EMC Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition

Transcription

1 EMC White Paper EMC Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition Product Overview Abstract: This white paper examines the storage management technologies available with EMC Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition and discusses how these technologies are deployed to create solutions for the Exchange Server storage challenges facing small and medium businesses (SMBs). Date 2/6/2006 1

2 Copyright 2006 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as 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. EMC 2, EMC, and where information lives are trademarks of EMC Corporation. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. All other brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. [S V1] 2

3 Table of Contents Introduction...4 Product Benefit Summary...4 Storage Administrator Management System...5 Exchange DLL... 5 Storage Administrator Service... 6 Storage Control DLLs... 6 Global Persistent Store... 6 Exchange Storage Provisioning...6 Defining a Storage Pool... 7 Creating Initial Volumes and LUNs... 8 Comparing Performance and Utilization... 8 Managing Volume Growth... 9 Using Storage Administrator for Exchange...9 Exchange System Manager Integration... 9 Creating/Migrating Storage Groups Eliminating Exchange Downtime Because of Server Failure Consolidating Servers with Storage Administrator for Exchange Other Features Summary

4 Introduction is an essential part of how companies conduct business. It is also one of the fastest-growing storage consumers today. As the amount of data grows, SMBs are looking for storage options that do not require a high degree of technical expertise or create a drain on resources (people, time, and money). EMC Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition is a software storage management solution that works with EMC CLARiiON AX Series disk arrays to simplify management of Microsoft Exchange Server data, provide fast recovery from an Exchange server failure, and facilitate migration from Exchange 2000 Server 2000 to Exchange Server 2003 without the cost and complexity usually expected with shared storage. Product Benefit Summary Storage Administrator provides the following benefits: Self-management Storage Administrator automates all storage management tasks to free administrators time and prevent costly errors. Storage configuration, volume management, provisioning, and storage maintenance tasks are all part of Storage Administrator, which allows Exchange administrators to concentrate on managing Exchange rather than storage. Capacity planning The Storage Administrator capacity planning tool allows the administrator to optimally plan the storage architecture for Microsoft Exchange. By ensuring a proper balance between utilization and performance, Storage Administrator reduces storage hardware costs while maintaining optimal mail client response time. Automated provisioning Storage Administrator uses fully supported interfaces to automate Exchange storage group and Mail Store creation for the storage subsystem. A storage group is a group of Exchange databases managed with one transaction log. The administrator simply uses Exchange System Manager, and Storage Administrator automatically configures the storage layout according to Exchange and storage array best practices. Storage Administrator also monitors free space and provisions EMC CLARiiON storage required for volume growth on request, eliminating disk full conditions and the associated downtime. Storage monitoring Storage Administrator closely monitors the health and utilization of the Exchange storage environment. Storage Administrator correlates storage subsystem configuration and status with the appropriate Exchange objects to provide a complete, application-specific view of how storage is utilized for Exchange. Transportable storage groups Storage Administrator allows any Exchange server connected to the SAN to access underlying storage associated with storage groups. At the Exchange level, this means individual storage groups can be removed or added easily to any Exchange server, allowing for load balancing, failover, server consolidation, out-of-forest access to backups, and off-server database validations. 4

5 Storage Administrator Management System Storage Administrator for Exchange is designed to automate storage management tasks for Exchange by using five main system components. Administrative interfaces The Microsoft Exchange System Manager (ESM) fully automates and performs common storage tasks. The Advanced Storage Manager (ASM) console is used to manage the Storage Administrator Logical Storage Pool (LSP) data layout within the storage array. Exchange DLL (dynamic-link library) Exchange DLL, commonly referred to as the Exchange library, interfaces directly with Exchange, ESM snap-in modules, and Active Directory. Storage Administrator for Exchange Windows Service This service is the central component of Storage Administrator for Exchange. It acts as the communication interface between all other components, performs system monitoring, initiates administrative actions, and processes user requests for the Exchange service. Storage Control DLLs Storage Control DLLs, commonly referred to as the Storage Control library, interface between the Storage Administrator for Exchange service and the array-specific interface, providing an abstraction layer. The Storage Control library corresponds to specific array (for example, EMC CLARiiON) management interfaces. Global Persistent Store (GPS) The GPS stores system information required by Storage Administrator and is a shared repository on the SAN that can be directly or indirectly accessed by all Exchange servers running Storage Administrator for Exchange. The GPS is used when storage groups are moved from one Exchange server to another. Figure 1 Storage administrator components Exchange DLL The Exchange library (Exchange DLL) manages all Exchange-specific activities such as storage group and store creation, and all interactions with Active Directory. The Exchange library provides the intelligence behind Storage Administrator ESM snap-ins and menu selections. When Exchange objects are created, deleted, renamed, or changed, the Exchange library initiates interactions with the storage subsystem 5

6 through the Storage Administrator for Exchange Service, and then interfaces with Exchange via the Microsoft CDOEXM API for the creation and management of Exchange objects. Storage Administrator Service The Storage Administrator Service (sansrv) launches and monitors the main routine (sanmain), which handles all generic application requests (for example, create a volume), and generates generic storage calls (for example, create a LUN) to the Storage Control library. The service also handles most interactions with the Global Persistent Store. Storage Control DLLs The Storage Control library handles all storage array management tasks for Storage Administrator. An array-independent, abstracted storage control interface translates Storage Administrator commands into appropriate operations for a specific array type. This abstraction layer allows other components to be independent of array-specific details. Specifically, a Storage Control library recognizes different array APIs (CLARiiON API or SMI-S), a specific set of storage products (SnapView for CLARiiON), and arrayspecific structures (RAID groups on CLARiiON). Global Persistent Store The Global Persistent Store (GPS) is a transactional XML (extensible markup language) database where Storage Administrator saves all required information about the Exchange storage environment. This component was designed with availability as its primary focus. When Storage Administrator configures a new storage array, a small LUN (logical unit number) is created within the array for configuration data. A LUN is a virtual drive created from a group of physical drives within an array and described as a device to a Windows platform. The LUN is NTFS formatted and protected by hardware RAID. One Exchange server is configured as the GPS primary server, which happens automatically during Storage Administrator installation on the first Exchange server. No user configuration is required. This server owns the LUN and proxies all database activity for other Exchange Servers. If the GPS primary server fails, another Exchange server automatically assumes this role and takes control of the Storage Administrator database. A primary GPS function is storing volume and LUN relationships to various Exchange storage groups and databases. This function permits Storage Administrator to relate Exchange administrative operations affecting storage groups and databases to underlying storage. Thus, when a storage group is moved, Storage Administrator understands which volumes, LUNs, and so on are affected and treats them as a set. Exchange Storage Provisioning Determining how to provision SAN storage for Exchange can be complex and time-consuming. Properly configuring storage for Exchange is more than simply creating and formatting a fixed-size LUN. The Storage Administrator provisioning scheme reflects Exchange, Windows, and EMC CLARiiON best practices to determine the optimum layout for Exchange databases and logs. Based on policy information set by Exchange administrators, Storage Administrator performs the following provisioning tasks: Determines the initial size for and creates all LUNs, RAID groups, and other array structures. Determines the initial size for and manages the SCSI plug-and-play for devices, and creates basic NTFS volumes. Formats volumes with the correct partition offset and mounts them in the proper location. Constantly monitors storage utilization, provides usage statistics to the Exchange administrator, and provides on-demand growth capability to the back-end storage device. Determines proper spindle count to ensure optimal I/O performance. 6

7 Allocates temporary space for Exchange maintenance operations when needed. Determines proper log and database volume placement to eliminate contention, optimize write cache, and balance storage processor resources. Determines proper RAID settings based on availability and performance policies. Defining a Storage Pool To properly provision storage to Exchange objects and to optimize performance and storage efficiency, Storage Administrator manages a pool of storage called the Logical Storage Pool (LSP), which consists of three main components: A collection of physical disk drives in a storage array A set of Exchange servers A single instantiation of a Global Persistent Store catalog The LSP is a unique concept compared to traditional array management applications such as EMC Navisphere. The LSP identifies and reserves physical storage for Exchange and separates it from storage for other applications. As Figure 2 illustrates, the LSP defines drives associated with Exchange and separates them from drives associated with SQL Server, which reflects the best practice of dedicating disks for exclusive use by the Exchange application. Figure 2 Logical Storage Pool An Advanced Storage Manager (ASM) function monitors and manages the LSP. ASM displays the total amount of storage allocated and how it is used. If the amount of free space falls below a set of thresholds, 7

8 the administrator is notified. The administrator can add more drives to the LSP by utilizing ASM s simple interface, which displays an array s physical drives and indicates that drives are available (unused), are controlled by Storage Administrator, or are allocated to another non-storage Administrator disk group or LUN. Adding drives to an LSP is as simple as clicking unallocated drives. For optimal storage utilization, EMC strongly recommends adding disks in multiples of 4 (for RAID 1+0) or 5 (for RAID 5). Storage Administrator monitors and enforces the minimum numbers of drives dictated by RAID type, disk group size, provisioning, or backup policy. After defining or adding a new set of drives to the LSP, the administrator can see the increased LSP free space. Storage Administrator allocates new storage to Exchange objects. Over time, the system load balances the I/O load across new drives as they are added to disk groups and LUNs. Creating Initial Volumes and LUNs Storage Administrator saves time and effort by automatically creating and maintaining volumes and associated array structures for Exchange storage groups and databases a process that can be complex when performed manually. When a storage group or database is created, Storage Administrator collects data about the intended use. It presents the administrator with a dialog box that request information about the intended number of mailboxes, estimated size of each mailbox, and average usage. Based on this information, Storage Administrator determines the sizes of the log volume and database volume(s). After an initial volume size is determined, associated LUNs must be created and placed within various array groups that determine host access, RAID type, striping, and so on. LUN placement is critical because the number of LUNs created against a specific number of drives determines the storage subsystem's performance. Most administrators do not have the time or resources to determine optimal layout by experimenting with LUN placement within disk or RAID groups. Storage Administrator provides the optimal array layout to ensure the best performance. Storage Administrator allows administrators to update planned values easily and automates provisioning of associated CLARiiON storage. Comparing Performance and Utilization Administrators must balance performance against storage utilization when determining Exchange storage requirements. To ensure adequate performance for Exchange clients, administrators must ensure the storage subsystem can support the number of I/O requests required by peak messaging traffic, which gives clients the impression of instantaneous response time for all messaging activities. Messaging traffic generates a certain number of I/O requests per second per user, and each drive in the subsystem can support a certain number of I/O operations per second. The following calculation determines the number of drives required: Number of mailboxes x average IOPS / number of IOPS for each drive = number of drives needed Tracking changes in these variables and calculating the results can be complex. How do you know what the average number of I/Os per second per user is? How many I/Os can a typical drive support? Administrators must also factor in write cache performance, RAID impact, disk-based backup impact, additional log writes I/O, and so on. Storage Administrator solves this planning challenge. EMC conducted extensive Exchange testing to determine exact messaging environment I/O demands, and exact performance for a variety of drives and arrays in this environment. The Storage Administrator provisioning policy is in part determined by optimizing log and database volume layout to provide the best balance of performance and space utilization. Use the Capacity Planning Tool to model the entire Exchange environment to determine how many drives are required to support the desired level of performance. When the system is operational, basic information about each mailbox store is captured as it is created. Storage Administrator allocates the proper number of drives to each volume, delivering adequate performance and using space efficiently. Storage Administrator has tuned the provisioning policy (based on extensive testing using Microsoft Loadsim with the MMB3 profile, Jetstress, and other performance-related utilities) to deliver average 8

9 response time of less than a second to all main client activities. Storage Administrator s provisioning policy delivers optimal storage subsystem utilization while helping to ensure clients never experience noticeable delays or see an Exchange server busy dialog box. Managing Volume Growth Another challenge of Exchange storage management is determining database volume sizes. Creating a volume that is too small has serious consequences because resizing involves substantial downtime and dangerous product data manipulation. Newer SAN systems can expand LUNs without taking the system down, but this is a complex manual task requiring an Exchange outage to resize the NTFS volume or dynamic volume use. An NTFS volume disk full causes the affected storage group or database to shut down. Storage Administrator creates volumes for new storage groups and databases at a calculated size based on intended use. Then Storage Administrator automates volume monitoring. When it detects a volume that needs more space, the Exchange administrator is notified that volume utilization thresholds are being reached. At this point, the Exchange administrator invokes a simple point-and-click operation that expands the corresponding volume automatically, with no disruption to Exchange data availability. If the LSP is running low on available storage space, the administrator can use the Advance Storage Manager interface to provision additional CLARiiON back-end storage for the LSP, whose total physical storage is managed as a free pool of storage to allocate to volumes when and where storage is needed. Using Storage Administrator for Exchange Storage Administrator is designed to minimize administrative and operational overhead for Exchange storage management. Exchange System Manager Integration All storage management products have an administrative impact caused by the initial learning curve and ongoing need to build expertise in the user interface and product functionality. To eliminate this impact, the Storage Administrator interface is completely embedded within Microsoft's Exchange System Manager (ESM), an interface that is already familiar to Exchange administrators. All storage management activities that cannot or should not be automated (for example, an administrator connecting a storage group to a server when a server fails) are controlled directly from within ESM via Storage Administrator MMC snapins. Storage Administrator makes Exchange storage management an extension of managing Exchange. After Storage Administrator is installed, a new container is visible in ESM: The Other Storage Groups container is created in each server container, as shown in Figure 3. This container allows access to storage groups that exist on the SAN but are not mounted to a specific server. In addition to this container, there are more menu selections for standard server, storage group, and database containers. 9

10 Figure 3 Main ESM screen with Storage Administrator Creating/Migrating Storage Groups Storage Administrator simplifies the creation of new storage groups and databases. It is not necessary to preconfigure LUNs, RAID groups, storage groups, or other array structures. You do not have to create NTFS volumes or predetermine pathnames, drive letters, or mount points. Storage Administrator determines volume size based on usage, eliminating the typical planning required to determine volume size and layout. When a new storage group or database is created within ESM, Storage Administrator automatically creates and configures the size and format for volumes, pathnames, mount points, LUNs, and array groups. Storage Administrator automates the migration of an existing Exchange 2000/2003 storage group to a Storage Administrator managed environment by adding a menu selection to existing storage group containers (see Figure 4). Storage Administrator sizes and configures required volumes based on actual object size, and then moves the databases to their new location. Migrating Exchange from direct-attached storage to a SAN with Storage Administrator s point-and-click process takes a fraction of the time needed for the manual process. 10

11 Figure 4 Migrating a storage group to Storage Administrator Eliminating Exchange Downtime Because of Server Failure Server failure is a typical concern when consolidating many mailboxes to a large Exchange server. Failure can result in long recovery cycles that interrupt service. Server clusters provide automated server failover with little or no client downtime, but clustering is an expensive and complex solution. Storage Administrator offers a relatively easy and inexpensive alternative. Storage Administrator maintains metadata for each storage group on the SAN, which allows storage group LUNs to be treated as a group so they can be associated with any Exchange server that has access to the LSP. 11

12 Figure 5 Server failure, orphaned storage group recovery If an Exchange server fails, storage groups mounted on it become orphaned on the SAN. In Figure 5, server Exchange A failed, and its two storage groups, SGA1 and SGA2, are orphaned. Because the LUNs are still intact, an administrator can access these storage groups with ESM and reconnect them to Exchange B in a matter of minutes. Alternatively, they can be reconnected to a newly installed, repaired, or spare server of the same name. If orphaned storage groups are recovered to a different server (for example, Exchange B in Figure 5), clients accessing those mailboxes must have their Exchange servers updated in Active Directory. Storage Administrator automates this process by looking at each mailbox name in a storage group being mounted, finding the corresponding user in Active Directory, and then making the appropriate change after notifying the administrator and getting confirmation. Users can access their mailboxes again as soon as this change is complete, without any client-side changes! Consolidating Servers with Storage Administrator for Exchange The process of moving thousands of various-sized mailboxes from many smaller servers to a few larger servers is a time-consuming process, involving a considerable amount of user downtime. The typical process begins with configuring empty storage groups on the new server, and then moving each mailbox from the existing storage group to the new storage group by copying data over the LAN. Storage Administrator can move storage groups from one server to another within a SAN, using the Add to server command, making this process safe, fast, and easy. Within ESM, the Remove from server command dismounts all stores and volumes from the server if users are not currently connected to the storage group. When a server fails, the storage group is orphaned on the SAN. The administrator can then reconnect the orphaned storage group to a different server within the LSP. 12

13 Figure 6 Exchange server consolidation Figure 6 illustrates how two older Exchange servers, Exchange A and Exchange B, are replaced by a newer, larger server, Exchange C. With ESM, the administrator simply takes storage groups SGA1, SGA2, SGB1, and SGB2 from the older servers and adds them to server Exchange C. This process can be used to for two main purposes: Consolidating servers A new (larger) server can be attached to the LSP, and storage groups from smaller servers can be moved to it, up to the server s limit of storage groups. Replacing servers A new server with the same name as the older server can be installed, attached to the LSP, and storage groups can be moved to the new machine. Other Features Storage Administrator provides several key capabilities for improved usability, supportability, and storage administration. Customer installable With robust configuration checking, Storage Administrator is now customer installable. The configuration checker performs the following functions: Enforces installation prerequisites Provides specific information about missing software and incorrect configurations Validates installed software and software versions Runs host-array connectivity, Exchange configuration, and Storage Administrator operation tests Provides HTML output with instructions that are automatically saved Also, the configuration checker is used to generate and send your configuration to technical support via the Support Utility. The configuration checker remains available from the Program Menu after installation. 13

14 Leverages Internet access Storage Administrator does not require Internet access; however, if Internet access is available from any Exchange server, Storage Administrator leverages it to improve usability and supportability. Storage Administrator downloads the latest interoperability data before running configuration checks. If Internet access is not available, Storage Administrator allows you to continue configuration checking based on local interoperability data. Storage Administrator launches the Microsoft Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA) tool download page to facilitate installation and subsequent checking of the deployed Exchange environment. If Internet access is not available, Storage Administrator continues with the other configuration checks. Storage Administrator allows you to FTP files to technical support. If FTP access is not available, you can save the generated files, archive them to a local directory, and transfer them to technical support using alternate mechanisms. Improved monitoring and notification support Storage Administrator monitors capacity for the Volume space (user-defined threshold), RAID group space, RAID group IOPS, and LSP space. Storage Administrator sends notifications for the following conditions: GPS migration failure Low volume space Low LSP space Low RAID group capacity Hot spare allocation is recommended External LUN association is detected Fragmented RAID group Expanded platform support Storage Administrator supports the following dual-storage processor CLARiiON models: AX100 CX300 and higher Fibre Channel and iscsi are supported, as well as FC and serial ATA drive types. Hot spare allocation Storage Administrator makes it easy to satisfy this recommended CLARiiON best practice by giving the user the option to allocate hot spares during LSP creation. Using all available disks If the entire array is dedicated to Exchange usage, Storage Administrator gives the user the option to automatically use all available disks, eliminating the need to select all disks manually. Volume re-creation If sufficient space is available, Storage Administrator allows the user to re-create an ESM storage group s existing volumes. Re-creating a storage group s volumes allows the user to reclaim extra storage group space that may no longer be needed. Volume re-creation may also improve storage layout, particularly if new disks were added to the LSP. Basic volume creation Storage Administrator allows the user to use ASM to create non-exchange volumes for use by other applications in order to better utilize available LSP storage. 14

15 Summary Deploying Exchange in a shared storage environment helps address the constantly growing demands for storage, scalability, administrative efficiency, and business continuance. However, to fully realize these benefits, SANs also require expertise to configure, tune, monitor, and manage storage. This expertise must include intimate knowledge of Exchange behavior in a SAN, or the problems the SAN was implemented to solve can be exploited. Storage Administrator dramatically reduces storage-related administrative and hardware costs associated with Exchange. By integrating with ESM, Storage Administrator allows administrators to focus on managing Exchange, not storage. Storage Administrator capacity planning configures the right amount of storage without waste and ensures clients never experience delays because of storage performance problems. In addition, Storage Administrator improves uptime and provides fast recovery from server failures. About EMC EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information management and storage that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at About EMC Insignia is part of the EMC Insignia line of software and hardware products, which enables small and medium businesses (SMBs) to store, protect, manage, and share vital business information. To learn more about EMC Insignia, contact your authorized EMC Velocity SMB channel partner or visit 15