Exchange 2010 Volume/LUN best practice

BOB_KOCHANSKI — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:50:35 GMT

Team,

I have a customer who is migrating their Exchange environment from 2003 - 2010 and there has been a lot of back and forth about the right way to go about this from a utilization/space/performance standpoint. Here are some of the messages that have been going back and forth, I am just trying to get the best answer for them so we don't look bad from a storage/performance standpoint. See below:

"Ideally I would configure one EDB in one LUN in one FlexVol. If the customer wants to put two or more databases into a single FlexVol they might as well go ahead and use one LUN. There isn’t a great deal of value in having multiple LUNs. That said, it’s not an unsupported configuration so I can’t say don’t do it.

Put multiple transaction log sets into a single LUN and that LUN in its own FlexVol.

If you want to snapshot yourdatabases on a different schedule you will have to think about your layout. Anydatabases that have the same snapshot schedule can have their logs put into thesame FlexVol. If you have a database with a 1 hour snap and another with a 4hour snap schedule then those logs are going to be in a different FlexVol."

"After looking into your exchange design further I think it is best to have one EDB in one LUN in one FlexVol. Primary reason is due tosnapshots and the fact they occur at the volume level.

If you want to put two or more databases into a singleFlexVol, it would be no different than using one LUN per volume from aperformance perspective. This could potentially increase the deduplicationratio. But other than that, there isn’t a great deal of value in havingmultiple LUNs in the same flexvol. That said, it’s not an unsupportedconfiguration.

Multiple transaction log sets can be placed into a singleLUN and that LUN in its own FlexVol. Any databases that have the same snapshotschedule can have their logs put into the same FlexVol. If you have a databasewith a 1 hour snap and another with a 4 hour snap schedule then those logs needto be in a different FlexVol.

If you want to snapshot your databases on adifferent schedule then the LUNs need to reside in different FlexVols."

"Actually I’ve been planning to go with the premise of having 2 LUNs on a volume. One LUN presented toa mailbox server for a single database, and the other presented to a differentmailbox server to be the location for the replicate of that database. Wewere lead to believe this was a very efficient way of doing things –thereplicate copy LUN would de-dupe down to almost nothing since the two LUNswould pretty much have the same exact db. Not doing this concerns mesince we’d pretty much need twice the storage on the Netapp to then accommodateour DAG groups. Not an insignificant amount of storage.

I was hoping to havethe storage ready by the end of this week for the Exchange mailboxservers… Now I’m not very confident in what I thought would be thesolution."

I would appreciate any ideas or input for this or if anyone has configured and rolled out the volume/LUN layout for an Exchange 2010 environment.

Thanks,

Bob Kochanski

Exchange 2010 Volume/LUN best practice

radek_kubka — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:21:37 GMT

Hi Bob and welcome to the Community!

Are you planning to use SnapManager for Exchange at all? Have you seen this post (plus the entire thread):

http://communities.netapp.com/message/40832#40832

Regards,

Radek

topic Exchange 2010 Volume/LUN best practice in Data Protection

Exchange 2010 Volume/LUN best practice

Exchange 2010 Volume/LUN best practice