provides:

• Authentication

• Redirection (limited)

• Proxy services for HTTP, POP, IMAP, and SMTP

The server does not do any data rendering and nothing is queued or stored here (except diagnostic logging).

Edge Transport server The Edge Transport server provides:

• Internet mail flow

• Anti-spam and antivirus protection

The Mailbox server role and the Client Access server role are the essential components in every Exchange organization and are the focus of this guide.

Features and enhancements

The EMC VNX flash-optimized unified storage platform delivers innovation and enterprise capabilities for file, block, and object storage in a single, scalable, and easy-to-use solution. Ideal for mixed workloads in physical or virtual environments, VNX combines powerful and flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management, and protection software to meet the demanding needs of today’s virtualized application environments.

VNX includes many features and enhancements designed to build on the first generation’s success. These features and enhancements include:

• More capacity with multicore optimization with EMC Multicore Cache, Multicore RAID, and Multicore FAST™ Cache (MCx™)

• Greater efficiency with a flash-optimized hybrid array

• Better protection by increasing application availability with active/active storage processors

• Easier administration and deployment by increasing productivity with Unisphere Management Suite

VSPEX is built with next-generation VNX to deliver even greater efficiency, performance, and scale than ever before.

Flash-optimized hybrid array

VNX is a flash-optimized hybrid array that provides automated tiering to deliver the best performance to your critical data, while intelligently moving less frequently accessed data to lower-cost disks.

EMC VNX

19



In this hybrid approach, a small percentage of flash drives in the overall system can provide a high percentage of the overall IOPS. The flash-optimized VNX takes full advantage of the low latency of flash to deliver cost-saving optimization and high performance scalability. EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering Suite (FAST Cache and FAST VP) tiers both block and file data across heterogeneous drives and boosts the most active data to the flash drives, ensuring that customers never have to make concessions for cost or performance.

Data generally is accessed most frequently at the time it is created; therefore, new data is first stored on flash drives to provide the best performance. As the data ages and becomes less active over time, FAST VP tiers the data from high-performance to high-capacity drives automatically, based on customer-defined policies. This functionality has been enhanced with four times better granularity and with FAST VP solid-state disks (SSDs) based on enterprise multilevel cell (eMLC) technology to lower the cost per gigabyte. FAST Cache dynamically absorbs unpredicted spikes in system workloads. FAST Cache can provide immediate performance enhancement by promoting suddenly active data from slower high-capacity drives to faster flash drives. All VSPEX use cases benefit from the increased efficiency.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructures deliver private cloud, end-user computing, and virtualized application solutions. With VNX, customers can realize an even greater return on their investment. VNX provides out-of-band, block-based deduplication that can dramatically lower the costs of the flash tier.

VNX Intel MCx code path optimization

The advent of flash technology has been a catalyst in totally changing the requirements of midrange storage systems. EMC redesigned the midrange storage platform to efficiently optimize multicore CPUs to provide the highest performing storage system at the lowest cost in the market.

MCx distributes all VNX data services across all cores (up to 32), as shown in Figure 3. The VNX series with MCx has dramatically improved the file performance for transactional applications like databases or virtual machines over network-attached storage (NAS).

Figure 3. VNX with multicore optimization

Multicore Cache The cache is the most valuable asset in the storage subsystem; its efficient use is key to the overall efficiency of the platform in handling variable and changing workloads. The cache engine has been modularized to take advantage of all the cores available in the system.

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Design Guide

Multicore RAID Another important part of the MCx redesign is the handling of I/O to the permanent back-end storage—hard disk drives (HDDs) and SSDs. Greatly increased performance improvements in VNX come from the modularization of the back-end data management processing, which enables MCx to seamlessly scale across all processors.

VNX performance

Performance enhancements VNX storage, enabled with the MCx architecture, is optimized for FLASH 1st and provides unprecedented overall performance. It optimizes transaction performance (cost per IOPS), bandwidth performance (cost per GB/s) with low latency, and capacity efficiency (cost per GB).

VNX provides the following performance improvements:

• Up to four times more file transactions when compared with dual controller arrays

• Increased file performance for transactional applications by up to three times, with a 60 percent better response time

• Up to four times more Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server OLTP transactions

• Up to six times more virtual machines

Active/active array storage processors The new VNX architecture provides active/active array storage processors, as shown in Figure 4, which eliminate application timeouts during path failover because both paths are actively serving I/O.

Figure 4. Active/active processors increase performance, resiliency, and efficiency

Load balancing is also improved and applications can achieve an up to two times improvement in performance. Active/active for block is ideal for applications that require the highest levels of availability and performance, but do not require tiering or efficiency services like compression or deduplication.

Note: The active/active processors are available only for classic LUNs, not for pool LUNs.

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Automated file system migrations

With this VNX release, VSPEX customers can use virtual Data Movers (VDMs) and VNX Replicator to perform automated and high-speed file system migrations between systems. This process migrates all snaps and settings automatically, and enables the clients to continue operation during the migration.

Unisphere Management Suite

Unisphere Management Suite extends the Unisphere easy-to-use interface to include VNX Monitoring and Reporting for validating performance and anticipating capacity requirements. As shown in Figure 5, the suite also includes Unisphere Remote for centrally managing thousands of VNX and VNXe systems with new support for EMC XtremCache.

Figure 5. New Unisphere Management Suite

VNXe3200 is the most affordable flash-optimized unified storage platform. It delivers innovation and enterprise capabilities for file and block storage in a single, scalable, and easy-to-use solution. Ideal for mixed workloads in physical or virtual environments, VNXe3200 combines powerful and flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management, and protection software to meet the demanding needs of today’s virtualized application environments.

VNXe3200 includes many features and enhancements designed to build on the success of the midrange EMC VNX family. These features and enhancements include:

• Greater efficiency with a flash-optimized hybrid array

• More capacity with multicore optimization with EMC Multicore Cache, Multicore RAID, and Multicore FAST Cache (MCx)

• Easier administration and deployment with VNXe Base Software components including Monitoring and Reporting, and Unified Snapshots

• VMware and Microsoft ecosystem integration

• Unified multiprotocol support for FC, iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS

VSPEX is built with next generation VNXe to deliver even greater efficiency, performance, and scale than ever before.

EMC VNXe3200

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Design Guide

Flash-optimized hybrid array

VNXe3200 is a flash-optimized hybrid array that provides automated tiering to deliver the best performance to your critical data, while intelligently moving less frequently accessed data to lower-cost disks.

In this hybrid approach, a small percentage of flash drives in the overall system can provide a high percentage of the overall IOPS. VNXe3200 takes full advantage of the low latency of flash to deliver cost-saving optimization and high performance scalability. EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering Suite (FAST™ Cache and FAST VP) tiers both block and file data across heterogeneous drives and boosts the most active data to the flash drives, ensuring that customers never have to make concessions for cost or performance.

Data is generally accessed most frequently at the time it is created; therefore, new data is first stored on flash drives to provide the best performance. As the data ages and becomes less active over time, FAST VP can tier the data from high-performance to high-capacity drives automatically, based on customer-defined policies. FAST Cache dynamically absorbs unpredicted spikes in system workloads. FAST Cache can provide immediate performance enhancement by promoting suddenly active data to from slower high-capacity drives to speedier flash drives. All VSPEX use cases benefit from the increased efficiency.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructures deliver private cloud, end-user computing, and virtualized application solutions. With VNXe3200, customers can realize an even greater return on their investment.

VNX Intel MCx code path optimization

The advent of flash technology has been a catalyst in totally changing the requirements of midrange storage systems. EMC redesigned the midrange storage platform to efficiently optimize multicore CPUs to provide the most efficient storage system at the lowest cost in the market.

MCx distributes all VNXe data services across all cores, as shown in Figure 3, and can dramatically improve the file performance for transactional applications like databases or virtual machines over NAS.

VNXe includes the first use of the Intel Non-Transparent Bridge (NTB) in an EMC storage array. NTB enables direct high-speed connectivity between storage processors by means of a PCI Express interface. This eliminates external PCI Express (PCIe) switches, saves power and space, and reduces latency and cost.

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Figure 6. VNXe3200 with multicore optimization

VNXe Base Software

The enhanced VNXe Base Software extends the EMC Unisphere easy-to-use interface to include VNX Monitoring and Reporting for validating performance and anticipating capacity requirements. The suite also includes Unisphere Central for centrally managing thousands of VNX and VNXe systems.

Virtualization ecosystem management

VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) is a VMware-defined API that displays storage information through vCenter. Integration between VASA technology and VNX makes storage management in a virtualized environment a seamless experience.

VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) offloads VMware storage-related functions from the server to the storage system. This enables more efficient use of server and network resources for increased performance and consolidation.

EMC Storage Analytics for VNXe EMC Storage Analytics (ESA) for VNXe delivers a storage-only version of VMware vCenter Operations Manager with a built-in VNXe connector that provides detailed analytics, relationships, and unique icons for EMC arrays and components.

EMC Virtual Storage Integrator EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) is a no-charge plug-in for VMware vCenter that is available to all VMware users with EMC storage. VSPEX customers can use VSI to simplify management of virtualized storage. VMware administrators can gain visibility into their VNX storage using the familiar vCenter interface.

With VSI, IT administrators can do more work in less time. VSI offers unmatched access control that enables you to efficiently manage and delegate storage tasks with confidence. With VSI, you can perform daily management tasks with up 90 percent fewer clicks and up to 10 times higher productivity.

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Design Guide

EMC Storage Integrator EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) is targeted towards the Windows and application administrator. ESI is easy to use, delivers end-to end monitoring, and is hypervisor agnostic. Administrators can provision in both virtual and physical environments for a Windows platform, and troubleshoot by viewing the topology of an application from the underlying hypervisor to the storage.

Microsoft Hyper-V With Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft provides Hyper-V 3.0, an enhanced hypervisor for private cloud that can run on NAS protocols for simplified connectivity.

Microsoft Hyper-V Offloaded Data Transfer The Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) feature of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 enables data transfers during copy operations to be offloaded to the storage array, freeing up host cycles. For example, using ODX for a live migration of a Microsoft SQL Server virtual machine doubled performance, decreased migration time by 50 percent, reduced CPU on the Hyper-V server by 20 percent, and eliminated network traffic.

EMC Powered Backup solutions—EMC Avamar and EMC Data Domain—deliver the protection confidence needed to accelerate deployment of virtualized Exchange.

Optimized for virtualized application environments, EMC Powered Backup reduces backup times by 90 percent and increases recovery speeds by 30 times—even offering instant virtual machine access—for worry-free protection. EMC backup appliances add another layer of assurance with end-to-end verification and self-healing for ensured recovery.

For Exchange, EMC Powered Backup delivers advanced capabilities including granular recovery of individual Exchange email messages for faster recovery and support for backups of DAGs, which ensures that as databases move they still are protected. In addition, features such as autodiscovery and autoconfiguration reduce complexity and save time while ensuring that critical data is always protected.

EMC Powered Backup solutions also deliver big savings. The deduplication solutions reduce backup storage by 10 to 30 times, backup management time by 81 percent, and bandwidth by 99 percent for efficient offsite replication—delivering a seven-month payback on average.

Furthermore, for VMware-based VSPEX deployments with up to 50 virtual machines, VSPEX offers VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP) Advanced for Exchange. VDP Advanced is powered by EMC Avamar technology so you get the benefits of Avamar's fast, efficient, image-level backup and recovery combined with an Exchange-specific plugin that simplifies protection of the Exchange environment.

For full technical guidance, refer to the EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Design and Implementation Guide. This guide describes how to design, size, and implement EMC Powered Backup for VSPEX Proven Infrastructures for virtualized Exchange.

VMware vSphere 5.5 transforms a computer’s physical resources by virtualizing the CPU, RAM, hard disk, and network controller. This transformation creates fully

EMC Powered Backup solutions

VMware vSphere 5.5

25



functional virtual machines that run isolated and encapsulated operating systems and applications just like physical computers.

VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) provides easy-to-use, cost-effective high availability for applications running in virtual machines. The VMware vSphere vMotion and VMware vSphere Storage vMotion features of vSphere 5.5 enable seamless migration of virtual machines and stored files from one vSphere server to another, with minimal or no performance impact. Coupled with VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and VMware vSphere Storage DRS, virtual machines have access to the appropriate resources at any point in time through load balancing of the compute and storage resources.

VMware Native Multipathing Plug-In (NMP) is the default module in vSphere used for multipathing. It provides a default path selection algorithm based on the array type. NMP associates a set of physical paths with a specific storage device or logical unit number (LUN). The specific details for handling path failover for a particular storage array are delegated to a Storage Array Type Plug-In (SATP). The specific details for determining which physical path is used to issue an I/O request to a storage device are handled by a Path Selection Plug-In (PSP). SATPs and PSPs are sub plug-ins within the NMP module.

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V provides a complete virtualization platform, which offers increased scalability and performance with a flexible solution from the data center to the cloud. It makes it easier for organizations to realize the cost savings from virtualization and to optimize server hardware investments.

Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V high-availability options include incremental backup support, enhancements in clustered environments to support virtual adapters within the virtual machine, and inbox network interface card (NIC) teaming.

In Hyper-V, “shared nothing” live migration enables the migration of a virtual machine from a server running Hyper-V to another one without the need for both of them to be in the same cluster or to share storage.

Multipathing solutions use redundant physical path components, such as adapters, cables, and switches, to create logical paths between the server and the storage device.

MPIO architecture supports iSCSI, FC, and SAS SAN connectivity by establishing multiple sessions or connections to the storage array. If one or more of these components fails, causing the path to fail, multipathing logic uses an alternate path for I/O so that applications can still access their data. Each NIC (in the iSCSI case) or host bus adapter (HBA) should be connected by using redundant switch infrastructures to provide continued access to storage in the event of a failure in a storage fabric component.

MCS is a feature of the iSCSI protocol, which enables combining several connections inside a single session for performance and failover purposes.

Note: Microsoft does not support the use of both MPIO and MCS connections to the same device. Use either MPIO or MCS to manage paths to storage and load balance policies.

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V

MPIO and MCS

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Design Guide

If a customer has special performance requirements on Exchange Server, consider using EMC XtremCache as a solution. XtremCache is intelligent caching software that uses server-based flash technology to reduce latency and accelerate throughput for dramatic application performance improvement. XtremCache accelerates read operations and protects data by using a write-through cache to the networked storage to deliver persistent high availability, integrity, and disaster recovery.

XtremCache, coupled with array-based EMC FAST software, creates the most efficient and intelligent I/O path from the application to the data store. The result is a networked infrastructure that is dynamically optimized for performance, intelligence, and protection for both physical and virtual environments.

EMC PowerPath Multipathing is a host-resident software application that intelligently manages host-to-storage I/O data paths to maximize the performance and availability of mission-critical applications. It combines automatic load balancing, path failover, and multiple path I/O capabilities into one integrated package. EMC PowerPath/VE delivers PowerPath Multipathing features to optimize VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments.

PowerPath/VE for Windows Hyper-V specifically designed to work within the MPIO framework. PowerPath/VE for VMware supports multiple paths between a vSphere host and an external storage device. Having multiple paths enables the host to access a storage device, even if a specific path is unavailable. Multiple paths can also share the I/O traffic to a storage device.

EMC recommends that you install PowerPath/VE with your VSPEX solution for advanced multipathing functionality such as intelligent path testing and performance optimization.

EMC XtremCache

EMC PowerPath/VE

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Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure


Chapter 4 Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure


Overview .................................................................................................................. 29

Step 1: Evaluate the customer use case ................................................................... 29

Step 2: Design the application architecture ............................................................. 30

Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ............................................. 33

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Design Guide

Overview

This chapter describes how to design the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 solution and how to choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure on which to layer Exchange Server. Table 4 outlines the main steps you need to complete when selecting a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013: Design process Table 4.

Step Action

1 Evaluate the customer’s Exchange workload by using the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet. See Step 1: Evaluate the customer use case.

2 Determine the required infrastructure, Exchange resources, and architecture by using the VSPEX Sizing Tool. See Step 2: Design the application architecture.

Note: If the Sizing Tool is not available, you can manually size the application by using the guidelines in Appendix B: Manually Sizing Exchange for VSPEX.

3 Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, based on the recommendations from Step 2. See Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

Step 1: Evaluate the customer use case

Before you deploy VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013, it is important to gather information about the customer’s business, infrastructure, and workload requirements, to help you design the Exchange environment correctly. To help you better understand the requirements for the VSPEX infrastructure design, EMC recommends that you use the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet when evaluating the workload requirements for the VSPEX solution.

The VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet in Appendix A presents a list of simple questions to help identify customer requirements, usage characteristics, and datasets. Table 5 provides a detailed explanation of the qualification worksheet and general guidance on how to determine input values.

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet guidelines Table 5.

Question Description

Number of mailboxes? Estimate the total number of users that will have a mailbox in the Exchange organization. This element is important for defining the resources required in the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange solution.

Maximum mailbox size (GB)? Determine the size of each user’s mailbox. This is an important element for sizing disk capacity.

Mailbox IOPS profile (messages sent/received per mailbox per day)?

Estimate the Exchange mailbox IOPS profile. This is an important element for sizing back-end storage to meet the Exchange IOPS requirement.

If this is your first time estimating your mailbox IOPS profile, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments for detailed information about the IOPS profile definition.

Overview

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet

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Question Description

DAG copies (including active copy)?

Define the high availability requirement of the Exchange mailbox databases. This factor includes both the active and passive copies of each mailbox database.

Deleted Items Retention (DIR) Window (days)?

Specify how long items will remain in the Exchange store after the user empties the Deleted Items folder. This feature enables users to recover items mistakenly deleted without having to call the help desk and have the Exchange administrator restore the database. However, this value will affect the database capacity by increasing the mailbox size footprint.

In Exchange Server 2013, this element is 14 days by default.

Backup/Truncation Failure Tolerance (days)?

Specify how many days you can go without a backup that performs truncation. Full backups and incremental backups purge the transaction logs since the last full/incremental backup. However, if a backup job fails, ensure that you have enough capacity to restore or continue the service until the next backup window.

For solutions that use the native data protection features within Exchange (mailbox resiliency), plan to set the backup failure tolerance value to 3 to ensure adequate capacity for the log volumes.

Included number of years’ growth?

Future growth is a key characteristic of the VSPEX solution.

Use this element to define the number of years’ growth that will be calculated in the VSPEX Sizing Tool. This answer helps you to understand the customer’s plan for future growth. EMC suggests planning for at least one year’s growth when using the VSPEX Sizing Tool.

Annual growth rate (number of mailboxes, %)?

Use this element to define the expected annual growth rate for the number of mailboxes in the Exchange organization. Enter a number that is appropriate for your environment.

Step 2: Design the application architecture

After you evaluate the workload and requirements of the customer’s Exchange Server environment, use the VSPEX Sizing Tool for Microsoft Exchange Server to design the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange solution.

VSPEX Sizing Tool output: Requirements and recommendations

The VSPEX Sizing Tool enables you to input the Exchange configuration from the customer’s answers in the qualification worksheet. After you complete the inputs to the VSPEX Sizing Tool, the tool generates a series of recommendations, as listed in Table 6.

Overview

VSPEX Sizing Tool

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Design Guide

VSPEX Sizing Tool output Table 6.

Sizing Tool recommendation Description

Recommended configuration for each Exchange server role

Provides detailed information for each Exchange server role, including the number of virtual machines, vCPU, memory, IOPS, and the capacity of the operating system volume.

Additional storage pools Recommends additional storage pools for Exchange data including Exchange databases and transaction logs.

In this solution, customers may need to add more disks and storage pools to the infrastructure layer to meet their business requirements, based on performance and capacity considerations for the Exchange organization.

For more information, see the examples in Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. For more information about the Sizing Tool, refer to the EMC VSPEX Sizing Tool portal.

Virtual machine resource best practices for Exchange Server 2013

The VSPEX Sizing Tool provides detailed recommendations for sizing the virtual machine resources required for the customer’s Exchange environment, based on the following basic resource types for each Exchange Server role (these resources are in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool):

• Exchange server role

• vCPU

• Memory

• OS capacity

• OS IOPS

Exchange 2013 brings fundamental changes in the search and store components and the protocol responsible for servicing client users’ requests. As a result, the Exchange 2013 Mailbox server role performs more work and needs more CPU and memory resources compared to its Exchange 2010 counterpart. EMC recommends that you follow the best practices described here when using the VSPEX Sizing Tool to design the customer’s environment.

• Exchange server role deployment best practices

In Exchange Server 2013, you can configure the DAG feature for mailbox database high availability, and you can enable Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) to balance the load of the Client Access servers. However, do not combine the Mailbox server and Client Access server roles in the same virtual machine if you want to use both DAGs and Windows NLB. DAGs require Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS), but Microsoft does not support installing both the Cluster service and NLB on the same computer. For more information, refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article Interoperability between MSCS and NLB.

• vCPU resources best practices

When sizing the Exchange Server virtual machines, follow the same rules for sizing Exchange on physical servers, and always size the Exchange Mailbox server first. Add 10 percent to the CPU requirements for hypervisor overhead.

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The VSPEX Sizing Tool shows the recommended number of vCPUs for each Exchange server role. The CPU type must meet or exceed the CPU or processor models defined in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading. We validated this Exchange Server solution with a statically assigned processor and no virtual-to-physical CPU oversubscription.

From the Client Access server’s perspective, it has a 1:4 CPU core ratio to the Mailbox server. For more information about vCPU considerations for Exchange 2013, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments.

• Memory resources best practices

The VSPEX Sizing Tool shows the recommended memory for each Exchange server role. We validated this VSPEX for virtualized Exchange solution with statically assigned memory, no over-commitment of memory resources, and no memory swapping or ballooning. The memory values provided by the tool are not hard limits but represent the value tested in the VSPEX solution.

In general, Mailbox server memory requirements are highly dependent on the number of mailboxes on the server and the mailbox IOPS profile. For detailed information, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments.

• OS capacity resources best practices

The VSPEX Sizing Tool shows the recommended capacity for the OS for each Exchange server role. EMC recommends that you put the OS volume into the VSPEX private cloud pool. For more information about the VSPEX private cloud pool, refer to the VXPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

For small and medium Exchange organizations, EMC recommends that you calculate the transport storage requirements on the Mailbox server. For detailed information, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments.

• OS IOPS best practices

The VSPEX Sizing Tool shows the estimated OS volume IOPS for each Exchange server role. EMC recommends that you put the OS volume into the VSPEX private cloud pool. In this solution, we considered more performance characteristics from the application perspective than from the OS perspective.

The VSPEX Sizing Tool generates suggestions for the number of virtual machines for each Exchange server role. The numbers are calculated based on the business requirement, as indicated by the answers in the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet.

Additional considerations

When designing the Exchange organization, it is important to plan for growth so that the environment can continue to deliver an effective business solution. To maintain performance targets and accommodate growth, the VSPEX Sizing Tool enables customers to select from one to three years’ growth. The cost of over-investment in hardware is usually far less than the cumulative expense of troubleshooting problems caused by undersizing.

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Design Guide

Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

The VSPEX program has produced numerous solutions designed to simplify the deployment of a consolidated virtual infrastructure using vSphere, Hyper-V, the VNX and VNXe series of products, and EMC Powered Backup. After you confirm the application architecture using the VSPEX Sizing Tool, you can choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure based on the calculated results.

While this Design Guide is intended for Exchange organization requirements, this may not be the only application intended for deployment on the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. For each application the customer plans to deploy, you must carefully consider the customer’s requirements. If you are uncertain about the best VSPEX Proven Infrastructure to deploy, consult EMC before making the decision.

Follow the steps in Table 7 when choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure: Selection steps Table 7.

Step Action

1 Use the VSPEX Sizing Tool to calculate the total vCPU and memory resources and recommend any additional storage layout requirements for Exchange.

2 Use the VSPEX Sizing Tool to design the customer’s resource requirements for other applications, based on business needs. The VSPEX Sizing Tool calculates the required compute resources and additional recommended storage layouts for both Exchange and other applications.

3 Discuss with your customers the maximum utilization of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure that meets their business requirements—this is the maximum utilization for both Exchange and other applications. Input the maximum utilization percentage to the VSPEX Sizing Tool. The tool provides a recommendation for the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure offering.

4 Select your network vendor and hypervisor software vendor for the recommended VSPEX Proven Infrastructure offering. For more information, go to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure page on EMC.com.

Overview

This section describes two examples of Exchange 2013 organizations—one small, one medium—and demonstrates how you would select the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for each one.

Example 1: Small Exchange organization

In this scenario, a customer wants to deploy a small Exchange organization on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. The customer needs to deploy 1,500 mailboxes and anticipates a 20 percent growth in the number of mailboxes in one year. The customer wants to deploy a DAG configuration so each of the mailbox databases will have one active copy and one passive copy for high availability. The expected mailbox size is 1.5 GB and the mailbox IOPS profile is 0.101 (that is, 150 messages sent/received per mailbox per day). Deleted email messages will be kept on the Exchange store for 14 days and the required backup failure tolerance is three days. There are no other applications to be deployed.

Overview

Considerations

Examples

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After talking to the customer, complete the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet for the production Exchange 2013 organization, as shown in Table 8.

Example of VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet: Table 8.Small Exchange organization

Question Answer

Number of mailboxes? 1,500

Maximum mailbox size (GB)? 1.5 GB


0.101 IOPS per mailbox (150 messages sent/received per mailbox per day)

DAG copies (including active copy)? 2

Deleted Items Retention (DIR) Window (days)? 14

Backup/Truncation Failure Tolerance (days)? 3

Included number of years’ growth? 1

Annual growth rate (number of mailboxes, %)? 20%

After you input the answers from the qualification worksheet to the VSPEX Sizing Tool, the tool generates a series of recommendations for the resources needed from the resource pool, as shown in Table 9.

Example of required resources: Small Exchange organization Table 9.

Exchange Server role

vCPUs Memory (GB)

OS volume capacity (GB)

OS volume IOPS

No. of virtual machines

Mailbox server 8 64 300 25 2

Client Access server 4 12 100 25 2

In this example, you need to set up two Exchange Mailbox servers and two Client Access servers to support the Exchange requirements specified in the qualification worksheet in Table 8.

The VSPEX Sizing Tool also lists recommendations for the type of storage array (VNXe in this case) and the storage layout, as shown in Table 10. The suggested storage layout for Exchange data is in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool.

Example of additional storage pools: Small Exchange organization Table 10.

Recommended additional storage layout

Storage pool name RAID type Disk type Disk capacity No. of disks

Exchange storage pool 1 RAID 1/0 (4+4) 7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks 2 TB 8


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Design Guide

In this example, Exchange is the only application planned for deployment on the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. The VSPEX Sizing Tool recommends that customers consider the following two VSPEX infrastructures for the best fit with their requirements:

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 200 Virtual Machines

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V for up to 200 Virtual Machines

Example 2: Medium Exchange organization

In this scenario, a customer wants to deploy a medium Exchange organization on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. The customer needs to deploy 9,000 mailboxes and anticipates an 11 percent growth in the number of mailboxes in one year. The customer wants to deploy a DAG configuration, so each of the mailbox databases will have one active copy and one passive copy for high availability. The expected mailbox size is 1.5 GB and the mailbox IOPS profile is 0.101 (that is, 150 messages sent/received per mailbox per day). Deleted email messages are kept on the Exchange store for 14 days and the required backup failure tolerance is three days. No other applications are deployed.

After talking to the customer, complete the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet for the production Exchange organization, as shown in Table 11.

Example of VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet: Table 11.Medium Exchange organization

Question Answer









Annual growth rate (number of mailboxes, %)? 11%

After you input the answers from the qualification worksheet to the VSPEX Sizing Tool, the tool generates a series of recommendations for the resources needed from the resource pool, as shown in Table 12.

Example of required resources: Medium Exchange organization Table 12.

Exchange Server role

vCPUs Memory (GB)


OS volume IOPS

No. of virtual machines



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In this example, you need to set up eight Exchange Mailbox servers and four Client Access servers to support the Exchange requirements specified in the qualification worksheet in Table 11.

The VSPEX Sizing Tool also lists recommendations for the type of storage array (VNX in this case) and the storage layout, as shown in Table 13. For increased efficiency and performance, the Exchange database pools use thin LUNs and contain both high-performance and high-capacity disks, with FAST VP enabled for storage tiering. The suggested storage layout for Exchange data is in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool.

Example of additional storage pools: Medium Exchange organization Table 13.



Exchange database pool 1 RAID 1/0 (16+16) 7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks 3 TB 32

RAID 1 (1+1) FAST VP SSDs 100 GB 2



Exchange log pool 1 RAID 1/0 (2+2) 7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks 3 TB 4


In this example, Exchange is the only application planned for deployment on the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. The VSPEX Sizing Tool recommends that customers consider the following two VSPEX infrastructures for the best fit with their requirements:

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines

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Design Guide

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Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations and Best Practices


Chapter 5 Solution Design Considerations and Best Practices


Overview .................................................................................................................. 39

Network design considerations ................................................................................ 39

Storage layout and design considerations ............................................................... 41

Virtualization design considerations ........................................................................ 52

EMC Powered Backup design considerations ........................................................... 53

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Design Guide

Overview

This chapter describes best practices and considerations for designing the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 solution. It covers the following VSPEX infrastructure layers and components:

• Network

• Storage layout

• Virtualization

For information on design considerations and best practices for EMC Powered Backup solutions for your Exchange environment, refer to the EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Design and Implementation Guide.

Network design considerations

Virtual networking uses the same concepts as physical networking, except that some concepts are implemented using software instead of physical cables and switches. While many physical networking best practices apply to virtual networking, there are additional considerations for traffic segmentation, availability, and throughput.

The advanced networking features of the VNXe and VNX series provide protection against network connection failures at the array. Meanwhile, each hypervisor host has multiple connections to user and storage Ethernet networks to guard against link failures. Spread the connections across multiple Ethernet switches to guard against component failure in the network. For more information, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

For this solution, EMC recommends that you consider the following aspects for network design:

• Separate different network traffic

Keep the virtual machine, storage, and vSphere vMotion or Microsoft Windows Hyper-V Live Migration network traffic separate by using VLAN segmentation.

• Set up network redundancy

A goal of redundant topologies is to eliminate network downtime caused by a single point of failure. All networks need redundancy for enhanced reliability. Network reliability is achieved through reliable equipment and network designs that are tolerant to failures and faults. Networks should be designed to recover rapidly so that the fault is bypassed. In this solution, we have two network switches and all networks have their own redundant link.

Overview

Network design best practices

39



• Use NIC teaming

Aggregate multiple network connections in parallel to increase the throughput beyond what a single connection can sustain, and to provide redundancy in case one of the links fails. For example, in the VMware virtualization environment, use two physical NICs per vSwitch and uplink the physical NICs to separate physical switches.

For the NIC teaming settings, best practice is to select no for the NIC teaming failback option. In case of some intermittent behavior in the network, this setting prevents flip-flopping of the NIC cards being used.

When setting up VMware HA, a good starting point is to also set the following ESX server timeouts and settings under ESX Server advanced setting:

NFS.HeartbeatFrequency = 12

NFS.HeartbeatTimeout = 5

NFS.HeartbeatMaxFailures = 10

• Use hardware load balancing or Windows NLB

NLB, together with the Exchange 2013 Client Access server, provides these benefits:

Reduces the impact of a single Client Access server failure within one of the Active Directory (AD) sites

Helps distribute the load evenly across the Client Access servers

For more information on creating a Windows NLB cluster and setting up Client Access servers, refer to the VSPEX Implementation Guides in Essential reading.

• Disable Delayed Acknowledgement on iSCSI NICs

On the Windows Hyper-V virtualization platform, modify the TCP/IP settings for the network interfaces carrying iSCSI traffic on Hyper-V hosts to immediately acknowledge incoming TCP segments. Otherwise slow iSCSI performance may occur. For detailed steps, refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article On a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Fail over cluster with a Hyper-V guest with many pass-through disks, the machine configuration may take some time to come online. This article also applies to Windows Server 2012 R2.

On the VMware virtualization platform, disable Delayed Acknowledgement (ACK), which may cause slow iSCSI performance issues. For more information, refer to the VMware Knowledge Base topic ESX/ESXi hosts might experience read/write performance issues with certain storage arrays.

• Set MTU as 9,000 for Ethernet network

To access the array via iSCSI, CIFS, or NFS, set the maximum transmission unit (MTU) as 9,000 on related host NICs, switch ports, and storage NICs that are used for connectivity. This eliminates slow performance when the I/O size is large.

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Design Guide

• Set up replication network for Exchange DAGs

When deploying DAGs in your environment, although a single network is supported, EMC recommends that each DAG has at least two networks:

A single Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) network, which is used by other servers (such as Exchange 2013 servers and directory servers) to communicate with the DAG member

A single Replication network, which is dedicated to log shipping and seeding

This provides network redundancy and enables the system to distinguish between a server failure and a network failure.

For detailed steps, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Deploying High Availability and Site Resilience.

For other best practices in network design for the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

Storage layout and design considerations

The best practices and design considerations in this section provide guidelines for effectively planning storage for various business requirements in Exchange Server 2013 environments. This section also covers FAST Suite and XtremCache design considerations.

Figure 7 shows an example of the high-level architecture of the Exchange components and storage elements validated in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange 2013 on a vSphere virtualization platform with a VNX storage array. This example uses raw device mapping (RDM) to store all Exchange Server database and log volumes.

You can also use Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) format to store Exchange data. Whether you use VMDK or RDM for Exchange data depends on technical requirements. For more information about VMDK and RDM considerations, refer to Microsoft Exchange 2013 on VMware Best Practices Guide.

Overview

Example architecture with vSphere and VNX

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Figure 7. Exchange 2013 storage elements on a vSphere 5.5 and VNX platform

Note: Microsoft has support policies on the types of storage (file or block protocols) that Exchange virtual machines can use for Exchange data. For detailed information, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Exchange 2013 Virtualization.

In addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool for virtual machines, EMC recommends that you use additional storage pools to store Exchange database and log files. When designing storage pools for deploying Exchange 2013, you can use different models—for example, one storage pool per Exchange Mailbox server or one storage pool per database copy.

In this example, a DAG is configured on Exchange Server 2013 and each database has two copies. We configured dedicated storage pools for each database copy. This provides database copy isolation and, in many cases, can minimize the number of pools needed for deployment compared to the model of one storage pool per Exchange Mailbox Server. We also separated the Exchange database and log files into different storage pools.

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Design Guide

The VSPEX private cloud pool and the Exchange database pools use thin LUNs and contain both high-performance and high-capacity disks, with FAST VP enabled for storage tiering.

Table 14 details the storage pool design for this example.

Exchange-related storage pools on VNX Table 14.

Pool name Purpose RAID recommendation

VSPEX private cloud pool

The infrastructure pool where all the virtual machines’ OS volumes reside. For details, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

RAID 5 with SAS disks and FAST VP SSDs

Exchange database pool 1

The pool where all the Exchange database data of the first database copy reside. RAID 1/0 with NL-SAS

disks and RAID 1 with FAST VP SSDs Exchange database

pool 2 The pool where all the Exchange database data of the second database copy reside.

Exchange log pool 1

The pool where all the Exchange log files of the first database copy reside.

RAID 1/0 with NL-SAS disks Exchange log

pool 2 The pool where all the Exchange log files of the second database copy reside.

Figure 8 shows an example of the high-level architecture of the Exchange components and storage elements validated in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange on a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V virtualization platform with a VNXe storage array.

All the Exchange Server virtual machine boot volumes are stored in the new Hyper-V virtual hard disk format (VHDX) on the cluster-shared volume (CSV), and all the Exchange Server database and log volumes are stored in pass-through disks. In the example, a DAG is configured on Exchange Server 2013 and each database has two copies.

You can also use Hyper-V VHDX to store Exchange data. Whether you use VHDX or pass-through disks for Exchange data depends on technical requirements. For example, if you use hardware snapshots for Exchange Server protection, you should use pass-through disks to store the Exchange database and log files.

Example architecture with Hyper-V and VNXe

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Figure 8. Exchange 2013 storage elements on a Hyper-V and VNXe platform

In addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool for virtual machines, EMC recommends that you use additional storage pools to store Exchange database and log files. For small Exchange organizations in a mailbox resiliency deployment, you can store the Exchange database and log files from one DAG copy in the same storage pool on VNXe—this minimizes the number of pools needed for deployment. The VSPEX private cloud pool and the Exchange database pools use thin LUNs for increased efficiency.

Table 15 details the storage pool design for this example.

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Design Guide

Exchange related storage pools on VNXe Table 15.

Pool name Purpose RAID recommendation

VSPEX private cloud pool

The infrastructure pool where all the virtual machines reside. For details, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

RAID 5 with SAS disks

Exchange data pool 1

The pool where all the Exchange database data and log files of the first database copy reside

RAID 1/0 with NL-SAS disks

Exchange data pool 2

The pool where all the Exchange database data and log files of the second database copy reside.

RAID 1/0 with NL-SAS disks

In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange 2013, consider the best practices in the following sections for storage layout and design.

Disk and RAID type selection for Exchange database and log files

On VNX and VNXe storage platforms, NL-SAS disks are a good fit due to the less demanding I/O requirements of Exchange Server 2013 compared to previous versions of Exchange Server. NL-SAS disks support large mailboxes at a relatively low cost. Using NL-SAS disks in a RAID 1/0 configuration produces better performance and minimal or no performance impact in the event of disk failure.

Disk layout considerations for Exchange Server 2013

When designing the disk layout for Exchange Server 2013:

• Isolate the Exchange database workload to a different set of spindles from other I/O-intensive applications or workloads such as SQL Server. This ensures the highest level of performance for Exchange and simplifies troubleshooting in the event of a disk-related Exchange performance issue.

• Place Exchange storage on separate disks from the guest OS physical storage.

• If using DAGs, deploy each DAG copy of the Exchange mailbox databases on its own set of physical disks.

• In a mailbox resiliency deployment, you do not have to place the database files and logs from the same mailbox database onto different physical disks. However, you can separate database and log volumes into different storage pools or RAID groups for optimal performance.

Storage pool or RAID group selection for Exchange Server 2013

You need to understand the application and business requirements when selecting the approach that best meets your needs. If conditions change, you can use VNX LUN migration to migrate between thin, thick, and classic LUNs.

Use pool-based thin LUNs for:

• Applications with moderate performance requirements

• Taking advantage of advanced data services like FAST VP, VNX Snapshots, compression, and deduplication

• Ease of setup and management

• Best storage efficiency

• Energy and capital savings

• Applications where space consumption is difficult to forecast

Storage design best practices

45



Use pool-based thick LUNs for:

• Applications that require good performance

• Taking advantage of advanced data services like FAST VP and VNX Snapshots

• Storage assigned to VNX for file

• Ease of setup and management

Use classic LUNs for:

• Applications that require extreme performance (for example, when milliseconds of performance are critical)

• The most predictable performance

• Precise data placement on physical drives and logical data objects

• Physical separation of data

Storage pools or RAID groups work well with Exchange Server 2013. When using storage pools, you can create thick or thin LUNs for the Exchange database and logs. With thick LUNs, the physical space allocated is equal to the user capacity that is seen by the mailbox server. With thin LUNs, the physical space allocated can be less than the user capacity that is seen by the mailbox server. From a performance perspective, both thick and thin LUNs are suitable for any Exchange workload on VNX and VNXe systems. However, thin LUNs can experience some additional overhead due to metadata tracking.

Using thin LUNs can provide significant storage savings when deploying large mailboxes, because you can create the LUNs with the required user capacity but with less physical capacity in the storage array.

Pool-based thin LUNs work well for smaller Exchange deployments. Pool-based thin LUNs with FAST VP provide a good balance between flexibility and performance for larger Exchange deployments on the VNX Family. Using thin LUNs to store Exchange data improves storage efficiency. After FAST VP SSDs are added, thin LUN metadata is promoted to the extreme performance tier to boost performance. FAST VP intelligently manages data relocation at the sub-LUN level.

On the VNX series, use the correct multiplier for best performance when designing storage pools:

• Eight (4+4) disks for RAID 1/0 pools

• Five (4+1) or nine (8+1) disks for RAID 5 pools

• Eight (6+2) or sixteen (14+2) disks for RAID 6 pools

VNX for block

It is a best practice to let the system balance the pool LUNs across both storage processors (SPs) when you create the pool LUNs, which it does by default; if you must manually change the setting, EMC recommends that you manually ensure the balance between the SPs.

Do not change the default owner of a pool LUN after you provision it. This can adversely affect performance. It changes the underlying private structures for pool LUNs that the original SP still controls. If you must change the SP ownership after you create a LUN, use LUN migration to migrate the LUN to a new LUN with the

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Design Guide

desired SP owner. Next, perform a trespass operation for the LUN from its previous owner to the new owner.

VNX for file

When creating LUNs on VNX for NFS or CIFS datastores to hold virtual machine boot volumes, consider the following best practices (in this solution we do not use file storage for Exchange data):

• Create approximately one LUN for every four drives in the storage pool.

• Create the LUNs in even multiples of 10.

• Numbers of LUNs = (number of drives in pool divided by four), rounded up to nearest multiple of 10.

• Make all the LUNs the same size.

• Balance LUN ownership across SPA and SPB.

For more information, refer to EMC VNX Unified Best Practices for Performance and the Microsoft TechNet topic Exchange 2013 Virtualization.

VMware VMDK or RDM disk selection for Exchange Server 2013

In VMware environments, you can configure either VMDK format or RDM to house Exchange 2013 data. Whether you use VMDK or RDM depends on technical requirements. For more information about VMDK and RDM considerations, refer to Microsoft Exchange 2013 on VMware Best Practices Guide.

VNX storage pool optimization for Exchange workload

When Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2013 creates databases for predeployment storage validation, it creates the first database and then copies it in parallel to the other databases, as defined in the configuration. If your design uses a single database per LUN, the first database might have better performance with lower latencies than the others. This is because more slices are allocated to the first LUN (where the first database resides) than to the others.

Figure 9 shows how Exchange Jetstress creates databases. In the example, Jetstress creates DB1 and then simultaneously copies it to the other databases.

Figure 9. Exchange Jetstress database initialization process

To ensure that all databases that reside on storage pool-based LUNs perform equally, use the EMC ESI for VNX Pool Optimization utility. This utility optimizes all the LUNs in the storage pool by warming up and preallocating the slices for each LUN, which enables the LUNs to perform uniformly. The utility is

Note: You do not need to use this utility on VNXe series arrays.

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The ESI for VNX Pool Optimization utility provisions and optimizes VNX storage pool thick and thin LUNs for maximum performance after LUN creation and before disk partitioning on the Exchange server. It is a best practice to use this tool when preparing the environment for Jetstress validation to ensure uniform, deterministic, high performance and low latencies across all LUNs within a VNX storage pool.

For more details, refer to Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices and Design Guidelines for EMC Storage.

File allocation unit size for Exchange data volumes

Format Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) volumes used for Exchange databases and logs with an allocation unit size of 64 KB.

This section provides two examples of storage layouts in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange 2013—one small organization for VNXe and one medium organization for VNX, both based on VSPEX Private Cloud. Both examples follow the best practices and design considerations previously discussed.

Note: These are two examples of a storage layout. To plan and design your own storage layouts for Exchange over a VSPEX private cloud, follow the guidance in the VSPEX Sizing Tool and the best practices in the Storage layout and design considerations section of this Design Guide.

Small Exchange organization on VNXe

Table 16 shows an example of a storage layout to store Exchange data for a small Exchange organization—this is in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool. For increased efficiency, the Exchange storage pools use thin LUNs. For more information about the user profile in this example, refer to Example 1: Small Exchange organization.

Exchange data storage pools: Small Exchange organization Table 16.





Figure 10 shows an example of the storage layout for a small Exchange organization on the VNXe series. The number of disks used in the VSPEX private cloud pool may vary according to the customer’s requirements. For detailed information, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

Storage layout examples

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Design Guide

Figure 10. Storage layout example: Exchange small organization for VNXe

VNXe does not require you to manually select specific drives as hot spares. Instead, VNXe considers every unbound disk in the array to be available as a spare. VNXe always selects an unbound disk that most closely matches the disk type, disk size, and location of the failing or failed disk.

Medium Exchange organization on VNX

Table 17 shows an example of a storage layout to store Exchange data for a medium Exchange organization—this is in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool. For increased efficiency and performance, the Exchange database pools use thin LUNs and contain both high-performance and high-capacity disks, with FAST VP enabled for storage tiering. For more information about the user profile in this example, refer to Example 2: Medium Exchange organization.

Exchange data storage pools: Medium Exchange organization Table 17.









Figure 11 shows an example of the storage layout for a medium size Exchange organization on the VNX series.

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Figure 11. Storage layout example: Exchange medium organization for VNX

VNX does not require you to manually select specific drives as hot spares. Instead, VNX considers every unbound disk in the array to be available as a spare. VNX always selects an unbound disk that most closely matches the disk type, disk size, and location of the failing or failed disk.

The number of disks used in the VSPEX private cloud pool may vary according to the customer’s requirements. For detailed information, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

Overview

FAST Suite provides two key technologies—FAST VP and FAST Cache—that enable extreme performance in an automated fashion, when and where needed. These technologies are available with the VNX series.

You can use FAST Cache and FAST VP to achieve high performance and lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the storage system. For example, you can use flash drives to create FAST Cache, and use FAST VP for storage pools consisting of SAS and NL-SAS disk drives. From a performance point of view, FAST Cache provides an immediate performance benefit to “bursty” data, while FAST VP moves more active data to SAS drives and less active data to NL-SAS drives. From

FAST Suite design best practices

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Design Guide

a TCO perspective, FAST Cache can service active data with fewer flash drives, while FAST VP optimizes disk utilization and improves efficiency with SAS and NL-SAS drives.

FAST technology is an available option in VSPEX Proven Infrastructures. For more information on the FAST Suite for VSPEX Proven Infrastructures, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

FAST Cache

When using FAST Cache to benefit Exchange performance, consider the following best practices:

• FAST Cache is not required on thick pool LUNs if snapshots are not used.

• When using FAST Cache, separate the Exchange database files and log files into different storage pools, and enable FAST Cache on the storage pools that house Exchange databases. Do not enable FAST Cache on Exchange log storage pools.

FAST VP

Customer requirements determine whether to use FAST VP with Exchange Server 2013. Compared to FAST Cache, which is a global resource in the array, FAST VP is used on a dedicated storage pool for a particular application. To ensure that FAST VP will benefit your design, evaluate the current Exchange configuration to identify any hot spots.

When designing FAST VP for Exchange 2013:

• Do not place database files and log files in the same storage pool, because log files have a lower I/O requirement and do not need to be moved to a higher tier. Always place the log files in separate storage pools and always use RAID 1/0. This can greatly reduce VNX SP, bus, and disk utilization due to the way that the VNX operating environment and write cache handles small, sequential I/Os.

• Do not place DAG copies of the same database in the same storage pool on the same disks.

• Set the FAST policy for the participating pool LUNs to Start High then Auto-Tier (Recommended).

When thin LUNs are used to store Exchange database data, FAST VP helps to boost performance by intelligently promoting metadata to the extreme performance tier.

For more information about FAST VP, refer to the EMC FAST VP for Unified Storage Systems White Paper.

When you enable XtremCache, you have complete and flexible control over the scope and granularity of the cache. In physical environments, you can enable or disable XtremCache at the source volume level or LUN level. In virtual environments, you can provision XtremCache capacity to an individual virtual machine. You can then configure the allocated cache capacity inside the virtual machine at the virtual disk level.

To learn more about EMC XtremCache, refer to the EMC XtremCache Data Sheet.

XtremCache design best practices

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When you configure XtremCache for volumes that house Exchange databases, it accelerates block I/O reads that require the highest IOPS, the lowest response time, or both. The software uses the PCIe card to cache the most frequently referenced data, shrinking storage access time while offloading the I/O processing from the storage array. By residing in the server on the PCIe bus, XtremCache bypasses the overhead of network storage access, thus reducing the response time.

XtremCache puts Exchange data into the server I/O stack, closer to the application, to dramatically improve performance. Our validation testing of XtremCache with Exchange 2013 shows a significant reduction in user response times and increased throughput. If you have heavy to extreme Exchange workload requirements that are greater than 250 messages per user per day, consider implementing an XtremCache solution.

Note: Performance gain and reduction in response time will vary based on each customer's Exchange email usage. EMC highly recommends that you use a pilot phase test in your environment to determine the exact benefits of this technology.

Virtualization design considerations

Exchange Server 2013 is supported in a virtual environment that uses Microsoft Hyper-V technology or VMware vSphere ESXi technology. For additional information on Microsoft support policies for virtualizing Exchange Server 2013, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Exchange 2013 Virtualization.

In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange 2013 solution, EMC recommends that you consider the following best practices for virtualizing Exchange Server 2013:

• Distribute the same Exchange server role across different physical hosts. For example, you may have several Exchange Client Access servers in your environment. In this scenario, for redundancy considerations, EMC recommends that you distribute these servers across different physical hosts.

• If using DAGs, distribute DAG copies across multiple physical hosts to minimize potential downtime in the event of physical server issues.

• Balance the workload by mixing the Exchange server roles on each physical host. For example, you can mix the Mailbox server and Client Access server virtual machines on a physical host to balance the workloads and prevent one physical resource from being unduly stressed.

• For Exchange 2013 deployments, you can combine Exchange Server virtual machines, including Exchange mailbox virtual machines that are part of a DAG, with host-based failover clustering and migration technology, provided you configure the virtual machines so that they do not save and restore state on disk when they are moved or taken offline.

• Disable the dynamic memory feature on Exchange Server virtual machines.

• Regularly monitor the performance of the entire VSPEX Proven infrastructure.

Overview

Virtualization design best practices

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Design Guide

You can monitor performance at the virtual machine level and at the hypervisor level. For example, when the hypervisor is ESXi, you can use the performance monitoring tool inside the Exchange Server virtual machine to ensure virtual machine or Exchange Server performance. Meanwhile, at the hypervisor level, you can use esxtop to monitor host performance.

For detailed information on the performance monitoring tools, refer to the VSPEX Implementation Guides in Essential reading.

EMC Powered Backup design considerations

VSPEX solutions are sized and tested with EMC Powered Backup solutions, including Avamar and Data Domain. If your solution includes EMC Powered Backup components, refer to the EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Design and Implementation Guide for information about designing and implementing them in your VSPEX solution.

Note: It is also feasible to use VNXe3200 or VNX series together with application-based replication.

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Chapter 6: Solution Verification Methodologies


Chapter 6 Solution Verification Methodologies


Overview .................................................................................................................. 55

Baseline hardware verification methodology ........................................................... 55

Application verification methodology ...................................................................... 55

EMC Powered Backup verification methodology ....................................................... 57

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Design Guide

Overview

This chapter provides a list of items that you should review after configuring the solution. Use the information in this chapter to verify the functionality and performance of the solution and its components and to ensure that the configuration supports core availability and performance requirements.

Baseline hardware verification methodology

Hardware consists of the computer's physical resources such as processors, memory, and storage. Hardware also includes physical network components such as NICs, cables, switches, routers, and hardware load balancers. You can avoid many performance and capacity issues by using the correct hardware for the solution and by verifying the redundancy of the solution components before you deploy to production.

For detailed steps on verifying the redundancy of the solution components, refer to the VXPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

Application verification methodology

After you have verified the hardware and the redundancy of the solution components, the next critical step is to test and optimize the Exchange application. Test the new VSPEX Proven Infrastructure before deploying it to production to confirm that the architectures you designed achieve the required performance and capacity targets. This enables you to identify and optimize potential bottlenecks before they negatively impact users in a live deployment.

Table 18 describes the high-level steps to complete before you put the Exchange environment into production.

High-level steps for application verification Table 18.

Step Description Reference

1 Understand the testing tools: Microsoft Jetstress. Jetstress overview

2 Understand the key metrics for your Exchange environment to achieve performance and capacity that meet the business requirements.

Key metrics for Jetstress testing

3 Use the VSPEX Sizing Tool for Exchange to determine the architecture and resources of your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

Note: If the Sizing Tool is not available, you can manually size the application by using the sizing guidelines in Manually Sizing Exchange for VSPEX in Appendix B.

EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

4 Build the test environment, and create Exchange virtual machines on your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

VSPEX Implementation Guides

High-level steps for application verification

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Step Description Reference

5 Run the Microsoft Jetstress tool to verify that the Exchange storage design meets the key performance metrics. You do not need to install Exchange Server to run Jetstress testing.

Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2013 Tool

It is important to verify the Exchange 2013 storage design for expected transactional IOPS before placing it in a production environment. To ensure that the environment functions appropriately, EMC recommends that you use the Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2013 tool to verify the Exchange storage design.

Jetstress simulates Exchange I/O at the database level by interacting directly with the ESE database technology without requiring Exchange to be installed. To simulate the Exchange I/O accurately, Jetstress uses the same ESE.dll file that Exchange uses in production.

You can configure Jetstress to test the maximum I/O throughput available to the disk subsystem within the required performance constraints of Exchange. Jetstress can accept a simulated profile of specific user counts and IOPS per user to verify that all of the hardware and software components within the I/O stack, from the operating system down to the physical disk drive, are capable of maintaining an acceptable performance level.

You can download Jetstress 2013 at Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2013 Tool.

Before running Jetstress, it is important to know which key metrics to capture and what thresholds must be met for each metric when running the tests. Table 19 lists the key metrics for Jetstress verification.

Key metrics for Jetstress verification Table 19.

Performance counters Target values

Achieved Exchange transactional IOPS (I/O database reads/sec + I/O database writes/sec)

Number of mailboxes * Exchange 2013 user IOPS profile

I/O database reads/sec N/A (for analysis purpose)

I/O database writes/sec N/A (for analysis purpose)

Total IOPS (I/O database reads/sec + I/O database writes/sec + BDM reads/sec + I/O log replication reads/sec + I/O log writes/sec)

N/A (for analysis purpose)

I/O database reads average latency (ms) Less than 20 ms

I/O log writes average latency (ms) Less than 10 ms

To design the virtualized Exchange 2013 solution on the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, consider all the factors described previously in this Design Guide—for example, storage layout, network load balancing, networking, and so on.

EMC recommends that you use the VSPEX Sizing Tool to determine the number of Exchange Server virtual machines required for your customer’s Exchange

Jetstress overview

Key metrics for Jetstress testing

Determining the architecture for the Exchange Server solution

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Design Guide

organization, and the resources (such as the processor, memory, and so on) required for each server role, according to the business needs.

To build the solution environment and create the Exchange virtual machines in your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, refer to the VSPEX Implementation Guides in Essential reading.

Note: Exchange Server does not need to be installed for Jetstress testing.

Jetstress can automatically compare the observed performance results against a set of acceptable values after each test. The results are then written to a HTML report.

For details on how to use the Jetstress tool and interpret the Jetstress report, refer to the Jetstress 2013: Jetstress Field Guide on the Microsoft TechNet website.

EMC Powered Backup verification methodology

VSPEX solutions are sized and tested with EMC Powered Backup solutions, including Avamar and Data Domain. If your solution includes EMC Powered Backup components, refer to the EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 Design and Implementation Guide for detailed information on verifying the functionality and performance of EMC Powered Backup in your VSPEX solution.

Building the infrastructure environment

Using the Jetstress tool

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Chapter 7: Reference Documentation


Chapter 7 Reference Documentation


EMC documentation ................................................................................................. 59

Other documentation ............................................................................................... 59

Links ........................................................................................................................ 60

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Design Guide

EMC documentation

The following documents, available from the EMC Online Support or EMC.com websites, provide additional and relevant information. If you do not have access to a document, contact your EMC representative.

• EMC Host Connectivity Guide for VMware ESX Server

• EMC Host Connectivity Guide for Windows

• EMC PowerPath Family: PowerPath and PowerPath/VE Multipathing Data Sheet

• EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Suite Product Guide

• EMC Unisphere Remote: Next-Generation Storage Monitoring

• EMC Unisphere: Unified Storage Management Solution

• EMC VNXe3200 Installation Guide

• EMC VNX5600 Unified Installation Guide

• EMC VNX FAST VP: VNX5200, VNX5400, VNX5600, VNX5800, VNX7600, and VNX8000

• EMC VNX Monitoring and Reporting 1.0 User Guide

• EMC VNX Multicore FAST Cache: VNX5200, VNX5400, VNX5600, VNX5800, VNX7600, and VNX8000

• EMC VNX Unified Best Practices for Performance

• EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Storage Viewer Product Guide

• EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Unified Storage Management Product Guide

• EMC XtremCache User Guide

• EMC XtremCache Data Sheet

• Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices and Design Guidelines for EMC Storage

• Using a VNXe System with FC iSCSI LUNs

• Using a VNXe System with NFS File Systems

• Using a VNXe System with VMware NFS or VMware VMFS

• Using a VNXe with CIFS File Systems

• Using EMC VNX Storage with VMware vSphere TechBook

Other documentation

For documentation on Microsoft Hyper-V and Microsoft Exchange, go to the Microsoft website. For documentation on VMware vSphere, go to the VMware website.

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http://www.microsoft.com/

http://www.vmware.com/



Links

Use the following links to obtain additional information on performing the tasks in this Design Guide.

Note: The links provided were working correctly at the time of publication.

Microsoft TechNet

Refer to the following topics on the Microsoft TechNet website:

• Deploying High Availability and Site Resilience

• Exchange 2013 Virtualization

• Jetstress 2013: Jetstress Field Guide

• Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2013 Tool

• Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments

Microsoft Knowledge Base

Refer to the following Knowledge Base articles on the Microsoft Support website:

• Interoperability between MSCS and NLB

• On a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Fail over cluster with a Hyper-V guest with many pass-through disks, the machine configuration may take some time to come online

VMware Knowledge Base

Refer to the following topic on the VMware Knowledge Base website:

• ESX/ESXi hosts might experience read/write performance issues with certain storage arrays

• Microsoft Exchange 2013 on VMware Best Practices Guide

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Design Guide

61

Appendix A: Qualification Worksheet


Appendix A Qualification Worksheet

This appendix presents the following topic:

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet ................................. 63

62

Appendix A: Qualification Worksheet


Design Guide

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet

Before sizing the VSPEX solution, use the qualification worksheet to gather information about the customer’s business requirements. Table 20 shows the qualification worksheet for a virtualized Exchange organization.

VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet Table 20.

Question Answer

Number of mailboxes?

Maximum mailbox size (GB)?


DAG copies (including active copy)?

Deleted Items Retention (DIR) Window (days)?

Backup/Truncation Failure Tolerance (days)?

Included number of years’ growth?

Annual growth rate (number of mailboxes, %)?

A standalone copy of the qualification worksheet is attached to this document in PDF format. To view and print the worksheet:

1. In Adobe Reader, open the Attachments panel as follows:

Select View > Show/Hide > Navigation Panes > Attachments.

or Click the Attachments icon as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Printable qualification worksheet

2. Under Attachments, double-click the attached file to open and print the qualification worksheet.

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Appendix B: Manually Sizing Exchange for VSPEX


Appendix B Manually Sizing Exchange for VSPEX

This appendix presents the following topics:

Overview .................................................................................................................. 65

Manually sizing Exchange 2013 for VSPEX .............................................................. 65

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Design Guide

Overview

Properly configured Exchange storage, combined with optimally sized server and network infrastructures, can guarantee smooth Exchange operation and excellent user experience. This section introduces the procedure for manually sizing Exchange 2013 for VSPEX, including how to calculate compute and storage resources to support a specific number of Exchange users. The amount of required resources is derived from the customer’s detailed requirements.

Note: If the VSPEX Sizing Tool is not available, you can use the manual sizing procedure to provide an approximate single-application sizing. EMC recommends the VSPEX Sizing Tool, with its multi-application and multi-instance capability, as the preferred sizing approach.

Manually sizing Exchange 2013 for VSPEX

Before sizing Exchange 2013, it is important to gather and understand the infrastructure requirements and limitations, and the estimated workload. The VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet in Appendix A presents a list of simple questions to help identify customer requirements, usage characteristics, and datasets. Table 5 on page 29 provides a detailed explanation of the questionnaire and general guidance on how to determine input values.

Table 21 shows a qualification worksheet populated with customer requirements. This is the example used to introduce the Exchange manual sizing methodology described in the following sections. To meet a customer requirement of 9,000 mailboxes with an 11 percent growth rate in the number of mailboxes in one year, size the environment for 10,000 mailboxes.

Example of VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet Table 21.

Question Example answer









Annual growth rate (number of mailboxes %)? 11%

After you determine the customer’s requirements, refer to the process flow in Table 22 to manually size Exchange 2013 for VSPEX.

Using the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange 2013 qualification worksheet

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Exchange manual sizing procedure Table 22.

Step Action

1 Determine the number of Mailbox and Client Access server roles for the customer’s environment, and calculate the required resources, including vCPU, memory, OS capacity, and OS IOPS.

2 Calculate the storage resources for both IOPS and capacity requirements.

3 Complete the calculation and choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure to meet the customer’s requirements.

vCPU sizing

When sizing the Exchange Server virtual machines, follow the same rules for sizing Exchange on physical servers. Always size the Exchange Mailbox server first.

The first step is to determine how many mailboxes will be hosted on each Exchange Mailbox server virtual machine and how many Exchange Mailbox servers are needed in the environment. Use the following guidelines:

• If there is only one copy of each mailbox database (DAG is not configured), we recommend that each Exchange Mailbox server host up to 2,000 mailboxes.

• If there are two copies of each mailbox database (DAG is configured), we recommend that each Exchange Mailbox server host up to 1,250 active mailboxes and 1,250 passive ones.

Therefore, in the example environment, 10,000 active mailboxes and 10,000 passive ones (two copies of each mailbox database) require eight Exchange Mailbox servers in total.

The second step is to calculate the vCPU requirement for each Exchange Mailbox server and Client Access server virtual machine. Use the following steps:

1. Calculate the number of active and passive mailboxes to be hosted on each Exchange Mailbox server. Consider that, in a server failure situation, if a certain number of Exchange Mailbox servers fail, the surviving Mailbox servers must support all the active mailboxes in the environment.

2. Estimate the CPU megacycle requirements for each mailbox, based on the mailbox IOPS profile and the DAG configuration. For detailed information about CPU estimates for different mailbox IOPS profiles, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments.

3. Calculate the total CPU megacycle requirements for each Exchange Mailbox server, and then calculate how many vCPUs are needed on each Exchange Mailbox server, according to the type of server processor the customer would use. Provision sufficient megacycles so that CPU utilization does not exceed 80 percent.

In the example environment, if we choose Intel Xeon E5-2650, 2 GHz as the server processor, we need 12 vCPUs for each Exchange Mailbox server virtual machine.

Sizing the Exchange server virtual machines

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Design Guide

4. From the Client Access server’s perspective, it has a 1:4 CPU core ratio to the Mailbox server. In the example, we deploy four Exchange Client Access servers and eight vCPUs for each Client Access server.

For detailed steps on calculating CPU megacycles, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments.

Memory sizing

Similar to vCPU sizing, the mailbox IOPS profile and the number of active and passive mailboxes determine the detailed memory requirement for each Exchange Mailbox server virtual machine. Use the following steps for sizing the Exchange Mailbox server and Client Access server:

1. Calculate the number of active and passive mailboxes to be hosted on each Exchange Mailbox server. Again, consider that, in a server failure situation, if a certain number of Exchange Mailbox servers fails, the surviving Mailbox servers must support all the active mailboxes in the environment.

2. Estimate the memory requirement for each mailbox based on the mailbox IOPS profile and the DAG configuration, and calculate the total memory requirement for each Exchange Mailbox server. Then calculate the memory requirement for the Exchange Client Access server. For detailed steps, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments.

In the example environment, we need 68 GB of memory for each Exchange Mailbox server and 20 GB of memory for each Exchange Client Access server.

OS capacity sizing

As the transport components (with the exception of the front-end transport component on the Client Access server role) are now part of the Exchange 2013 Mailbox server, you need to calculate the transport storage requirements for the OS capacity. In the example, we need 300 GB for the OS capacity of the Mailbox server. For the Client Access server, the OS capacity is fixed at 100 GB. For detailed information, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments.

OS IOPS sizing

The OS IOPS is fixed at 25 IOPS per OS volume on each Exchange virtual machine. The example has 12 Exchange virtual machines in total. For detailed information, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides in Essential reading.

Virtual machine resource summary

In the example environment, we need eight Exchange Mailbox server and four Exchange Client Access server virtual machines, as shown in Table 23.

Summary of virtual machine resources Table 23.

Exchange Server role vCPUs Memory (GB)


OS volume IOPS No. of virtual machines



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Overview

To size the storage requirements, calculate the IOPS requirement first, and then calculate the capacity requirement. Determine the total number of disks required by consolidating the results from the IOPS and capacity requirement calculations.

As a best practice, EMC recommends using 7.2 k rpm 3 TB NL-SAS drives in a RAID 1/0 configuration on the VNX and VNXe series to house the Exchange database and log files.

For larger Exchange deployments, pool-based thin LUNs with FAST VP provide a good balance between flexibility and performance. EMC also recommends separating the database and log volumes into different storage pools for optimal performance. Therefore, calculate the storage requirements for the Exchange database and log files separately.

Exchange storage IOPS calculation

It is important to understand the amount of database IOPS consumed by each mailbox user because it is one of the key transactional I/O metrics needed to adequately size the storage. To determine the IOPS for different mailbox profiles, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments.

To size the Exchange storage IOPS, use the following steps:

1. Calculate the total database IOPS required to support all mailbox users by using the following building block calculation:

Total transactional IOPS = IOPS per mailbox * mailboxes per server * (1 + I/O overhead factor)

Add 20 percent overhead, as suggested by Microsoft, and add another 20 percent overhead required by EMC for additional I/O activities such as Background Database Maintenance (BDM). Do not confuse the EMC 20 percent overhead requirement, with the Microsoft-suggested 20 percent overhead, which the customer may or may not choose to add.

In the example, the calculation is:

0.101 * 2500 * (1 + 20% + 20%) = 354 IOPS

In step 1, we determined the IOPS requirement to support one Exchange Mailbox server of 2,500 mailboxes (both active and passive). The total IOPS required for 20,000 users mailboxes (both active and passive) is 2,832 (354 IOPS * 8).

2. Calculate the number of disks required to provide the desired user performance for the Exchange database, based on the IOPS requirements, by using the formula:

Disks required for Exchange database IOPS = (Total backend database Read IOPS + Total backend database Write IOPS) / Physical Disk Speed = ((Total transactional IOPS * Read Ratio) + (RAID Write Penalty *(Total transactional IOPS * Write Ratio)) / Physical Disk Speed

Sizing the storage for Exchange Mailbox server

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Design Guide

Where: Is:

Total transactional IOPS The IOPS calculated in Step 1.

Read Ratio The percentage of I/Os that are reads (60% for Exchange 2013). This number is based on the Jetstress 2013 reports from the validation testing in this solution.

Write Ratio The percentage of I/Os that are writes (40% for Exchange 2013). This number is based on the Jetstress 2013 reports from the validation testing in this solution.

RAID Write Penalty The RAID write penalty multiplier (RAID 1/0=2).

Physical Disk Speed 65 Exchange 2013 database IOPS for 7,200 rpm NL-SAS drives.

In the example, to support an Exchange database IOPS requirement for 20,000 mailboxes using 7,200 rpm NL-SAS drives, we need:

(2832 * 0.6) + 2 * (2832 * 0.4) / 65 = 3964 / 65 = 60.99 (round up to 64 disks)

3. Calculate the number of disks required to provide the desired user performance for Exchange log files, based on the IOPS requirements, by using the formula:

Disks required for Exchange log IOPS = (Total backend database Write IOPS * 60%) / Physical Disk Speed

Where: Is:

Total backend database Write IOPS The IOPS calculated in Step 2.

Physical Disk Speed 180 Exchange 2013 sequential log IOPS as Physical Disk Speed for sequential log I/O.

In the example, to support an Exchange log IOPS requirement for 20,000 mailboxes using 7,200 rpm NL-SAS drives, we need:

0.6 * 2265 / 180 = 1359 / 180 = 7.55 (round up to 8 disks)

Exchange storage capacity calculation

After calculating the IOPS requirement, calculate the number of disks needed to meet the Exchange capacity requirement. It is important to determine what the mailbox size on disk would be before attempting to determine the total storage requirements.

A full mailbox with a 1.5 GB quota, for example, requires more than 1.5 GB of disk space because we must accommodate the maximum mailbox size, the white space, and the deleted item retention window (including calendar version logging and single item recovery, if enabled).

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To calculate the Exchange storage capacity requirement, use the following steps:

1. To determine the mailbox size on disk, use the following formula:

Mailbox size on disk = Maximum mailbox size + White space + Dumpster

Where: Is:

White space Email messages sent/received per user per day * average message size.

In the example, a mailbox in 0.101 IOPS profile sends and receives a total of 150 email messages per day on average, so the whitespace is 150 * 75 / 1024 = 11 MB.

Dumpster Email messages sent/received per user per day * average message size * deleted item retention window + Maximum mailbox size * 0.012 + Maximum mailbox size * 0.03.

In the example, it is 150 * 75 * 14 / 1024 + 1536 * 0.012 + 1536 * 0.03 = 218 MB.

In the example, the mailbox size on disk is 1,536 + 11 + 218 = 1,765 MB.

2. To determine the total database LUN size, use the following formula:

Total database LUN size = Number of mailboxes * Mailbox size on disk * (1 + Index space + additional Index space for maintenance) / (1 + LUN free space)

In the example, with 20 percent for the Index, 20 percent for the additional Index space for maintenance, and 20 percent for LUN-free protection, the database size will be 20,000 * 1,765 MB * (1 + 0.2 + 0.2) / (1 - 0.2) / 1,024 = 60,327 GB.

3. To determine the total log LUN size, use the following formula:

Total log LUN size = Log size * Number of mailboxes * Backup/truncation failure tolerance days / (1 + LUN free space)

To ensure that the Mailbox server does not sustain any outages because of space allocation issues, size the transaction logs LUNs to accommodate all of the logs that will be generated during the backup set. If the architecture uses the mailbox resiliency and single item recovery features as the backup architecture, allocate enough log capacity to accommodate any backup or truncation failure (for example, a failed database copy prevents log truncation from occurring). In the example, the backup/truncation failure tolerance window is three days.

A mailbox with a 0.101 IOPS profile generates 30 transaction logs per day on average. So, in the example, the total log LUN size = (30 logs * 1 MB) * 20,000 * 3 / 1,024 / (1 - 0.2) = 2,197 GB.

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Design Guide

4. To determine the number of disks, use the following formulas:

Disks required for Exchange database capacity = Total database LUN size / Physical Disk Capacity * RAID penalty

Disks required for Exchange log capacity = Total log LUN size) / Physical Disk Capacity * RAID penalty

In the example, each 3 TB NL-SAS disk provides 2,794.5 GB of raw capacity. The RAID penalty is 2 due to the RAID 1/0 configuration, so the number of disks required for Exchange database capacity is 60,327 / 2,794.5 * 2 = 43.2 (round up to 44).

The number of disks required for Exchange log capacity is 2,197 / 2,794.5 * 2 = 1.6 (round up to 2).

Final storage calculation results

At this stage, compare the results from the IOPS calculation and the capacity calculation and select the larger number to meet both requirements. In the example, as a final result, you need 64 * 3 TB 7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks in RAID 1/0 for the Exchange database, and 8 * 3 TB 7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks in RAID 1/0 for the Exchange log files. Table 24 shows a summary of the results.

Number of disks required for IOPS and capacity Table 24.

Data Calculation results Final results Disk type Disk capacity

Exchange database 64 disks to meet IOPS requirement 64 disks

7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks

3 TB 44 disks to meet capacity requirement

Exchange log 8 disks to meet IOPS requirement 8 disks

7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks

3 TB 2 disks to meet capacity requirement

As a best practice, separate the DAG copies for each database into different physical disks. In the example, we configured dedicated storage pools for each database copy, and separated the Exchange database and log files into different storage pools.

For increased efficiency and performance, the Exchange database pools use thin LUNs and contain both high-performance and high-capacity disks, with FAST VP enabled for storage tiering. Table 25 shows the final storage layout for the example, based on the final number of disks determined in Table 24.

Exchange data storage pool configuration Table 25.

Recommended Exchange data storage layout






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Recommended Exchange data storage layout



After sizing the application, and determining the resources required and the recommended disk storage layouts, use the following steps to choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure based on the calculated results:

1. If the customer wants to deploy other applications in the same VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, refer to the VSPEX Design Guides for those applications to determine the total resources required and the recommended storage layouts for the combined workload.

For example, if the customer wants to deploy Exchange 2013, SQL Server 2012 OLTP workloads, and SharePoint 2013 in the same VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, refer to the following Design Guides to size SQL Server and SharePoint manually:

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013

2. Aggregate the required virtual machine resources (number of disks, total IOPS, and so on) for all applications. For example:

Total disks for applications data = SQL disks for data + Exchange disks for data + SharePoint disks for data = 34 disks + 76 disks + 14 disks = 124 disks

3. Discuss with your customer the virtualization platform they want to use to meet their business requirements.

4. Refer to the appropriate EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide and calculate the number of disks required for the VSPEX private cloud pool by using the virtual infrastructure building block methodology. For example:

Total disks for Private Cloud = 160 SAS disks + 8 SSD disks = 168 disks

5. Aggregate the total number of disks required, including the number of disks for the combined applications, the VSPEX private cloud pool, and hot spares.

Total disks = Total disks needed for applications data + Total disks for Private Cloud + Hot Spare = 124 disks + 168 disks + 12 disks = 304 disks

6. Refer to the appropriate EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide and calculate the total number of virtual machines based on the compute and storage resources of the combined application workload.

7. Use Table 26 to select the minimum recommended VSPEX Proven Infrastructure based on the number of supported virtual machines.

Selecting the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

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Design Guide

VSPEX storage model support matrix Table 26.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure model* Supported storage array

Up to 200 virtual machines VNXe3200

Up to 200 virtual machines VNX5200™



Up to 1,000 virtual machines VNX5800™

* Includes the following VSPEX models: VSPEX Private Cloud for Microsoft and VSPEX Private Cloud for VMware.

8. Compare the values in Table 27 to those in Table 26 to make sure the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure supports the total number of disks required for the combined applications and the Private Cloud. If it does not, you may need to upgrade to the next VSPEX Proven Infrastructure model. In this example, VNX5600 can support a maximum of 500 disks, which fits the minimum requirement of 304 disks calculated in step 5.

Storage system support matrix Table 27.

Storage system Maximum number of drives

VNXe3200 150

VNX5200 125

VNX5400 250

VNX5600 500

VNX5800 750

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Documents

EMC VSPEX FOR VIRTUALIZED MICROSOFT … · Contents . EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2013 . Enabled by EMC VNX Family and EMC Powered Backup Design Guide . Overview