Exchange Server Web Page Overview

In the past decade, e-mail and electronic messaging have become the backbone of communication and collaboration within and among organizations and Microsoft® Exchange has become the most often-deployed messaging environment in the corporate marketplace. Both Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 offers a range of features designed to dramatically advance user productivity and simplify manageability of email for enterprise customers. As a leading partner of Microsoft, Dell is committed to deliver added value products and services for Microsoft Exchange® 2007 and Exchange 2010.

The Dell EqualLogic PS Series SAN delivers Efficient, Simple, Safe Mailbox Storage for Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Exchange presents many compelling benefits to enterprises today, while significantly increasing the need for efficient, simple, safe storage. Dell's intelligent EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI arrays are compatible for Exchange right out of the box. The PS Series supports advanced capabilities that can help to optimize your Exchange server deployment. These capabilities can be grouped into four key areas: Improved Storage Efficiency, Simplified Storage Management, Enhanced Email Protection, and Shared-Resource Architecture.

Improved Storage Efficiency
One of the first challenges faced by an Exchange administrator is how much storage to allocate and configure. Given the possibility of dramatic increases in storage use and potential challenges in changing the configuration of DAS and JBOD storage, PS Series SANs present a valuable capability – thin provision the needed volumes and allow the system to automatically grow as demand increases. This enables high asset utilization and lower upfront storage costs. One aspect of storage efficiency enabled by PS Series is the use of SAN based backups and replication. This capability offloads the processing needed for these tasks, relieving mail server processor loads. PS Series snapshots and replicas are very space efficient, they do not needlessly create redundant data copies.

Simplified Storage Management
Corporate email services can be made to be more reliable and cost-effective by reducing the need for specialized knowledge and reducing the number of repetitive tasks required on the part of Exchange administrators. PS Series SANs are based on industry standard iSCSI networking technology, reducing the need for costly, specialized equipment and skills. PS Series management is designed to be as automated as possible in order to reduce the frequency of required management tasks. Capacity, networking, and performance are optimized by intelligent algorithms that require little administrator involvement. In fact when a new array is added to the SAN, the capacity is quickly recognized and automatically incorporated into the networking and storage available to the volumes on the SAN. Furthermore network traffic is automatically balanced across all available interfaces, including those in newly added arrays. Tiering is the storage of email database and log files on different classes of storage to optimize performance. This can be done manually, or intelligent algorithms can automate the distribution of data on higher performance of storage, both between arrays with different disk technology and within our XVS array which features a hybrid of SSD and SAS disks in one chassis.

Exchange administrators benefit from specific support for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware. This integration is packaged in the EqualLogic Host Integration Toolkit for Windows and includes: MPIO DSM for device-specific optimization of iSCSI traffic; VSS integration for application aware snapshots, clones, replicas and backups; Exchange 2010 integration for application-consistent data protection and recovery; and Hypervisor integration for enhanced performance, reliability, management and availability.

Enhanced Email Protection
Exchange 2010 mailbox resiliency is enhanced by the PS Series at many levels. All hardware components are redundant and hot swappable, including drives, controllers, power modules, fans, cache and network ports. Additional data protection is provided by configurable RAID levels including the option of dual parity RAID 6. PS Series arrays are shipped with Auto Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition which provides the ability to create application-consistent snapshots, clones and replicas called Smart Copies. These Smart Copy snapshots and replicas are very space efficient, using eliminating the storage of redundant data to conserve space on the SAN. Administrators can create schedules that automate the creation of snapshots and replicas, providing additional granular protection from database corruption. This gives the administrator control over the establishment of recovery points (RPO), easing compliance with business mandates. If there is a need to create a recovery database for the retrieval of lost information, this can be done almost instantly from a snapshot image. These features combine to greatly reduce recovery times (RTO). Smart Copy replication allows the creation of application-consistent Smart Copies of Exchange 2010 mailbox databases and logs at disaster recovery sites. This proven solution is specifically designed to manage bandwidth challenges while providing a high level of disaster protection and site resilience.

Shared-Resource Architecture
Many customers are establishing an enterprise architecture that standardizes on the flexibility and availability of virtualized server farm and shared storage. This type of infrastructure enables the adoption of a consistent approach to high availability, and provides for formerly unattainable levels of asset utilization. PS Series SANs have high levels of integration with virtualization offerings from VMware and Microsoft. This provides the ability to consolidate environments using shared resources across business critical capabilities.