EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010 with ... · IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE . EMC VSPEX . Abstract This Implementation Guide describes, at a high level, the steps required

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

EMC VSPEX

Abstract

This Implementation Guide describes, at a high level, the steps required to deploy a Microsoft Exchange 2010 organization on an EMC® VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructure enabled by Microsoft Hyper-V on EMC VNX® and EMC VNXe®.

April 2013

EMC VSPEX FOR VIRTUALIZED MICROSOFT EXCHANGE 2010 WITH MICROSOFT HYPER-V

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010 with Microsoft Hyper-V Implementation Guide

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Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.

Published April 2013

EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.

The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.

EMC2, EMC, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

For the most up-to-date regulatory document for your product line, go to the technical documentation and advisories section on the EMC Online Support website.


Part Number H11428


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Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................ 11

Purpose of this guide .................................................................................. 12

Business value ............................................................................................ 12

Scope .......................................................................................................... 13

Audience ..................................................................................................... 13

Terminology ................................................................................................ 14

Chapter 2 Before You Start .................................................................. 15

Overview ..................................................................................................... 16 Pre-deployment tasks .......................................................................................... 16

Documentation workflow ............................................................................. 17

Deployment prerequisites ........................................................................... 17

Plan and size Microsoft Exchange ................................................................ 19

Support resources ....................................................................................... 23 VSPEX Design Guide ............................................................................................ 23 VSPEX Solution Overviews ................................................................................... 23 VSPEX Proven Infrastructures ............................................................................... 24 Exchange Best Practices Guide ............................................................................ 24

Chapter 3 Solution Overview ............................................................... 25

Overview ..................................................................................................... 26

Solution architecture ................................................................................... 26

Key components .......................................................................................... 27 Microsoft Exchange 2010 .................................................................................... 28 EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ......................................................................... 28 EMC VNX and VNXe .............................................................................................. 29 EMC Unisphere .................................................................................................... 31 Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V ...................................................... 32 MPIO and MCS ..................................................................................................... 32 EMC Storage Integrator ........................................................................................ 32

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EMC Avamar ......................................................................................................... 33 EMC Data Domain ................................................................................................ 33 EMC PowerPath .................................................................................................... 34

Chapter 4 Solution Implementation ..................................................... 35

Overview ..................................................................................................... 36

Physical setup ............................................................................................. 36 Overview .............................................................................................................. 36

Network implementation ............................................................................. 36 Overview .............................................................................................................. 36

Storage implementation .............................................................................. 37 Overview .............................................................................................................. 37 Set up initial VNX/VNXe configuration .................................................................. 38 Provision storage for Hyper-V datastores .............................................................. 38 Provision storage for Exchange datastores and logs ............................................. 39 FAST Cache configuration on VNX ......................................................................... 50 FAST VP configuration on VNX .............................................................................. 51

Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V infrastructure implementation ............... 53 Overview .............................................................................................................. 53 Install Windows hosts .......................................................................................... 54 Install and configure Failover Clustering ............................................................... 54 Configure Windows host networking .................................................................... 54 Configure multipathing ........................................................................................ 54 Configure initiator to connect to a VNX/VNXe iSCSI server .................................... 55 Publish VNX/VNXe datastores to Hyper-V ............................................................. 55 Connect Hyper-V datastores ................................................................................. 55

Exchange Server virtualization implementation ........................................... 56 Overview .............................................................................................................. 56 Create Exchange virtual machines ........................................................................ 57 Install Exchange guest OS .................................................................................... 58 Install integration services ................................................................................... 58 Assign an IP address ............................................................................................ 58 Attach pass-through disks to Exchange virtual machines ..................................... 58

Application implementation ........................................................................ 61 Overview .............................................................................................................. 61 Predeployment verification .................................................................................. 62 Prepare Active Directory ....................................................................................... 62 Install Exchange 2010 Client Access server and Hub Transport roles .................... 62 Deploy Client Access server array ......................................................................... 64 Install Exchange 2010 Mailbox server role ........................................................... 65

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Deploy DAG .......................................................................................................... 66

Backup and recovery implementation .......................................................... 67 Overview .............................................................................................................. 67 Backup and recovery considerations .................................................................... 67 Backup strategies ................................................................................................ 69 Federated backups of Exchange 2010 DAG environments .................................... 72 Multistreaming ..................................................................................................... 74

Chapter 5 Solution Verification ........................................................... 75

Baseline hardware verification .................................................................... 76 Overview .............................................................................................................. 76 Verify Hyper-V functionality .................................................................................. 76 Verify solution components redundancy .............................................................. 76 Verify the Exchange CAS array configuration ........................................................ 77 Verify the Exchange DAG configuration ................................................................. 77 Monitor the solution’s health ............................................................................... 78

Exchange Server performance verification ................................................... 79 Overview .............................................................................................................. 79 Jetstress verification ............................................................................................ 80 LoadGen verification ............................................................................................ 81

Backup and recovery verification ................................................................. 85 Verify backup and recovery .................................................................................. 85

Chapter 6 Reference Documentation ................................................... 87

EMC documentation .................................................................................... 88

Other documentation .................................................................................. 89

Links ........................................................................................................... 89

Appendix A Configuration worksheet ..................................................... 91

Configuration worksheet for Exchange ......................................................... 92

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Figures

Figure 1. Solution architecture .......................................................................... 27 Figure 2. VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ............................................................... 29 Figure 3. Exchange storage elements on a Hyper-V and VNXe platform ............. 38 Figure 4. Example of storage layout for EMC VNX .............................................. 41 Figure 5. Storage pools ..................................................................................... 42 Figure 6. Create a new pool ............................................................................... 42 Figure 7. Specify pool name .............................................................................. 43 Figure 8. Storage type ....................................................................................... 43 Figure 9. Specify the amount of storage ............................................................ 44 Figure 10. Microsoft Exchange menu .................................................................. 44 Figure 11. Specify the Exchange storage resource name ..................................... 45 Figure 12. Select Exchange version ..................................................................... 45 Figure 13. Allocation preview .............................................................................. 46 Figure 14. Split database sizes and log sizes ...................................................... 46 Figure 15. Select the storage pool ....................................................................... 47 Figure 16. Host access ........................................................................................ 47 Figure 17. LUNs for one DAG copy ....................................................................... 48 Figure 18. Example of storage layout for EMC VNXe ............................................. 49 Figure 19. Use ESI to manage storage system ..................................................... 50 Figure 20. Storage Pool Properties—FAST Cache enabled .................................... 51 Figure 21. Expand Storage Pool dialog box ......................................................... 52 Figure 22. CSV disk in Failover Cluster Manager .................................................. 55 Figure 23. CSV disk in EMC Storage Integrator .................................................... 56 Figure 24. Rescan disks ...................................................................................... 59 Figure 25. Add disk ............................................................................................. 60 Figure 26. Pass-through disks in Failover Cluster Manager .................................. 60 Figure 27. Pass-through disks in EMC Storage Integrator .................................... 61 Figure 28. Custom Exchange Server installation .................................................. 63 Figure 29. Select Client Access Role and Hub Transport Role .............................. 64 Figure 30. DNS entry for CAS array ...................................................................... 65 Figure 31. Mailbox Role ...................................................................................... 66 Figure 32. Installation map ................................................................................. 69 Figure 33. Backup workflow for Exchange ........................................................... 70 Figure 34. Non-federated backup of all databases in the DAG ............................. 71 Figure 35. Federated backup of a DAG cluster example ....................................... 73 Figure 36. Cmdlet to verify CAS-array associations .............................................. 77 Figure 37. Cmdlet to verify DAG configuration ..................................................... 77 Figure 38. Verify that DAG detects the failure ...................................................... 78

Figures


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Tables

Table 1. Terminology ........................................................................................ 14 Table 2. Pre-deployment tasks ......................................................................... 16 Table 3. Solution deployment process ............................................................. 17 Table 4. Deployment prerequisites checklist .................................................... 17 Table 5. Exchange-related storage pools .......................................................... 19 Table 6. Example of customer evaluation ......................................................... 20 Table 7. Example of required resources—small Exchange organization ............ 21 Table 8. Example of storage recommendations—small Exchange organization 21 Table 9. Example of performance key metrics—Jestress tool ............................ 22 Table 10. Example of performance key metrics—LoadGen tool ........................... 22 Table 11. Example of storage pool design .......................................................... 23 Table 12. Exchange server roles ......................................................................... 28 Table 13. Tasks for physical setup ..................................................................... 36 Table 14. Tasks for switch and network configuration ........................................ 36 Table 15. Tasks for VNX/VNXe storage array configuration ................................. 37 Table 16. Example additional storage pools for Exchange data on VNX .............. 39 Table 17. iSCSI LUN layout for Exchange on VNX ................................................ 39 Table 18. Tasks for server installation ................................................................ 53 Table 19. Exchange virtual machine installation and configuration .................... 56 Table 20. Example of Exchange reference virtual machines ................................ 57 Table 21. Tasks for implementing an Exchange organization ............................. 61 Table 22. Tasks for verifying the VSPEX installation ........................................... 76 Table 23. Tools to monitor the solution .............................................................. 78 Table 24. Example of verification questions for user profile ............................... 79 Table 25. Key metrics for Jetstress verification ................................................... 80 Table 26. Jetstress verification ........................................................................... 81 Table 27. Key metrics for LoadGen verification ................................................... 82 Table 28. LoadGen performance tests ................................................................ 83 Table 29. LoadGen performance results ............................................................. 84 Table 30. Common server information ............................................................... 92 Table 31. Exchange information ......................................................................... 92 Table 32. Hyper-V server information ................................................................. 92 Table 33. Array information ................................................................................ 93 Table 34. Network infrastructure information ..................................................... 93 Table 35. VLAN information ............................................................................... 93

Tables


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Chapter 1 Introduction

This chapter presents the following topics:

Purpose of this guide ................................................................................. 12

Business value .......................................................................................... 12

Scope ........................................................................................................ 13

Audience ................................................................................................... 13

Terminology ............................................................................................... 14

Chapter 1: Introduction


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Purpose of this guide EMC® VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructures are optimized for virtualizing business-critical applications. VSPEX provides modular solutions built with technologies that enable faster deployment, more simplicity, greater choice, higher efficiency, and lower risk.

VSPEX provides partners with the ability to design and implement the virtual assets required to support Microsoft Exchange in a virtualized environment on an EMC VSPEX Private Cloud.

VSPEX provides a validated system capable of hosting a virtualized Exchange solution at a consistent performance level. This Proven Infrastructure solution is layered on a VSPEX Private Cloud for Microsoft Hyper-V architecture and uses the highly available EMC VNX® family, which provides the storage. EMC Avamar® and EMC Data Domain® enable partners to adopt a purpose-built backup appliance for Exchange Server. The compute and network components, while vendor-definable, are laid out so they are redundant and powerful enough to handle the processing and data needs of the virtual machine environment.

This Implementation Guide describes how to implement, with best practices, the resources necessary to deploy Microsoft Exchange on any VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for Hyper-V.

Business value Email is an indispensible lifeline for communication within your business, and connects you with customers, prospects, partners, and suppliers. IT administrators who support Microsoft Exchange are challenged with maintaining the highest possible levels of performance and application efficiency. At the same time, most organizations struggle to keep pace with relentless data growth while working to overcome diminishing budgets. Administering, auditing, protecting, and managing an Exchange environment for a modern geographically diverse work force is a major challenge for most IT departments.

Many businesses try to address these challenges by adding physical servers and inefficient directly attached storage, which compounds the problem. Traditional backup cannot keep pace either. Businesses struggle to get backups done within available backup windows and to control backup data growth.

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 faster deployment, more simplicity, greater choice, higher efficiency, and lower risk. Validation by EMC ensures predictable performance and enables customers to select technology that uses their existing IT infrastructure while eliminating planning, sizing, and configuration burdens. VSPEX provides infrastructures for customers who want to simplify their system while at the same time gaining more choice in individual stack components.



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The designed methodology and best practices of EMC backup and recovery systems are to:

• Reduce the customer’s backup storage requirements and costs

• Meet backup windows

• Enable fast disk-based recovery

Scope This guide describes the high-level steps required to deploy Exchange 2010 on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure with Hyper-V and VNX/EMC VNXe®, and it provides best practices for Exchange implementations . The guide assumes that a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure already exists in the customer environment.

The example used throughout this guide describes the deployment of an EMC VNX5500 or EMC VNXe3150 array. The same principles and guidelines apply to any other VNX or VNXe model.

Audience This guide is intended for internal EMC personnel and qualified EMC VSPEX partners, and assumes that VSPEX partners who deploy this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange 2010 are:

• Qualified by Microsoft to sell and implement Exchange solutions

• Certified in Exchange 2010 with one or both of the following Microsoft certifications:

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) - Microsoft Exchange 2010 - Configuring (Exam: 662)

Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) - Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010 (Exam: 662 and 663)

• Qualified by EMC to sell, install, and configure the VNX or VNXe series 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

If you plan to deploy the solution described in this document, you must also have the necessary technical training and background to install and configure:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V as virtualization platform

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems (OS)

Note During testing of the solution, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was not supported for installation on computers running the Windows Server 2012 OS. At the date of publication of this guide, Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 is available to support Exchange 2010 on Windows Server 2012 OS.



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• Microsoft Exchange 2010

• EMC next-generation backup, which includes Avamar and Data Domain

External references are provided where applicable. EMC recommends that partners who plan to implement this solution are familiar with these documents. For details, see Support resources.

Terminology Table 1 lists the terminology used in this guide.

Table 1. Terminology

Term Definition

AD Active Directory

CAS Client Access server

CIFS Common Internet File System

CSV Cluster-shared volume

DAG Database availability group

DNS Domain name system

FQDN Fully Qualified Domain Name

GLR Granular-level recovery

IOPS Input/output operations per second

NIC Network interface card

NFS Network File System

NLB Microsoft Network Load Balancing

NL-SAS Near-line serial-attached SCSI

PSOL Preferred server order list

Reference virtual machine Represents a unit of measure for a single virtual machine to qualify the compute resources in a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

rpm Requests per minutes

VHDX Hyper-V virtual hard disk format

VSS Volume Shadow Copy Service


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Chapter 2 Before You Start


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

Documentation workflow ........................................................................... 17

Deployment prerequisites .......................................................................... 17

Plan and size Microsoft Exchange .............................................................. 19

Support resources ..................................................................................... 23

Chapter 2: Before You Start


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Overview Before you implement Exchange on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, EMC recommends that you check and complete the pre-deployment tasks, described in Table 2.

Pre-deployment tasks include procedures that do not directly relate to environment installation and configuration, but whose results are needed during installation. Pre-deployment tasks include collecting hostnames, IP addresses, VLAN IDs, license keys, installation media, and so on. You should perform these tasks before visiting a customer to decrease the amount of time required on site.

This guide is based on the recommendations of the EMC VSPEX Sizing Tool and the EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010 Design Guide.

Table 2 describes the pre-deployment tasks needed for this solution.

Table 2. Pre-deployment tasks

Task Description Reference

Gather documents

Gather the related documents listed in Support resources.

We1

Support resources

refer to these resources throughout this guide. They provide details on setting up procedures and deploying best practices for the various solution components.

Gather tools

Gather the required and optional tools needed for the deployment.

Use Table 4 to confirm that you have all equipment, software, and licenses before starting the deployment process.

Deployment prerequisites checklist

Gather data

Collect the customer-specific configuration data for networking, naming, and required accounts.

Enter this information into the Configuration worksheet located in Appendix A for reference during deployment.

Configuration worksheet for Exchange

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

Pre-deployment tasks



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Documentation workflow To design and implement your solution, refer to the process flow in Table 3.

Table 3. Solution deployment process

Step Action

1 Use the VSPEX for virtualized Exchange Server qualification worksheet to collect the user requirements. The qualification worksheet is in Appendix A of the Design Guide.

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

Note If the VSPEX Sizing Tool is not available, you can manually size the application using the sizing guidelines in Appendix B of the Design Guide.

3 Determine the final design for the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange. Refer to the Design Guide for guidance.

Note Ensure that all application requirements are considered, not just a single application.

4 Select and order the right solution. Refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document in Support resources for guidance.

5 Follow this guide to deploy and test your VSPEX solution.

Note If you already have a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure environment, you can skip the sections for the implementation steps that are already completed.

Deployment prerequisites This guide applies to VSPEX Proven Infrastructures for virtualized Exchange 2010 solutions with Hyper-V and VNX or VNXe. The example provided and carried through this guide is for a deployment on a VNX5500 or VNXe3150. The same principles and guidelines apply to the use of any other VNX or VNXe model.

Table 4 itemizes the hardware, software, and licenses required to configure this solution. For additional information, refer to the hardware and software tables in the appropriate document listed in Support resources.

Table 4. Deployment prerequisites checklist

Requirement Description Version Notes

Hardware Physical servers: Sufficient physical server capacity to host the required number of virtual machines as recommended by the VSPEX Sizing Tool and Design Guide

VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

Networking: Switch port capacity and capabilities as required by the virtual server infrastructure



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EMC VNX or VNXe: Multiprotocol storage array with the required disk layout

Note The storage should be sufficient to support the total reference virtual machines required and the additional storage layout for applications.

Backup: EMC Avamar GEN 4 in a single-node configuration

For backup and recovery

Software VNXe Operating Environment (OE) 2.3.1.19462

VNX OE for block 05.32.000.5.008

VNX OE for file 7.1.47.5

EMC Unisphere™ for VNX 1.2.0.1.0556

Unisphere for VNXe 1.8.1.10050

EMC Storage Integrator 2.1 EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Suite Technical Notes

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 RTM with latest update

(Enterprise or Data Center edition is required for failover functionality)

For Hyper-V host

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (or higher) Service Pack 1 with latest update

During testing of the solution, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was not supported for installation on computers running the Windows Server 2012 OS. At the date of publication of this guide, Exchange Serverer 2010 Service Pack 3 is available to support Exchange 2010 on Windows Server 2012 OS.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2012 Enterprise Edition Service Pack 2

Jetstress 2010 14.01.0225.017

For verification tests only

Load Generator (LoadGen) 2010 14.01.0180.003

For verification tests only



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EMC Avamar 6.1 in server and client versions

For backup and recovery

EMC PowerPath® 5.7

Licenses Microsoft Windows Server license keys

Note This requirement may be covered by an existing Software Assurance agreement and may be found on an existing customer Microsoft Key Management Server (KMS) (if applicable)

2008 R2 Standard (or higher)

http://www.microsoft.com

Microsoft Windows Server license keys

Note This requirement may be covered by an existing KMS

2012

Enterprise or Data Center edition

Microsoft Exchange Server license key

2010 (Standard or Enterprise)

Plan and size Microsoft Exchange To plan and size your Exchange organization over a VSPEX stack, follow the recommendations and VSPEX Sizing Tool results introduced in the Design Guide EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010.

In this VSPEX solution , we introduced general storage pools that are used to store Exchange data (in an Exchange database availability group (DAG) deployment with two copies for each database), as shown in Table 5. For detailed information, refer to the Design Guide.

Table 5. Exchange-related storage pools

Pool name Purpose

VSPEX private cloud pool

Also known as the infrastructure pool, where all the virtual machines’ operating system (OS) volumes reside. For details, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure listed in Support resources.

Exchange storage pool 1

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


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

This example is introduced in the Design Guide. A customer wants to create a small Exchange 2010 organization on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. You should complete the evaluation, as shown in Table 6, to evaluate the requirements needed to create

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this Exchange organization. For more detailed information about this example, refer to the Design Guide.

Table 6. Example of customer evaluation

Question Example answer

Number of mailboxes 900

Maximum mailbox size (GB) 1.5 GB

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

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

DAG copies (including Active) 2

Deleted Items Retention (DIR) window (days) 14

Backup/Truncation Failure Tolerance (days) 3

Snapshot (days retained) 0

Included number of years’ growth 1

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

Once you have received a completed qualification worksheet from the customer, and entered those answers into the VSPEX Sizing Tool, you see the following results:

• Required resources table that lists the number of virtual machines and their characteristics

• Storage Recommendations table that lists the additional storage hardware required to run Exchange Server in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pools.

• Performance metrics table that lists the key performance metrics that should be achieved in the Jetstress and LoadGen tests. EMC recommends that you run Jetstress and LoadGen tests to verify the Exchange performance before putting Exchange in the production environment. For more information about these two testing tools, refer to Exchange Server performance verification in this guide.

Table 7 through Table 11 provide examples based on the customer information provided in Table 6.

EMC recommends that you use the VSPEX Sizing Tool and follow the recommendations in the Design Guide to determine the number of server roles required for your Exchange organization, and the resources required for each server role.

Table 7 shows an example of equivalent reference virtual machine requirements for different Exchange Server roles used in this solution. In this example, you need to set up two Exchange Mailbox servers and two HUB/CAS combined servers to support the requirements for a small Exchange organization.Then you determine the equivalent number of reference virtual machines required for each Exchange server role by calculating the maximum of the individual resources (CPU, memory, capacity and IOPS).



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Table 7. Example of required resources—small Exchange organization

Exchange Server role vCPU Memory OS volume capacity

OS volume IOPS

No. of virtual machines

Total reference virtual machines

Mailbox server

Equivalent reference virtual machines

4 8 1 1 2 16

HUB/CAS combined server


4 4 1 1 2 8

Total equivalent reference virtual machines 24

For example, each Mailbox server requires four vCPUs, 16 GB of memory, 100 GB of storage, and 25 IOPS. This translates to:

• Four reference virtual machines of CPU

• Eight reference virtual machines of memory

• One reference virtual machine of capacity

• One reference virtual machine of IOPS

The values round up to eight reference virtual machines for each Mailbox server, multiplied by the number of virtual machines needed (two in this example), which results in 16 total reference virtual machines for the Mailbox server role.

8 reference virtual machines x 2 virtual machines = 16 total reference virtual machines

For more details about how to determine the equivalent reference virtual machines, refer to the appropriate document in Support resources.

Table 8 shows an example of EMC’s storage recommendations for a small Exchange organization.

Table 8. Example of storage recommendations—small Exchange organization

Recommended additional storage layout

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

Exchange storage pool 1 RAID 5 (4+1) 15,000 rpm SAS disks 600 GB 10

Exchange storage pool 2 RAID 5 (4+1) 15,000 rpm SAS disks 600 GB 10

Table 9 shows an example of EMC’s performance key metrics using Jetstress for a small Exchange organization.



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Table 9. Example of performance key metrics—Jestress tool

Performance counters Target values

Achieved Exchange transactional IOPS

(I/O database reads/sec + I/O database writes/sec)

Number of mailboxes * Exchange 2010 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 reads average latency (ms) Less than 10 ms

Table 10 shows an example of EMC’s performance key metrics using LoadGen for a small Exchange organization.

Table 10. Example of performance key metrics—LoadGen tool

Server Performance counter Target

Mailbox server Processor\%Processor time Less than 80%

Exchange database\I/O database reads (attached) average latency

Less than 20 ms

Exchange database\I/O database writes (attached) average latency

Less than 20 ms

Less than read average

Exchange database\I/O database reads (recovery) average latency

Less than 200 ms

Exchange database\I/O database writes (recovery) average latency

Less than 200 ms

Exchange database\IO log read average latency Less than 10 ms

Exchange database\IO log writes average latency Less than 10 ms

ExchangeIS\RPC requests Less than 70

ExchangeIS\RPC averaged latency Less than 10 ms

HUB/CAS combined servers

Processor\%Processor time Less than 80%

Exchange RpcClientAccess\RPC Requests Less than 40

Exchange RpcClientAccess\RPC Averaged Latency Less than 250 ms

ExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Aggregate Delivery Queue Length (All Queues)

Less than 3,000



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ExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Active Remote Delivery Queue Length

Less than 250

ExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Active Mailbox Delivery Queue Length

Less than 250

Table 11 shows an example of the final storage pool design for a small Exchange organization.

Table 11. Example of storage pool design

Pool name Purpose Connectivity type

Storage type

VSPEX private cloud pool

Mailbox Server 01 boot LUN iSCSI Hyper-V datastore

Mailbox Server 02 boot LUN iSCSI Hyper-V datastore

HUB/CAS Server 01 boot LUN iSCSI Hyper-V datastore

HUB/CAS Server 02 boot LUN iSCSI Hyper-V datastore


DB and LOG files of the first database copy

iSCSI Mailbox server 01 pass-through disks


DB and LOG files of the second database copy

iSCSI Mailbox server 02 pass-through disks

Support resources EMC recommends that you read the following documents, available from the VSPEX space in the EMC Community Network or from the EMC.com and VSPEX Proven Infrastructure partner portal.

The related Design Guide is listed below.

• EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010

The related Solution Overviews are listed below.

• EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization for Midmarket Businesses

• EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization for Small and Medium Businesses

VSPEX Design Guide

VSPEX Solution Overviews

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The related VSPEX Proven Infrastructure documents are listed below.

• EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up to 100 Virtual Machines


The related Exchange Best Practice Guide is listed below.

• Microsoft Exchange 2010: Storage Best Practices and Design Guidance for EMC Storage


Exchange Best Practices Guide


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Chapter 3 Solution Overview


Overview ................................................................................................... 26

Solution architecture ................................................................................. 26

Key components ........................................................................................ 27

Chapter 3: Solution Overview


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Overview This chapter provides an overview of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange and the key technologies used in this solution. We validated the solution using a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. VNX/VNXe and Hyper-V virtualized Windows Server platforms provide storage and server hardware consolidation.

This guide supports all VSPEX Proven Infrastructures for virtualized Exchange solutions with Hyper-V and VNX/VNXe. This guide uses, as working examples, 250 virtual machines enabled by Hyper-V on VNX and 50 virtual machines enabled by Hyper-V on VNXe.

The solution described in this guide includes the servers, storage, network components, and Exchange components that are focused on small- and medium-sized business environments. The solution enables customers to quickly and consistently deploy a small or medium virtualized Exchange organization in a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

The VNX and VNXe storage arrays are multi-protocol platforms that can support the Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI), Network File System (NFS), and Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocols depending on the customer’s specific needs. EMC validated the solution using iSCSI for data storage.

This solution requires the presence of Microsoft Active Directory (AD) and domain name system (DNS). The implementation of these services is beyond the scope of this guide, but these are considered prerequisites for a successful deployment.

Solution architecture Figure 1 shows an example of the architecture that characterizes the validated infrastructure for support of an Exchange 2010 overlay on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

In this solution, we deployed all Exchange Servers as virtual machines on a Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V cluster across three back-end servers. A VNX5500 or a VNXe3150 provides the back-end storage functionality, but you can use any VNX or VNXe model that has been validated as part of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

The optional backup and recovery components provide Exchange data protection.

Note This solution applies to all VSPEX offerings using Hyper-V.



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Figure 1. Solution architecture

For more details, refer to the appropriate document in Support resources.

Key components This section provides a brief overview of the technologies used in this solution.

• Microsoft Exchange 2010

• EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

• EMC VNX and VNXe

• EMC Unisphere

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V

• MPIO and MCS

• EMC Storage Integrator

• EMC Avamar

• EMC PowerPath



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Microsoft Exchange 2010 is an enterprise email and communication system that enables businesses and customers to collaborate and share information. EMC enhances Exchange 2010 with a selection of storage platforms, software, and services.

With Exchange 2010, Microsoft presents a unified approach to high availability (HA) and disaster recovery by introducing features such as DAG and online mailbox moves. Mailbox servers can be implemented in mailbox resiliency configurations with database-level replication and failover.

Major 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 drives, Fibre Channel (FC), and serial-attached storage (SAS) drives, and slower-performing SATA and NL-SAS drives.

Exchange 2010 provides multiple server roles, as shown in Table 12.

Table 12. Exchange server roles

Role Function

Mailbox server Hosts mailboxes and public folders.

Client Access server Hosts the client protocols, such as Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4), Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS), Outlook Anywhere, Availability service, and Autodiscover service. It also hosts Web services.

Hub Transport server Routes mail within the Exchange organization.

Edge Transport server Typically sits at the perimeter of the topology and routes mail in to and out of the Exchange organization.

Unified Messaging server Connects a Private Branch eXchange (PBX) system to Exchange 2010.

The first three server roles are the essential components in every Exchange organization and are the focus of this guide. For Exchange 2010 key concepts, refer to the Design Guide.

EMC has joined forces with the industry’s leading providers of IT infrastructure to create a complete virtualization solution that accelerates deployment of private cloud. VSPEX enables faster deployment, more simplicity, greater choice, higher efficiency, and lower risk. Validation by EMC ensures predictable performance and enables customers to select technology that uses their existing IT infrastructure while eliminating planning, sizing, and configuration burdens. VSPEX provides a virtual infrastructure for customers looking to gain the simplicity that is characteristic of truly converged infrastructures, while at the same time gaining more choice in individual stack components.

VSPEX solutions are proven by EMC and packaged and sold exclusively by EMC channel partners. VSPEX provides channel partners with more opportunity, a faster sales cycle, and end-to-end enablement. By working closely together, EMC and its

Microsoft Exchange 2010

EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure



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channel partners can now deliver infrastructure that accelerates the journey to the cloud for even more customers.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, as shown in Figure 2, is a modular virtualized infrastructure exclusively delivered by EMC’s VSPEX partners. VSPEX includes a virtualization layer, server, network, and storage, designed by EMC to deliver reliable and predictable performance.

Figure 2. VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

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

Application-based solutions such as Exchange can be deployed on VSPEX Proven Infrastructures. The VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange solution was validated using VNXe and a Hyper-V virtualized Windows Server platform to provide storage and server hardware consolidation. The virtualized infrastructure is centrally managed, and enables you to efficiently deploy and manage a scalable number of virtual machines and associated shared storage.

The EMC VNX family, including VNXe, is optimized for virtual applications delivering innovation and enterprise capabilities for file, block, and object storage in a scalable, easy-to-use solution. This next-generation storage platform combines powerful and

EMC VNX and VNXe



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flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management, and protection software to meet the demanding needs of today’s enterprises.

The VNX series is powered by Intel Xeon processors, for intelligent storage that automatically and efficiently scales in performance, while ensuring data integrity and security.

VNX customer benefits

VNX supports the following features:

• Next-generation unified storage, optimized for virtualized applications

• Capacity optimization features including compression, deduplication, thin provisioning, and application-centric copies

• High availability, designed to deliver five 9s availability

• Automated tiering with Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) and EMC FAST™ Cache that can be optimized for the highest system performance and lowest storage cost simultaneously

• Multiprotocol support for file, block, and object with object access through EMC Atmos™ Virtual Edition (Atmos VE)

• Simplified management with Unisphere for a single management interface for all network-attached storage (NAS), storage area network (SAN), and replication needs

• Up to three times improvement in performance with the latest Intel Xeon multicore processor technology, optimized for Flash

The VNXe series is purpose-built for the IT manager in smaller environments. The VNX series is designed to meet the high-performance, high-scalability requirements of midsize and large enterprises.

VNXe customer benefits

VNXe supports the following features:

• Next-generation unified storage, optimized for virtualized applications

• Capacity optimization features including compression, deduplication, thin provisioning, and application-centric copies

• High availability, designed to deliver five 9s availability

• Multiprotocol support for file and block

• Simplified management with EMC Unisphere for a single management interface for all NAS, SAN, and replication needs

VNX software suites available

The following VNX software suites are available:

• FAST Suite: Automatically optimizes storage for the highest system performance and the lowest cost simultaneously.

• Local Protection Suite: Practices safe data protection and repurposing.



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• Remote Protection Suite: Protects data against localized failures, outages, and disasters.

• Application Protection Suite: Automates application copies and proves compliance.

• Security and Compliance Suite: Keeps data safe from changes, deletions, and malicious activity.

VNX software packs available

The following software packs are available:

• Total Efficiency Pack: Includes all five software suites.

• Total Protection Pack: Includes local, remote, and application protection suites.

VNXe software suites available

The following VNXe software suites are available:

• Local Protection Suite: Increases productivity with snapshots of production data.

• Remote Protection Suite: Protects data against localized failures, outages, and disasters.

• Application Protection Suite: Automates application copies and proves compliance.

• Security and Compliance Suite: Keeps data safe from changes, deletions, and malicious activity.

VNXe software packs available

The following software packs are available with VNXe:

• VNXe3300 Total Protection Pack: Includes local, remote, and application protection suites

• VNXe3150 Total Value Pack: Includes remote and application protection suites, and security and compliance suite

EMC Unisphere is the next-generation unified storage management platform that provides intuitive user interfaces for the newest range of unified platforms including the VNX and VNXe series. Unisphere’s approach to storage management fosters simplicity, flexibility, self-help, and automation—all key requirements for the journey to the cloud.

Unisphere can be customized to the needs of a mid-size company, a department within a large enterprise, or a smaller remote or branch office environment. With Unisphere’s pluggable architecture, it is easily extensible and continues its seamless support for additional EMC offerings, including integration with data protection and security.

Unisphere for VNXe provides provisioning wizards that have built-in best practices to provision and manage application data, such as Exchange, Hyper-V, VMware, and

EMC Unisphere



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shared folder storage. Unisphere’s Exchange wizard automatically incorporates many of the best practices for Exchange Server, along with recommendations specific to the VNXe platform, into the storage design, without additional user intervention. The wizard provides a resource to store Exchange databases and log files based on simple parameters, such as the number of users and the average user mailbox size.

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

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V high-availability options includes:

• Incremental backup support

• Enhancements in clustered environments to support virtual adapters within the virtual machine

• 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 adapters, cables, and switches to create logical paths between the server and the storage device.

Microsoft MPIO architecture supports iSCSI, FC, and SAS SAN connectivity by establishing multiple sessions or connections to the storage array. In the event that 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 network interface card (NiC) (for iSCSI) 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.

Multiple Connections per Session (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.

EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) is an agentless, no-charge plug-in that enables application-aware storage provisioning for Microsoft Windows server applications, Hyper-V, VMware, and Xen Server environments. ESI enables administrators to easily provision block and file storage for Windows or Exchange sites. With ESI, you can:

• Provision, format, and present drives to Windows servers

• Provision new cluster disks and add them to the cluster automatically

• Provision shared CIFS storage and mount it to Windows server

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V

MPIO and MCS

EMC Storage Integrator



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If your customer needs backup solution on Exchange Server 2010 environment, EMC Avamar solves the challenges associated with traditional backup, enabling fast, reliable backup and recovery for remote offices, data center local area network (LANs), and virtualization environments. Avamar is backup and recovery software that uses patented global data deduplication technology to identify and eliminate redundant sub-file data segments at the source, reducing daily backup data by up to 500 times—before it is transferred across the network and stored to disk. This enables companies to perform daily full backups, even across congested networks and limited wide area network (WAN) links.

Key Avamar differentiators are:

• Deduplication of backup data at the source—before transfer across the network

• Enabling of fast, daily full backups across existing networks and infrastructure

• Up to 500 times reduction of required daily network bandwidth

• Up to 10 times faster backups

• Encryption of data in flight and at rest

• Patented RAIN technology that provides fault tolerance across nodes and eliminates single points of failure

• Scalable grid architecture

• Up to 500 times reduction of total backup storage due to global data deduplication.

• Daily verification of recoverability

• Centralized web-based management

• Simple one-step recovery

• Flexible deployment options, including the EMC Avamar Data Store package

For more information, see the Avamar documents referenced in EMC documentation.

If you use Avamar to implement a backup and recovery solution, you can choose to direct backups to an EMC Data Domain system instead of to the Avamar server. Data Domain deduplication storage system deduplicates data inline so that the data lands on disk already deduplicated, which requires less disk space than the original dataset. With Data Domain, you can retain backup and archive data on site longer to quickly and reliably restore data from disk.

The Data Domain software suite includes the following options:

• Data Domain Replication

• Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

• Data Domain Boost

• Retention Lock

• Encryption

EMC Avamar

EMC Data Domain



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• Extended Retention

EMC recommends that you install EMC PowerPath on Windows 2012 Hyper-V hosts for advanced multipathing functionality, such as intelligent path testing and performance optimization. PowerPath is a server-resident software solution designed to enhance performance and application availability. PowerPath combines automatic load balancing, path failover, and multiple path I/O capabilities into one integrated package.

PowerPath for Windows is an intelligent path management application specifically designed to work within the Microsoft Multipathing I/O (MPIO) framework. PowerPath enhances application availability by providing load balancing, automatic path failover, and recovery functionality.

EMC PowerPath


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Chapter 4 Solution Implementation


Overview ................................................................................................... 36

Physical setup ........................................................................................... 36

Network implementation ............................................................................ 36

Storage implementation ............................................................................ 37

Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V infrastructure implementation ............... 53

Exchange Server virtualization implementation .......................................... 56

Application implementation ....................................................................... 61

Backup and recovery implementation ......................................................... 67

Chapter 4: Solution Implementation


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Overview This chapter describes how to implement the solution.

Note You may already have completed some of the implementation steps while following the guidelines from the Proven Infrastructure documents. You can skip those sections of this guide.

Physical setup

This section includes preparation information for the solution’s physical components. After you complete the tasks in Table 13, the new hardware components are racked, cabled, powered, and ready for network connection.

Table 13. Tasks for physical setup


Prepare network switches Install switches in the rack and connect them to power.

Vendor installation guide

Prepare servers Install the servers in the rack and connect them to power.

Vendor installation guide

Prepare VNX/VNXe Install the VNX/VNXe storage array in the rack and connect it to power.

EMC VNX/VNXe System Installation Guide

For details of the physical setup, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document in Support resources.

Network implementation

This section provides the network infrastructure requirements that you need to support the solution architecture. Table 14 provides a summary of the tasks for switch and network configuration and references for further information.

Table 14. Tasks for switch and network configuration


Configure infrastructure network

Configure storage array and Windows host infrastructure networking as specified in the solution VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.


Complete network cabling

Connect:

• Switch interconnect ports

• VNX/VNXe ports

• Windows server ports

Overview

Overview



37


Configure VLANs Configure private and public VLANs as required.

Vendor switch configuration guide

For details of the network implementation, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document in Support resources.

Storage implementation

This section describes how to configure the VNX/VNXe storage array. In this solution, the VNX or VNXe provides Hyper-V datastores and Exchange pass-through disks based on the iSCSI servers for Windows hosts.

Table 15 provides a summary of the tasks required for switch and network configuration, and references for further information.

Table 15. Tasks for VNX/VNXe storage array configuration


Set up initial VNX/VNXe configuration

Configure the IP address information and other key parameters, such as DNS and Network Time Protocol (NTP), on the VNX or VNXe.

• VNX/VNXe System Installation Guide

• EMC VNX/VNXe Series Configuration Worksheet

Provision storage for Hyper-V datastores

Create storage pools and provision storage that will be presented to the Windows servers as Hyper-V datastores hosting the virtual machines.

Provision storage for Exchange databases and logs

Create storage pools and provision storage that will be presented to the Exchange Mailbox server virtual machines as pass-through disks hosting the virtual machines.

Figure 3 shows the high-level architecture between the Exchange components and storage elements validated in a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Exchange on a Hyper-V virtualization platform and VNXe storage array.

The system volumes of all virtual machines are stored in the new Hyper-V virtual hard disk format (VHDX) on a cluster-shared volume (CSV). Wizard-driven storage provisioning on the VNXe, or created manually on VNX, enables you to create the Exchange LUNs, and present them to the virtual machines as pass-through disks.

Overview



38

Figure 3. Exchange storage elements on a Hyper-V and VNXe platform

Ensure that network interfaces, IP address information, and other key parameters such as DNS and NTP are configured on the VNX/VNXe before provisioning the storage.

For more information about how to configure the VNX/VNXe platform, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document listed in Support resources.

To configure the iSCSI servers on VNX or VNXe and provision storage for Hyper-V datastores, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document listed in Support resources.

Set up initial VNX/VNXe configuration

Provision storage for Hyper-V datastores



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In this solution, all the Exchange database and log LUNs are presented to Exchange Mailbox server virtual machines as pass-through disks. Before you provision the storage for Exchange, follow the recommendations and VSPEX Sizing Tool proposals introduced in the Design Guide.

Provision storage for Exchange on VNX

Table 16 shows an example of storage pools for Exchange on VNX, in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool. For more information about the storage layout recommendations and design, refer to the Design Guide.

For more information about best practices for Exchange, refer to Microsoft Exchange 2010: Storage Best Practices and Design Guidance for EMC Storage.

Table 16. Example additional storage pools for Exchange data on VNX

Storage pool name RAID type Disk type Disk capacity

No. of disks

Exchange database pool 1 RAID 1/0 (24+24) 7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks 2 TB 48

Exchange database pool 2 RAID 1/0 (24+24) 7,200 rpm NL-SAS disks 2 TB 48

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

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

To configure iSCSI network settings, storage pools, iSCSI LUNs, and storage groups on the VNX array:

1. In Unisphere, select the VNX array that is to be used in this solution.

2. Select Settings > Network > Settings for Block.

3. Configure the IP address for network ports used for iSCSI.

4. Select Storage > Storage Configuration > Storage Pools.

5. Select Pools and create the additional storage pools in the VNX for Exchange database and transaction logs, according to the VSPEX Sizing tool recommendation.

6. Right-click a storage pool and click Create LUN to provision the LUNs in each of these pools. Table 17 shows an example of iSCSI LUN layout for Exchange databases and transaction logs.

Table 17. iSCSI LUN layout for Exchange on VNX

Server role LUN name LUN size No. of LUNs

Storage pool name

Exchange Mailbox server 1

Database LUNs 1,650 GB 8 Exchange database pool 1

Log LUNs 100 GB 8 Exchange log pool 1




Provision storage for Exchange datastores and logs



40

Server role LUN name LUN size No. of LUNs

Storage pool name







7. Select Host > Storage Groups.

8. To create storage groups to unmask LUNs to the Hyper-V hosts:

a. Click Create and type a name for the storage group.

b. Click Yes to finish the creation.

c. Click Yes to select LUNs or connect hosts.

d. Select LUNs. Under Available LUNs, select all the LUNs created in the previous steps and click Add.

e. Select Hosts. Under Available Hosts, select the Hyper-V servers to be used and add them to The Hosts to be Connected.

f. Click OK to finish.

Figure 4 shows an example of a storage layout for VNX with FAST Cache enabled on the Exchange database pool. The number of disks used in the VSPEX private cloud pool may vary according to your customer’s requirements. For detailed information, refer to the appropriate document in VSPEX Proven Infrastructures.



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Figure 4. Example of storage layout for EMC VNX

Provision storage for Exchange on VNXe

One of the advantages of VNXe is its awareness of what applications are using storage, and automatically applying the best practices for those applications into the storage provisioning and management process. To provision storage for Exchange databases, use EMC Unisphere™ to:

1. Create a storage pool.

2. Run the application-provisioning wizard.

Create a storage pool To create a storage pool:

1. Log in to Unisphere as an administrator.

2. Select System > Storage Pools, as shown in Figure 5.



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Figure 5. Storage pools

3. To open the Disk Configuration wizard, click Configure Disks.

4. Select the storage pool configuration mode:

a. Select Manually create a new pool as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Create a new pool

b. In the Select application list box, select the appropriate application.

5. Click Next.

6. Type a name and description for the storage pool, as shown in Figure 7.



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Figure 7. Specify pool name

7. Click Next.

8. Select a disk type for the storage pool, as shown in Figure 8, according to the VSPEX Sizing Tool recommendation. In this solution, use RAID 5 (4+1).

Figure 8. Storage type

9. Click Next.



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10. Select the quantity of disks to use for the storage pool, as shown in Figure 9, according to the VSPEX Sizing Tool recommendation.

Figure 9. Specify the amount of storage

11. Click Next. The Summary window opens.

12. Verify that the information is correct, then click Finish.

13. Verify that the disk configuration is complete, then click Close.

Note For an Exchange 2010 DAG deployment, provision each DAG copy in a separate storage pool. The example presented above is sufficient for one DAG copy. Repeat this procedure for each additional DAG copy.

Run the application-provisioning wizard To configure the storage for Exchange:

1. Log in to Unisphere as an administrator.

2. Select Storage > Microsoft Exchange, as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10. Microsoft Exchange menu

3. Click Create. The Microsoft Exchange wizard opens.



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4. Type a name and description for this instance, as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11. Specify the Exchange storage resource name

5. Click Next.

6. Select the Exchange version details, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Select Exchange version

Note Your choice of the DAG membership setting affects the provisioning best practices that will be applied and, in turn, the size and quantity of databases you create. Use this option carefully to avoid inappropriate sizing in the Exchange environment. The example used here includes DAG provisioning.

7. Click Next.

8. Type the quantity and size of the mailboxes.

9. Click Preview Allocation to view the logical disk objects that will be allocated for the Exchange deployment, as shown in Figure 13.



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Figure 13. Allocation preview

Note To distribute workload on multiple Mailbox servers, it is a best practice to modify the allocation to evenly split the database sizes and log sizes among the databases as shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14. Split database sizes and log sizes

10. Click Next.

11. Select the storage pool created previously for the DAG copy, as shown in Figure 15.



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Figure 15. Select the storage pool

12. Click Next.

13. Specify the host access for this deployment, as shown in Figure 16. In this solution, assign access rights to both Hyper-V nodes in the cluster.

Figure 16. Host access

14. Click Next.

15. Select the protection options for the storage pool, according to the VSPEX Sizing Tool recommendation. In this solution, do not enable replication and snapshots.



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16. Click Next. The Summary window opens.

17. Verify the details, then click Finish.

Figure 17 shows the Exchange LUNs created for one DAG copy.

Figure 17. LUNs for one DAG copy

Figure 18 shows the target storage layout for the VNXe system used in this solution. The number of disks used in the VSPEX private cloud pool may vary according to your customer’s requirements. For detailed information, refer to the appropriate document in VSPEX Proven Infrastructures.



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Figure 18. Example of storage layout for EMC VNXe

Use EMC Storage Integrator to manage storage for Exchange

You can also use ESI to provision and manage storage for Exchange on VNX or VNXe. You can use the ESI GUI to view the storage provisioned for Exchange on VNXe, as shown in the example in Figure 19. ESI simplifies the steps involved in viewing, provisioning, and managing block and file storage for Microsoft Windows.



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Figure 19. Use ESI to manage storage system

For more information, refer to the EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Suite Product Guide.

Due to the changes in Exchange 2010 storage architecture, which results in lower I/O to storage devices and the trend to deploy larger mailboxes, many Exchange designs are capable of using high-capacity, low revolutions per minute (rpm) drives (for example, 7.2k rpm NL-SAS). However, there are Exchange configurations with considerably higher I/O demands and smaller mailbox requirements that would benefit from adding Flash drives and enabling FAST Cache or FAST VP .

Enabling FAST Cache on a VNX series array is a transparent operation to Exchange. No reconfiguration or downtime is necessary. To make the best use of either of the FAST technologies, EMC recommends that you enable FAST Cache on the Exchange database storage pool. Do not enable FAST Cache on the Exchange log storage pool. For more details, refer to the Design Guide.

To create and configure FAST Cache:

1. Refer to VSPEX Proven Infrastructures for detailed steps about how to create FAST Cache.

2. After the FAST Cache is created, in Unisphere, select Storage, then select Storage Pool. Choose an Exchange Database Pool, and click Properties.

3. In Storage Pool Properties, select Advanced, then select Enabled to enable FAST Cache, as shown in Figure 20.

FAST Cache configuration on VNX



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Figure 20. Storage Pool Properties—FAST Cache enabled

4. Click OK to complete the configuration.

Note FAST Cache on the VNX series array does not cause an instant performance improvement. The system must collect data about access patterns and promote frequently used information into the cache. This process can take a few hours, during which, the performance of the array steadily improves.

If FAST VP is enabled on the VNX array, you can add additional Flash disks into the Exchange database pool as an extreme performance tier. In the example storage layout for VNX shown in Figure 4 on page 41, this feature was not enabled on the Exchange database pools.

For more information about FAST VP design considerations for Exchange, refer to the Design Guide.

To add Flash disks to an existing Exchange database pool, using these steps:

1. In Unisphere, select Storage, then select Storage Pool.

2. Choose an Exchange database pool and click Properties.

3. Select Disks Type and click Expand to view the Expand Storage Pool dialog box.

4. Under Extreme Performance, from the list boxes, select the number of Flash disks and RAID configuration to add into the Exchange database storage pool for tiering, as shown in Figure 21. EMC recommends using RAID 5 for the extreme performance tier in the Exchange database storage pool.

Under Disks, you can see the Flash drives that will be used for the extreme performance tier. You can choose the drives manually by selecting Manual.

FAST VP configuration on VNX



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Figure 21. Expand Storage Pool dialog box

5. Click OK.



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Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V infrastructure implementation This section lists the requirements for the installation and configuration of the Windows hosts and infrastructure servers required to support the architecture. Table 18 describes the required tasks that must be completed.

Table 18. Tasks for server installation


Install Windows hosts Install Windows Server 2012 on the physical servers that are deployed for the solution.

Install and configure Failover Clustering

• Add the server role Hyper-V.

• Add the Failover Clustering feature.

• Create and configure the Hyper-V cluster.

Deploy a Highly Available Virtual Machine

Configure Windows hosts networking

Configure Windows hosts networking including network interface card (NIC) teaming.

Configure multipathing Configure multipathing to optimize connectivity with the storage arrays.

• Understanding MPIO Features and Components

• EMC PowerPath and PowerPath/VE for Windows Installation and Administration Guide

Configure initiator to connect to a VNX/VNXe iSCSI server

Configure Windows Server 2012 initiator to connect a VNX/VNXe iSCSI server.

• EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with Microsoft Windows Hyper-V

• EMC Host Connectivity Guide for Windows

Publish VNX/VNXe datastores to Hyper-V

Configure the VNX/VNXe to enable the Hyper-V hosts to access the created datastores.

• EMC VNXe3150 System Installation Guide

• EMC VNXe3300 System Installation Guide

Connect to Hyper-V datastores

Connect the Hyper-V datastores to the Windows hosts as the Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) to Hyper-V failover cluster.

• EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with Microsoft Windows Hyper-V




Overview

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj863389.aspx�


http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee619734(v=WS.10).aspx�




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For more details, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document listed in Support resources.

All the servers in a Hyper-V failover cluster must run the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2012.

For detailed steps about how to configure the Windows hosts, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document listed in Support resources.

To install and configure Failover Clustering, complete these steps:

1. Apply the latest service pack for Windows Server 2012.

2. Configure the Hyper-V role and the Failover Clustering feature.

For detailed steps, refer to Microsoft TechNet Library topic Deploy a Highly Available Virtual Machine.

To ensure performance and availability, a minimum number of NICs is required:

• At least one NIC for virtual machine networking and management (may be separated by network or VLAN if desired).

• At least two NICs for iSCSI connection (configured as MCS or MPIO or PowerPath).

• At least one NIC for live migration.

To configure additional paths for high availability, use MPIO or MCS with additional network adapters in the server. This creates additional connections to the storage array in Microsoft iSCSI Initiator through redundant Ethernet switch fabrics.

For detailed instructions about how to install and configure MPIO or MCS, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document in Support resources.

EMC PowerPath

Alternatively, you can use EMC PowerPath for optimal performance. PowerPath is host-resident software that works with both VNX and VNXe storage systems to deliver intelligent I/O path management. Using PowerPath, administrators can improve the server’s ability to manage heavy storage loads through continuous and intelligent I/O balancing.

PowerPath automatically configures multiple paths, and dynamically tunes performance as the workload changes. PowerPath also adds to the HA capabilities of the VNX and VNXe storage systems by automatically detecting and recovering from server-to-storage path failures.

For detailed instructions about how to install and configure PowerPath, refer to the EMC PowerPath and PowerPath/VE for Windows Installation and Administration Guide.

Install Windows hosts

Install and configure Failover Clustering

Configure Windows host networking

Configure multipathing





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To connect to the VNX/VNXe targets (iSCSI servers), the host uses an iSCSI initiator, which requires Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator and the iSCSI initiator service. These services are part of the Windows Server 2012 software, however, the drivers for them are not installed until you start the service. You must start the iSCSI initiator service using the administrative tools.

For instructions on configuring an iSCSI initiator to connect to a VNX/VNXe iSCSI server, refer to EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with Microsoft Windows Hyper-V and EMC Host Connectivity Guide for Windows.

At the end of the storage implementation process on VNXe, you have datastores that are ready to be published to the Hyper-V. Now that the hypervisors are installed, you must return to Unisphere and add the Hyper-V servers to the list of hosts that are enabled to access the datastores. Because you are using VNXe iSCSI targets in a clustered environment, you must grant the datastore access to all the Windows Server 2012 hosts in the Hyper-V cluster.

On VNX, you must configure the storage group to grant datastore access to all the Windows Server 2012 hosts in the Hyper-V cluster.

For more information, refer to EMC Host Connectivity Guide for Windows.

Connect the Hyper-V datastores configured in Storage implementation to the appropriate Windows hosts as CSVs. The datastores are used for virtual server infrastructure.

For instructions about how to connect the Hyper-V datastores to the Windows host, refer to EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with Microsoft Windows Hyper-V and EMC Host Connectivity Guide for Windows.

After you connect and format the datastores on one of the hosts, you must enable CSV, then add the clustered disks as CSV disks.

Figure 22 shows the CSV disk used in this solution.

Figure 22. CSV disk in Failover Cluster Manager

Use EMC Storage Integrator to manage CSV disks for Exchange

You can also use ESI to view and manage CSV disks in an efficient manner. Figure 23 shows the same CSV disk in the ESI GUI.

Configure initiator to connect to a VNX/VNXe iSCSI server

Publish VNX/VNXe datastores to Hyper-V

Connect Hyper-V datastores



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Figure 23. CSV disk in EMC Storage Integrator

For more information, refer to EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Suite Product Guide.

Exchange Server virtualization implementation

This section provides the requirements for the installation and configuration of the Exchange virtual machines. Table 19 describes the tasks that must be completed.

Table 19. Exchange virtual machine installation and configuration


Create the Exchange virtual machines

Create the virtual machines to be used for the Exchange 2010 organization.

Install the Hyper-V Role and Configure a Virtual Machine

Install Exchange guest OS

Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition on the Exchange virtual machine.

Note During testing of the solution, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was not supported for installation on computers running the Windows Server 2012 OS. At the date of publication of this guide, Exchange Serverer 2010 Service Pack 3 is available to support Exchange 2010 on Windows Server 2012 OS.

Install the guest OS

Install integration services

Install the integration services on the Exchange virtual machine


Assign IP address • Assign the IP for all the networks in the virtual machine.

• Join all the Exchange Servers to the domain.

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Attach pass-through disks to Exchange virtual machines

Attach the database LUNs and log LUNs to the Exchange Server mailbox virtual machines as pass-through disks.

The Exchange 2010 organization consists of multiple components that may appear in a single deployment, including the:

• Client Access server roles

• Hub Transport server roles

• Mailbox server roles

• Edge Transport server roles

• Unified Messaging server roles

The first three server roles are the essential components in every Exchange organization and are the focus of this Guide.

EMC recommends that you use the VSPEX Sizing Tool and follow the recommendations in the Design Guide to determine the number of server roles required for your Exchange organization, and the resources required for each server role.

Table 20 shows an example of equivalent reference virtual machine requirements for different Exchange Server roles used in this solution. In this example, you need to set up two Exchange Mailbox servers and two HUB/CAS combined servers to support the requirements for a small Exchange organization. Then you determine the equivalent number of reference virtual machines required for each Exchange server role by calculating the maximum of the individual resources (CPU, memory, capacity and IOPS).

The system volumes of all Exchange virtual machines are stored on the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure pool, which are presented as CSVdisks in Hyper-V cluster.

Table 20. Example of Exchange reference virtual machines

Exchange Server role vCPU Memory OS volume capacity

OS volume IOPS

No. of virtual machines

Total reference virtual machines

Mailbox server


4 8 1 1 2 16



4 4 1 1 2 8

Total equivalent reference virtual machines 24

Create Exchange virtual machines



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For example, each Mailbox server requires four vCPUs, 16 GB of memory, 100 GB of storage, and 25 IOPS. This translates to:

• Four reference virtual machines of CPU

• Eight reference virtual machines of memory

• One reference virtual machine of capacity

• One reference virtual machine of IOPS

The values round up to eight reference virtual machines for each Mailbox server, multiplied by the number of virtual machines needed (two in this example), which results in 16 total reference virtual machines for the Mailbox server role.

8 reference virtual machines x 2 virtual machines = 16 total reference virtual machines

For more details about how to determine the equivalent reference virtual machines, refer to the appropriate document in Support resources.

Install Windows 2008 R2 on the Exchange virtual machine and apply the latest service pack.

Note During testing of the solution, Microsoft Exchange 2010 was not supported for installation on computers running the Windows Server 2012 OS. At the date of publication of this guide, Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 is available to support Exchange 2010 on Windows Server 2012 OS.

EMC recommends that you install the Hyper-V integration software package on the guest OS to improve integration between the physical computer and the virtual machine.

Assign an IP address for each of the network adapters in all the Exchange virtual machines, according to what you have planned for the IP reservation for each server. Join every server to the existing domain.

For more information, refer to the Configuration Worksheet for Exchange in Appendix A.

To attach the Exchange LUNs to Mailbox server virtual machines as pass-through disks:

1. Ensure that the Hyper-V nodes recognize the newly created Exchange LUNs on VNX/VNXe by opening Computer Manager and selecting Rescan Disks, as shown in Figure 24.

Install Exchange guest OS


Assign an IP address

Attach pass-through disks to Exchange virtual machines



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Figure 24. Rescan disks

2. To initialize the disks:

a. Bring the new Exchange LUNs online.

b. Initialize the disks.

c. Switch the LUNs to offline.

3. To add all Exchange LUNs to the Hyper-V cluster, in Microsoft Failover Cluster Manager, select Storage > Disks > Add Disk, as shown in Figure 25.



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Figure 25. Add disk

4. Expand the Hyper-V node, then select the Exchange Mailbox server virtual machine that hosts the Exchange LUNs.

5. Right-click the virtual machine and select Settings.

6. Click Add Hardware and select SCSI Controller.

7. To add a hard drive, click Add.

8. Select Physical hard disk, select the proper Exchange LUN, then click OK. The selected Exchange LUN is added as a pass-through disk.

Note Repeat these steps to add additional pass-through disks planned for this Exchange Mailbox server.

9. Verify the storage disks status, as shown in Figure 26, and ensure that the pass-through disks are correctly assigned to the Exchange Mailbox server virtual machine.

Figure 26. Pass-through disks in Failover Cluster Manager



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Use EMC Storage Integrator to manage pass-through disks for Exchange

You can also use ESI to view and manage pass-through disks in an efficient manner. Figure 27 shows the same pass-through disks in the ESI GUI.

Figure 27. Pass-through disks in EMC Storage Integrator

For more information, refer to EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Suite Product Guide.

Application implementation

This section includes information about how to implement the Exchange application into a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

Before you implement Exchange 2010, you must read the Design Guide to plan your Exchange organization based on your business needs.

After you complete the tasks in Table 21, the new Exchange organization is ready to be verified and tested.

Table 21. Tasks for implementing an Exchange organization

Task Description References

Pre-deployment verification by Jetstress

Run Jetstress to verify the disk subsystem performance before you implement the Exchange application.

Jetstress verification

Prepare Active Directory Prepare Active Directory for the Exchange organization

Planning Active Directory

Install Exchange 2010 Client Access server and Hub Transport server roles

Install the Client Access server and Hub Transport server roles on virtual machines.

Install Exchange Server 2010

Overview

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Task Description References

Deploy a Client Access server array

For load balancing, if there are multiple Client Access servers in the same Active Directory site, deploy a Client Access server array.

Understanding RPC Client Access

Install Exchange 2010 Mailbox server role

Install Mailbox server role on virtual machines.

Install Exchange Server 2010

Deploy DAG To provide HA for Exchange Mailbox databases, deploy DAG and create multiple copies for each Mailbox database.

• Managing Database Availability Groups

• Add a Mailbox Database Copy

EMC recommends that you run Jetstress to verify the disk subsystem performance before you implement the Exchange application. For more details, refer to Jetstress verification.

Before you install Exchange Server 2010, prepare your Active Directory environment for the Exchange organization by completing these steps:

1. Extend the Active Directory schema for Exchange Server 2010 by running the following command:

Setup /PrepareSchema

2. Create the required Active Directory containers and set up permissions for the Exchange organization by runing the following command:

Setup /PrepareAD /OrganizationName: <organization name>

You can also specify the organization name.

3. Prepare the other Active Directory domains by running the following command:

Setup /PrepareDomain

For more information on how to prepare the Active Directory, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Planning Active Directory.

Before you install the Exchange server roles, complete the Exchange 2010 Prerequisites.

Install the Exchange 2010 Client Access server and Hub Transport server on the same virtual machine. Use the Exchange Server installation media to install Exchange server roles.

To install Client Access server and Hub Transport server roles on the virtual machine:

1. In the Exchange Server 2010 setup wizard, under Installation Type, select Custom Exchange Server Installation as shown in Figure 28, then click Next.

Predeployment verification

Prepare Active Directory

Install Exchange 2010 Client Access server and Hub Transport roles

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Figure 28. Custom Exchange Server installation

2. Under Server Role Selection, select both Client Access Role and Hub Transport Role as shown in Figure 29. Click Next.



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Figure 29. Select Client Access Role and Hub Transport Role

3. Use the wizard to complete the installation of the Client Access server role. When the installation is complete, apply the latest service pack and the latest update rollup.

4. Repeat the same steps if there are other Exchange Client Access server virtual machines.

If there are multiple Client Access servers in the same Active Directory site, you can create an Exchange Client Access server array for load balancing purposes.

To deploy an Exchange Client Access server array:

1. Create the internal DNS entry for the name of the CAS array, as shown in Figure 30.

Deploy Client Access server array



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Figure 30. DNS entry for CAS array

2. Set up network load balancing for the set of Client Access servers. This solution supports both Microsoft Windows load balancers and hardware load balancers.

For details on how to configure and implement the hardware load balancer, contact your vendor. For more information about Windows load balancing, refer to Microsoft TechNet Library topic Network Load Balancing Deployment Guide.

3. Run the following cmdlet to create the new CAS array:

New-ClientAccessArray -fqdn <FQDN_of_array> -site <SiteName>

From this point on, any new mailbox database you create in your environment, in this same site, will automatically be associated with this array.

To install Mailbox server roles on the virtual machine, use the Exchange Server installation media and use these steps:

1. In the Exchange Server 2010 Setup wizard, under Installation Type, select Custom Exchange Server Installation.

2. Under Server Role Selection, select Mailbox Role as shown in Figure 31. Click Next.

Install Exchange 2010 Mailbox server role

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Figure 31. Mailbox Role

3. Use the wizard to complete the Mailbox server role installation. When the installation is complete, apply the latest service pack and the latest update rollup.

4. Repeat the same steps if you need to deploy additional Exchange Mailbox server virtual machines.

A DAG is the base component of the HA framework built into Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. A DAG is a group of up to 16 Mailbox servers that hosts a set of databases and provides automatic database-level recovery from failures that affect individual servers or databases. To deploy DAG in your Exchange 2010 environment:

1. Run the following cmdlet to create a DAG:

New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Name <DAG_Name> -WitnessServer <Witness_ServerName> -WitnessDirectory <Folder_Name> -DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIPAddresses <DAG_IP>

2. Run the following cmdlet to add the Mailbox server to the DAG:

Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity <DAG_Name> -MailboxServer <Server_Name>

3. Run the following cmdlet to create a DAG network:

Deploy DAG



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New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupNetwork -DatabaseAvailabilityGroup <DAG_Name> -Name <Net_Name> -Description "Net_Description" -Subnets <SubnetId> -ReplicationEnabled:<$True | $False>

For details about how to manage Exchange DAG, refer to Microsoft TechNet Library topic Managing Database Availability Groups.

4. Create Exchange databases based on the VSPEX Sizing Tool recommendations:

New-MailboxDatabase -Name <Database_Name> -EdbFilePath <Database_File_Path> -LogFolderPath <Log_File_Path>

5. Add mailbox database copies based on the VSPEX Sizing Tool recommendations.

Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity <Database_Name> -MailboxServer <Server_Name> -ActivationPreference <Preference_Number>

For details, refer to Microsoft TechNet Library topic Add a Mailbox Database Copy.

The Exchange organization is now running with the DAG deployed. To verify the functionality and monitor the system’s health, refer to Solution Verification.

Backup and recovery implementation

This solution uses Avamar as its backup and recovery component. Avamar solves the challenges associated with traditional backup, enabling fast, reliable backup and recovery for remote offices, data center LANs, and Exchange environments. The Avamar backup and recovery software uses patented global data deduplication technology to identify redundant sub-file data segments at the source, reducing daily backup data up to 500 times before transferring that data across the network and storing it to disk. This enables companies to perform daily full backups even across congested networks and limited WAN links.

This guide is not intended to replace the core documentation for planning, implementing, or installing Avamar. Refer to this information as best practices for those activities.

Avamar plug-in

The Avamar plug-ins support backup and recovery of Exchange ranging from entire databases to various object levels such as mailboxes or individual email items. Additional flexibility includes the ability to use activation priority in preferred server order lists (PSOLs), so that even if the preferred copy is not available for backup, Avamar will back up the next available copy. You should back up the other components in the Exchange environment with the Avamar Client for Windows. This enables you to recover the Exchange databases and related Exchange servers.

Overview

Backup and recovery considerations






68

Hyper-V

If Hyper-V is being protected by Avamar virtual machine image protection, you can restore the virtual machines without needing an Avamar client installed on the hosts. If they are Exchange Mailbox server roles, you can restore the databases from Exchange Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) backups.

Avamar Exchange VSS plug-in

The Avamar Exchange VSS plug-in relies on the base Avamar Windows Client and enables database backups. For disaster-level recovery, a virtual machine image recovery enables OS-level recovery. The database recovery is applied after those resources are restored.

Note The implementation of Hyper-V image-level protection is beyond the scope of this guide, but is a viable option when restoring base operating systems.

Avamar Configuration Checker

The Avamar Configuration Checker ensures that prerequisites are met. When you run this tool, it reports on all the required components installed for Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) and Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) access, as well as the Exchange configuration for Exchange Mailbox server roles.

Backup User Configuration Tool

The Backup User Configuration Tool is also provided when the Exchange VSS plug-in is installed. This tool creates the Avamar Backup User. The Avamar Backup User must have the relevant rights assigned to be able to back up and restore databases and mailbox or mail items. The Avamar services run as this user to enable those activities. It is possible to configure a user manually. For more information about manually configuring a user, refer to the Avamar Exchange VSS documentation.

Note Using Data Domain as the backup target for Avamar is also an option. The Avamar client and plug-ins are installed in the same way as when using Avamar as the backup target. If Data Domain is used, the only difference is a checkbox in the dataset definition. This is included in the implementation steps in the Avamar Exchange VSS documentation.

Figure 32 shows a map of the Avamar installation.



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Figure 32. Installation map

The Exchange data is stored in the Exchange Information Store, which contains the following data:

• Exchange database (EDB) files, including mailbox databases and public folder databases.

• Transaction log (LOG) files, which store database operations such as creating or modifying a message. Once the operations are committed, they are written to the EDB file.

• Checkpoint (CHK) files, which store information about successful operations when they are saved to the database on the hard disk.

When you select an Information Store or any database for backup, Avamar backs up the database file and accompanying LOG and CHK files. The backup strategy for a Microsoft Exchange environment should include the following backups.

Exchange 2010 environment

Back up the following components with the Windows Exchange VSS plug-in:

• Databases

• Stand-alone (non-DAG) databases

Backup strategies



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• Active or passive databases in a DAG environment

On-demand backup in a stand-alone environment

When you perform an on-demand backup in a stand-alone (non-clustering) environment, you can back up the entire Exchange Server or an Exchange 2010 database.

Figure 33 shows the backup workflow for a stand-alone Exchange 2010 environment.

Figure 33. Backup workflow for Exchange

On-demand backup in a high-availability environment

With the Windows Exchange VSS plug-in you can back up both the active node and the passive node in a high-availability Exchange configuration.

Exchange 2010 on-demand backup in a high-availability environment

In Exchange 2010, a physical server (node) can contain both active and passive databases, but not active and passive copies of the same database. To back up all passive databases on a node, select all databases on the physical node, and then select the option to only back up the replicas (passive copies). To back up all active databases on a node, select all databases on the physical machine, and then select the option to only back up the active databases. Figure 34 shows a non-federated backup of all of the databases in an Exchange 2010 DAG.



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Figure 34. Non-federated backup of all databases in the DAG

In this example, there are three Exchange servers, with active and passive copies of four mailbox databases. In a non-federated backup, each Exchange server is a separate Avamar client. To back up all passive mailbox databases, you must perform a passive node backup for each physical server in the cluster. You can set up and schedule a backup dataset that includes the backups of all of these servers: MBX1, MBX2, and MBX3.

However, when you run passive node backups against all servers in the cluster, you may end up with multiple passive node backups of the same database. While this does not cause any errors for Avamar, it consumes extra server and storage resources to back up and store duplicate copies of the same database. Backing up copies of the same database may impact deduplication results for that database by 60 percent or more. This is a direct result of how those databases are created. Microsoft uses log replay. Replaying the logs into the database copies results in unique data.



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Note EMC recommends that you back up the passive node because it has less impact on Exchange server performance and mail users. In some environments, such as a stand-alone Exchange server, you may not have a choice and must back up an active database because the system does not have passive databases or replicas. As a last resort for an environment with multiple DAG copies, you can allow the backup job to address an alternate database copy. This is explained in the next section.

In an Exchange 2010 DAG environment, passive and active databases can be replicated across multiple nodes for high availability. Backups are created from the passive databases, which can reduce the impact on production servers and resources. To back up all databases in the DAG environment using conventional backup, requires that all passive databases are backed up on each Exchange server, even if the same database has multiple passive copies replicated across several nodes.

However, with the Avamar federated backup for Exchange 2010 DAGs, you can back up Exchange databases under the DAG name rather than each server. With a federated backup, you can specify the order that Avamar polls each server in the DAG for passive copies of each Exchange database. Avamar federated backups of Exchange 2010 DAGs use several key features:

• Avamar Cluster Client Configuration

• Avamar Cluster Client Resource

• Preferred server order list (PSOL)

Federated backups is not a requirement of the implementation but without it there is no automated ability to back up, only an alternate copy of a database.

Avamar Cluster Client Configuration

The Avamar Cluster Client Configuration tool identifies which servers in the DAG to include in the Avamar Cluster Client. Run the Avamar Cluster Configuration tool after installing the Avamar Windows Client and Windows Exchange VSS plug-in.

Avamar Cluster Client Resource

The Avamar Cluster Client Configuration tool creates a separate Avamar client for the DAG cluster. This configuration provides a separate client resource in Avamar Backup and Restore, which you can select instead of selecting each individual Exchange server in the DAG. The Avamar Cluster Client must have its own unique IP and DNS name to use. The DNS name is not the DAG name. The implementation steps must identify a unique name and IP strictly for the Avamar Cluster Resource.

Preferred server order list

When you perform a backup through the DAG resource, Avamar selects an Exchange Server to back up the passive copies of the databases. Since multiple Exchange servers can host replicas or passive copies of the same database, you can specify a PSOL to tell Avamar which Exchange servers to use to back up the Exchange databases. When the backup order starts, Avamar backs up the passive or replica copies of each database, running the backups from the Exchange servers in the order specified in the PSOL.

Federated backups of Exchange 2010 DAG environments



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Figure 35 shows an example of a federated backup of a DAG cluster with three Exchange servers:

• MBX1

• MBX2

• MBX3

Figure 35. Federated backup of a DAG cluster example

The cluster contains four Exchange databases: DB1, DB2, DB3, and DB4.

Each database can only have one active copy, but can have multiple passive or replica copies. In this example, there are two passive copies of DB1, one copy on two different Exchange servers: MBX2 and MBX3. The other databases, DB2, DB3, and DB4, have one passive copy each in the cluster. Only one copy of each database needs to be backed up.



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The PSOL specifies that Avamar backs up the databases from the Exchange servers in this order:

• MBX2

• MBX3

• MBX1

Multistreaming enables parallel processing of backup jobs using multiple processors. You can use as many as six streams. Each stream requires a separate processor core. By taking advantage of multiprocessors, you can improve backup performance when storing backups on either the Avamar server or on a Data Domain system. You can configure multi-streaming to group backups by volume or by database. If volumes have varying database sizes, for example 500 GB on g:\, 100 GB on h:\, and 100 GB on z:\, it will take more time for streams to release the volumes with bigger sizes.

For a balanced multistream backup performance, choose by volume if all volumes are similar in size, or by database if all databases are similar in size. If databases are balanced across volumes so that each database is about the same size, and each volume contains about the same number of databases, then there will be little difference between grouping backups by database or volume.

Multistreaming places additional demands on computer hardware and resources beyond the base requirements for the Windows Exchange VSS plug-in. This does not mean that you should not use multistreaming, only that you should use it with caution.

Note A clustered or DAG environment is not required for multistreaming, but it is highly recommended. When using multistreaming, Avamar consumes much more CPU resources than when backing up data as a single stream. If the backup is performed on an active Exchange server node, this can have an impact on the email server’s performance and therefore affect the end user’s experience.

Multistreaming


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Chapter 5 Solution Verification


Baseline hardware verification ................................................................... 76

Exchange Server performance verification .................................................. 79

Backup and recovery verification ................................................................ 85

Chapter 5: Solution Verification


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Baseline hardware verification

This section provides a list of items that should be reviewed when the solution has been configured. The goal of this section is to verify the configuration and functionality of specific aspects of the solution, and ensure that the configuration supports core availability requirements.

Table 22 describes the tasks that must be completed.

Table 22. Tasks for verifying the VSPEX installation


Verify Hyper-V functionality

Verify the basic Hyper-V functionality of the solution with a post-installation checklist.

Verify solution components redundancy

Verify the redundancy of the solution components:

• Storage

• Hyper-V host

• Network switch

Vendor documentation

Verify the Exchange CAS array configuration

Verify the CAS array configuration in the solution.

Verify the Exchange DAG configuration

Verify the DAG configuration in the solution.

Monitor the solution’s health

Use tools to monitor the solution’s health.

• Microsoft Exchange Analyzers

• Manage Diagnostic Logging Levels

• Performance and Scalability Counters and Thresholds

• VNXe3100/3150: How to Monitor System Health

EMC recommends that you verify the Hyper-V configurations prior to deployment into production on each Hyper-V server.

For more detailed information, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document in Support resources.

To ensure that the various components of the solution maintain availability requirements, it is important that you test specific scenarios related to maintenance or hardware failure. EMC recommends that you verify redundancy of the solution components including storage, Hyper-V hosts, and network switches.

For details, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document in Support resources.

Overview

Verify Hyper-V functionality

Verify solution components redundancy

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To ensure that the Exchange CAS array is running smoothly, use these steps to verify and monitor the CAS array configuration:

1. Use the following cmdlet to verify that the Exchange databases are associated with CAS array, as shown in Figure 36:

Get-MailboxDatabase | fl Name, RpcClientAccessServer

Figure 36. Cmdlet to verify CAS-array associations

2. Start the Outlook client to ensure that you can open and access a mailbox. This indicates that the CAS array address is working.

3. Shut down one CAS server to verify that the Outlook client can still access the mailbox. This indicates that the load balancer is working.

To ensure that the Exchange DAG is working smoothly, use these steps to verify the DAG configuration.

1. Use the following cmdlet to verify on what Mailbox servers the databases are activated. Normally, the active databases are hosted on different mailbox servers as showed in Figure 37.

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus –server <Server_Name>

Figure 37. Cmdlet to verify DAG configuration

2. Shut down one Mailbox server to simulate a failure.

Verify the Exchange CAS array configuration

Verify the Exchange DAG configuration



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3. Monitor the database copy status, to verify that the DAG detects the failure as shown in Figure 38, and that the DAG automatically fails over the affected database to the other Mailbox server.

Figure 38. Verify that DAG detects the failure

4. Verify that the users can access the mailbox after the database is activated on the other Mailbox server.

Health monitoring is a simplified measurement that reflects the reliability, stability, and performance of the entire solution.

Table 23 lists several tools you can use to monitor and troubleshoot the solution.

Table 23. Tools to monitor the solution

Tool Description

Microsoft Exchange Analyzers

You can use several Microsoft Exchange Analyzer tools to verify basic connectivity, identify potential problems, and troubleshoot issues in an Exchange organization.

For more detailed instructions, refer to Microsoft TechNet Library topic Microsoft Exchange Analyzers.

Event Viewer Event Viewer is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in. It enables you browse and manage event logs. It is a useful tool for troubleshooting problems. You can filter for specific events across multiple logs, and reuse useful event filters as custom views.

Exchange Diagnostic Logging

The Exchange diagnostic logging level determines which events are written to the Application event log in Event Viewer. The default logging level is 0 (lowest). You can increase the logging level when you troubleshoot a specific issue. EMC recommends that you return the logging level to the default setting after you complete the troubleshooting activities.

For more information on Exchange diagnostics logging, refer to Microsoft TechNet Library topic Manage Diagnostic Logging Levels

Microsoft Windows performance counters

By using Windows performance counters, you can analyze bottlenecks in areas such as CPU utilization, memory, disk I/O, and network I/O.

For more information on performance counters and thresholds in the Exchange database, refer to the MSDN Library topic Monitoring and maintaining Exchange Server 2010.

Monitor the solution’s health







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Tool Description

VNX/VNXe Unisphere management interface

You can use the VNX/VNXe Unisphere management interface dashboard to monitor and determine VNX/VNXe system health, including: capacity utilization statistics, CPU usage statistics, storage resource health, health of hardware component, system alerts, and log files.

For more information on monitoring the VNX/VNXe’s health, refer to VNXe3100/3150: How to Monitor System Health and EMC Unisphere: Unified Storage Management Solution..

VNX Unisphere Analyzer

VNX Unisphere Analyzer software is preloaded on all VNX storage systems with the FLARE/block bundles (or later). It is easy to monitor, collect, and analyze all aspects of storage-related data with the analyzer.

EMC recommends that you use the test tools to monitor the performance of the entire Exchange environment. For details about performance verification and test methodology, refer to the Design Guide.

Exchange Server performance verification This section provides an example Exchange environment in this solution. The purpose is to measure the performance of the Exchange server roles to ensure the VSPEX solution meets your business requirements.

Before you verify your own solution, to understand the test methodology, refer to the Design Guide.

We verified that the Exchange organization supports the user profile shown in Table 24.

Table 24. Example of verification questions for user profile

Question Example answer

Number of mailboxes 900

Maximum mailbox size (GB) 1.5 GB

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

0.15 IOPS per mailbox (150 messages sent/received per mailbox per day

DAG copies (including Active) 2

Deleted Items Retention (DIR) window (days) 14

Backup/Truncation failure tolerance (days) 3

Snapshot (days retained) 0

Included number of years’ growth 1

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

Note We tested 1,000 mailboxes to include the one-year growth with 11 percent

growth rate.

Overview



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Overview of Jetstress tool

Verify the Exchange 2010 storage design for the expected transactional IOPS before placing it in a production environment. To ensure that the environment functions appropriately, EMC recommends that you use Microsoft Jetstress tool to verify the Exchange storage design.

The Jetstress tool simulates Exchange I/O at the database level by interacting with the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) database technology (also known as Jet) on which Exchange is built.

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 the disk subsystem is capable of maintaining an acceptable performance level by the metrics defined in that profile.

Key metrics

Before running the Jetstress tool, you need to know which Jetstress testing key metrics to capture and what thresholds must be met for each metric when running the tests. Table 25 lists the key metrics for Jetstress verification.

Table 25. Key metrics for Jetstress verification

Performance counters Target values

Achieved Exchange transactional IOPS

(I/O database reads/sec + I/O database writes/sec)


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 reads average latency (ms) Less than 10 ms

Build test environment

To build the Jetstress test environment:

1. Install the guest OS on the virtual machines in your test environment for the Exchange Mailbox servers on your Hyper-V hosts and provision storage to these virtual machines.

Note You do not need to install Exchange server 2010 on your virtual machines.

2. Install Jetstress on the virtual machines.

Jetstress verification



81

3. Populate the Jetstress databases according to your requirements.

4. Run the Jetstress tests and analyze the report.

For more information, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2010.

Test results

We used Jetstress version 14.01.0225.017 to simulate an I/O profile of 0.15 IOPS per user. We validated the building blocks using a two-hour performance test. Jetstress simulated 1,000 on a single Mailbox server to validate the performance under the worst (failover) situation, with all active databases mounted on a single Mailbox server. Compared to the normal working situation, in which two Mailbox servers host 1,000 users (500 users per server), the test situation doubles the pressure on the single Mailbox server’s disk subsystem.

Table 26 shows the average I/O and the average latency on the Mailbox server. The performance of the Exchange organization exceeds the design target.

Table 26. Jetstress verification

Database I/O Target values Single Mailbox server (1,000 users)

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


In this solution: 1,000 * 0.15 = 150

580

I/O database reads/sec N/A (for analysis purpose) 356

I/O database writes/sec N/A (for analysis purpose) 224

Total I/O (DB+Logs+BDM+Replication)/sec

N/A 737

I/O database reads average latency (ms)

Less than 20 ms 19

I/O log reads average latency (ms) Less than 10 ms 5

Overview of LoadGen tool

After you complete the storage verification with Jetstress and determine that the storage is sized correctly and performs as expected, use the Microsoft Exchange Server LoadGen tool to simulate a MAPI workload against the entire Exchange infrastructure. LoadGen testing is necessary to determine how each Exchange component performs under close-to-production user load.

LoadGen requires full deployment of the Exchange environment for verification testing. Perform all LoadGen verification testing in an isolated lab environment where there is no connectivity to the production data.

LoadGen verification

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LoadGen performs the following tasks for verification:

• Generates users and workloads against the entire Exchange environment, including network and storage components

• Simulates the entire email flow and locates any bottlenecks in the solution

• Assists in determining the CPU and memory resources that are required to sustain the load for which the Exchange environment is designed

Key metrics

Before you run the LoadGen tool, you need to know which LoadGen testing key metrics to capture and what thresholds must be met for each metric when running the tests. Table 27 lists the key metrics for LoadGen verification.

Table 27. Key metrics for LoadGen verification


Mailbox server Processor\%Processor time Less than 80%


Less than 20 ms


Less than 20 ms



Less than 200 ms


Less than 200 ms

Exchange database\IO log read average latency

Less than 10 ms

Exchange database\IO log writes average latency

Less than 10 ms

ExchangeIS\RPC requests Less than 70

ExchangeIS\RPC averaged latency Less than 10 ms

HUB/CAS combined servers

Processor\%Processor time Less than 80%

Exchange RpcClientAccess\RPC Requests Less than 40

Exchange RpcClientAccess\RPC Averaged Latency

Less than 250 ms


Less than 3,000


Less than 250


Less than 250



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Build test environment

To build the LoadGen test environment:

1. Deploy Exchange Server 2010 in your test environment, including Exchange Mailbox servers and HUB/CAS combined servers, and provision storage to these virtual machines.

2. Create virtual machines for LoadGen clients and install a guest OS.

3. Install LoadGen. EMC recommends that you install LoadGen tools on separate virtual machines other than the Exchange servers.

4. Populate LoadGen databases per your requirements.

Note This can be time-consuming depending on the number of mailboxes and the size of the mailboxes to be supported.

5. Run the LoadGen tests, collect Windows performance counter data, and analyze the report.

Test results

We used LoadGen 2010 to simulate Outlook 2007 online mode mailboxes with the following characteristics:

• The action profile was 150 messages per mailbox per day

• Each mailbox was 1.5 GB in size

We determined the validity of each test run by comparing the results of selected performance counters to Microsoft-specified criteria. We collected performance counter data at one-minute intervals for the duration of each test run. We then discarded the results of the first and last hours and averaged the results over the remainder of the test.

For additional information about monitoring Exchange 2010 performance and other key performance counters, refer to Microsoft TechNet Library topic Performance and Scalability Counters and Thresholds.

Table 28 shows the LoadGen tests that we used to measure the performance of the Exchange infrastructure.

Table 28. LoadGen performance tests

Test Description

1 Normal operation - 10 hours, 100 percent concurrency test under normal operating conditions with 150 messages MAPI profile. The objective was to verify the entire Exchange environment’s performance under normal operating condition.

2 Mailbox server failure - 10 hours, 100 percent concurrency test during the failure of one Mailbox server and one Client Access server. All databases are activated on the other Mailbox server. All client RPC requests are processed by one Client Access server. The objective is to verify the entire Exchange environment's performance when one Mailbox server and one Client Access server are lost.





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Table 29 shows that the performance achieved by the Exchange virtual machines meets the target metrics in all test scenarios.

Table 29. LoadGen performance results

Server Performance counter Target Normal situation Failover situation

Mailbox server

Processor\%Processor time

Less than 80% 8% 12%


Less than 20 ms 10 12


Less than 20 ms


3 3





Exchange database\IO log read average latency

Less than 10 ms 7 0

Exchange database\IO log writes average latency

Less than 10 ms 8 2

Exchange Replication(*)\ReplayQueueLength

Less than 2 1 0

ExchangeIS\RPC requests Less than 70 0 0

ExchangeIS\RPC averaged latency

Less than 10 ms 1 1


Processor\%Processor time

Less than 80% 3% 6%

Exchange RpcClientAccess\RPC Requests

Less than 40 0 0

Exchange RpcClientAccess\RPC Averaged Latency



Less than 3,000 0 0



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Server Performance counter Target Normal situation Failover situation


Less than 250 0 0


Less than 250 0 0

DAG replication stops in a failover situation. That is why some performance counters look better in a failover situation.

Currently, the VSPEX Sizing tool assigns at least four vCPUs to the Exchange virtual machines to provide headroom for deployment of additional third-party applications (for example, anti-virus, anti-spam, and so on). We did not have any third-party applications in the test environment, which resulted in a lower CPU utilization. If required, customers can adjust the vCPU numbers based on their requirements.

Backup and recovery verification Verification of the Exchange backup and recovery implementation requires several recovery options. The highest level is to recover an entire database. You recover it into a recovery database (RDB) for Exchange 2010. There are other lower level elements you need to confirm if the environment is configured with granular-level recovery (GLR ). When recovering mailboxes or lower level objects, you should consider several backup and recovery steps as described below.

Recovery steps

The specific steps for recovering these objects are described in the following Avamar Exchange VSS documents:

• EMC Avamar 6.1 for Exchange VSS User Guide

• EMC Avamar 6.1 Operational Best Practices

• EMC Avamar 6.1 Administration Guide

Verify backup and recovery



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Chapter 6 Reference Documentation


EMC documentation................................................................................... 88

Other documentation ................................................................................. 89

Links ......................................................................................................... 89

Chapter 6: Reference Documentation


88

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.

• Design Guide: EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010

• Implementation Guide: EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010 with VMware vSphere

• Proven Infrastructure: EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up to 100 Virtual Machines

• Proven Infrastructure: EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up to 500 Virtual Machines

• Best Practices Guide: Microsoft Exchange 2010: Storage Best Practices and Design Guidance for EMC Storage

• EMC VNXe Series Using VNXe System with Microsoft Windows Hyper-V

• EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with Generic iSCSI Storage

• EMC VNXe Series Using VNXe System with Microsoft Exchange

• EMC VNXe3150 Installation Guide

• EMC VNXe3300 Installation Guide

• EMC VNXe Series Configuration Worksheet

• EMC VNXe Data Protection

• EMC VNXe3100/3150: How to Monitor System Health

• EMC FAST VP for Unified Storage Systems

• VNX Operating Environment for File Release Notes Version

• VNX File and Unified Worksheet

• VNX Installation Guide

• Unisphere System Getting Started Guide


• EMC Avamar 6.1 for Exchange VSS User Guide

• EMC Avamar 6.1 Operational Best Practices

• EMC Avamar 6.1 Administration Guide

• EMC PowerPath and PowerPath/VE for Windows Installation and Administration Guide

• EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Suite Product Guide

• EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Suite Technical Notes

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Other documentation For documentation on Microsoft Exchange and Hyper-V, refer to the Microsoft website.

• Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) Users Guide for Windows Server 2012

Links Refer to the following topics on the Microsoft TechNet Library:

• Add a Mailbox Database Copy

• Deploy a Highly Available Virtual Machine

• Install Exchange Server 2010

• Install the guest OS

• Install the Hyper-V Role and Configure a Virtual Machine

• Installing and Configuring MPIO

• Jetstress Field Guide

• Manage Exchange Diagnostic Logging Levels

• Managing Database Availability Groups

• Managing Mailbox Database Copies

• Microsoft Exchange Analyzers

• Microsoft Exchange Load Generator

• Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2010

• Monitoring and maintaining Exchange Server 2010

• Network Load Balancing Deployment Guide

• Performance and Scalability Counters and Thresholds

• Planning Active Directory

• Understanding a New Installation of Exchange 2010

• Understanding MPIO Features and Components

• Understanding RPC Client Access

• Use Cluster Shared Volumes in a Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster

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

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91

Appendix A Configuration worksheet

This appendix presents the following topics:

Configuration worksheet for Exchange ........................................................ 92

Appendix A: Configuration worksheet


92

Configuration worksheet for Exchange Before configuring Exchange for this solution, you need to gather some customer-specific configuration information such as IP addresses, hostnames, and so on.

The following tables provide a worksheet that you can use to record the information. You can also print and use the worksheet as a customer “leave behind” document for future reference.

To confirm the customer information, cross-reference with the relevant array configuration worksheet, EMC VNXe Series Configuration Worksheet or VNX File and Unified Worksheets.

Table 30. Common server information

Server name Purpose Primary IP address

Domain Controller 01

Domain Controller 02

DNS Primary

DNS Secondary

DHCP

NTP

SMTP

SNMP

Mailbox server 01

Mailbox server 02

HUB/CAS server 01

HUB/CAS server 02

Table 31. Exchange information

Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) Purpose Primary IP address

Exchange DAG

Exchange Client Access server array

Table 32. Hyper-V server information

Server name Purpose Primary IP address Private net (storage) addresses

Hyper-V Host 1

Hyper-V Host 2

Appendix A: Configuration worksheet


93

Server name Purpose Primary IP address Private net (storage) addresses

Hyper-V Host 3

…

Table 33. Array information

Object Description

Array name

Array Type

Root password

Admin password

Management IP

SPA IP address

SPB IP address

iSCSI IP addresses on SPA

iSCSI IP addresses on SPB

VSPEX private cloud pool name

Exchange database pool 1 name

Exchange database pool 2 name

Table 34. Network infrastructure information

Name Purpose IP address Subnet mask Default gateway

Ethernet Switch 1

Ethernet Switch 2

…

Table 35. VLAN information

Name Network purpose VLAN ID Allowed subnets

Virtual machine networking management

iSCSI storage network

Live migration

Documents

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010 with ... · IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE . EMC VSPEX . Abstract This Implementation Guide describes, at a high level, the steps required