NetApp sanpcenter for Exchange, single mailbox recovery

[FelixZhou]

our 2016 MS Exchange servers currently on NetApp (AFF300, 9.8G5), it is around 20TB. We plan to implement the SnapCenter plug in for Exchange. Can someone share some good experience on this?

1.  Since we may need to keep snapshots on production site for quick recovery purpose, how many snapshots can we keep? Will they impact any Exchange server performance?

2. heard the "single mailbox recovery 8.3", is it a snapcenter based tool, using for recovering database, mailbox or individual emails?

3. we provision SAN devices to Exchange, any best practice on this?

thanks.

[TMACMD]

If I recall, a common mistake I see is improper setup for exchange. I am pretty sure (cue Tracy Morgan commercial) that the proper setup is for the exchange data buckets should be on a direct attached lun to the host/vm. It can be fibre channel or iSCSI. 

i see customers making using a lun attached to the ESXi host and putting a vmdk for exchange there. Although it works, I think I read in the SnpCenter docs that the configuration is not supported

[Ontapforrum]

SMBR is a very good product. I have used it to restore emails items/mailbox. For database restore, you can use the SnapCenter for Exchange product. As far as snapshots are concerned, I believe it should be whatever supported by respective ontap versions:

In ONTAP 9.3 and earlier, a volume can contain up to 255 Snapshot copies. In ONTAP 9.4 and later, a volume can contain up to 1023 Snapshot copies. Snapshots have no bearing on the exchange server performance.

For SnapCenter SAN best practices:
https://www.netapp.com/pdf.html?item=/media/12398-tr-4681pdf.pdf

Some useful topics:
https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/Single_Mailbox_Recovery_(SMBR)
https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/Single_Mailbox_Recovery_(SMBR)/How_to_manually_restore_a_single_item_with_SMBR
https://www.netapp.com/blog/easily-recover-exchange-email-from-snapvault-with-netapp-single-mailbox-recovery/
https://kb.netapp.com/Advice_and_Troubleshooting/Data_Storage_Software/Single_Mailbox_Recovery_(SMBR)/How_to_manually_restore_a_single_item_with_SMBR