Lab Validation Report

Lab Validation Report NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Enterprise Class, Cost Effective Storage for Microsoft Exchange 2010 By Tony Palmer and Brian Garrett September 2011

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 2 Contents Introduction... 3 Background... 3 NetApp and Microsoft Exchange 2010... 3 ESG Lab Validation... 6 Getting Started... 6 Performance and Availability... 9 Solution and Cost Efficiency... 11 ESG Lab Validation Highlights... 14 Issues to Consider... 14 The Bigger Truth... 15 Appendix... 16 ESG Lab Reports The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about emerging technologies and products in the storage, data management and information security industries. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by NetApp. All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of the Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. Copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at (508) 482.0188.

Introduction Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 3 This ESG Lab Validation analyzes the operational efficiency of NetApp FAS and V-Series data storage systems in realworld, mission-critical, enterprise e-mail environments to validate the tangible business value offered by NetApp in enterprises utilizing Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Background ESG asked IT managers to share the growth rate of their production e-mail data year over year, and found that 75% of users reported greater than 10% annual growth while 40% of respondents reported 20% or higher growth in e- mail capacity, as seen in Figure 1. 1 Interestingly, the highest growth rates were reported by sites supporting the largest numbers of users and the highest installed capacity, with 58% of organizations with 25 TB of installed e-mail capacity reporting 20% or higher annual growth. A 20% annual growth rate represents a doubling of capacity every four years. Figure 1. E-mail Data Growth At approximately what rate do you believe the primary storage capacity associated with your e-mail environment is growing? (Percent of respondents, N=386) 40% 35% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 25% 21% 10% 5% 0% 1% to 10% 11% to 20% 21% to 30% 8% 31% to 40% 3% 3% 41% to 50% 51% to 60% 2% 61% to 70% 1% 71% to 80% 0% 81% to 90% 2% 91% to 100% 0% More than 100% Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2010. IT managers are being challenged to satisfy this growth in e-mail data while addressing the host of IT concerns that come with it. Mission-critical Exchange environments demand easily manageable systems with predictably scalable performance, enterprise class availability, and rock solid reliability. NetApp and Microsoft Exchange 2010 NetApp has been providing storage solutions that enhance the value of Microsoft Exchange for over ten years. Microsoft Exchange is an industry leading enterprise messaging product that s used to manage the delivery of electronic e-mail, calendaring, contacts, and task management services. This report highlights how NetApp solutions amplify the benefits of enhancements that Microsoft introduced in the latest release of Exchange Server 2010 including: 1 Source: ESG Research Report, E-mail Archiving Market Trends, May 2010.

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 4 Database Availability Group (DAG) which provides automatic failover protection at the individual mailbox database level instead of at the server level. In Exchange 2010, this is known as database mobility. As a result of this and other database cache architectural changes, failover actions complete much faster than in previous versions of Exchange. Core Store enhancements that increased the storage performance efficiency by approximately 70% compared to Exchange Server 2007 and 90% compared to Exchange Server 2003. Mailbox Database Copies which are supported with the flexibility to add/remove up to sixteen copies per database without major server reconfiguration. Incremental Deployment which can be used to deploy service and data availability for mailbox servers and databases after Exchange is installed. NetApp storage solutions for Microsoft Exchange enhance the value of an Exchange 2010 deployment with a set of deeply integrated features and capabilities including: Unified storage efficiency. NetApp provides storage efficiency technologies for Exchange environments using a variety of methods including thin provisioning, data deduplication, and compression. These technologies can be deployed individually and in combination, allowing customers to reduce the capital costs associated with storing and protecting mission-critical Exchange data. Heterogeneous data protection. NetApp provides on-disk data backups using capacity and resourceefficient Snapshot technology. Mature and field proven snapshot technology from NetApp can be used to cost effectively improve recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) for Exchange environments. Heterogeneous replication and data center mobility. For environments that cannot utilize a DAG, NetApp SnapMirror is a data replication solution that provides consistent disaster recovery protection for users business-critical data while enabling business continuance and data center mobility. NetApp V-Series extends NetApp replication tools for use with third party storage arrays from different vendors or different array tiers. Replication is deduplication-aware to further improve replication efficiency. SnapManager for Exchange. SnapManager automates complex, manual, and time-consuming processes associated with backup, recovery, and verification of Exchange Server databases without the need to bring Exchange servers or mailboxes offline. SnapManager for Exchange enables organizations to restore from a wide range of options from full content and storage group to individual database or virtual disk recovery. Integrated with SnapMirror technology, SnapManager can simplify remote replication of Exchange Server data to support disaster recovery. DAGs can be combined with a NetApp Exchange solution to enhance the protection and recoverability of missioncritical messaging services. Figure 2 illustrates the basic DAG concept. Each of the Exchange servers has an active Exchange database on one server and a passive copy for recoverability on two other servers. If a database is corrupted or a server goes down, a passive copy can be promoted to active.

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 5 Figure 2. Microsoft Exchange 2010 with a Database Availability Group (DAG) Databases are kept up to date using transaction logs which are shipped between servers over the network. Notice that in this model there are three copies of each database which protects against multiple server or disk failures. Figure 3 shows Microsoft Exchange 2010 on NetApp FAS or V-Series. Using NetApp RAID-DP, volumes and LUNs are protected from double disk failures. Resiliency can be achieved with only two copies of each database and fewer servers because all volumes can be presented to any server in the storage network. Figure 3. Microsoft Exchange 2010 with NetApp FAS or V-Series IT organizations that transition to Exchange Server 2010 and NetApp storage can take advantage of powerful synergies including the DAG example shown in Figure 3 to: Improve the availability of Exchange services which improves end-user productivity Rapidly restore messaging services after a hardware failure or disaster Improve the recoverability of Exchange data with space efficient disk-based backups Increase storage efficiency and reduce costs Simplify storage management and respond faster to the needs of the business

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 6 ESG Lab Validation ESG Lab performed hands-on evaluation and testing of NetApp in a Microsoft Exchange 2010 environment at the NetApp Sunnyvale headquarters, and remotely using FAS and V-Series systems located in Bellevue, Washington. Testing was designed to demonstrate the ease of integration of NetApp with Microsoft Exchange 2010 while providing an efficient, highly available storage platform. ESG also validated the performance of NetApp systems running Exchange 2010 using hands on testing and published ESRP benchmark results. Getting Started Figure 4 illustrates the test bed used by ESG Lab. Two Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V servers hosted virtual machines running Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. A NetApp FAS3270 system with active-active dual controllers was installed with 64x 1 TB SATA drives and one 512 GB Flash Cache module in each controller, for 1 TB total Flash Cache. The servers were connected to the FAS3270 over a 1 Gbps iscsi SAN. 2 Testing evaluated the efficiency, performance, and availability of NetApp storage using deduplication, RAID-DP, and capacity-efficient NetApp Snapshots and clones in Microsoft Exchange environments. Figure 4. The ESG Lab Test Bed ESG Lab Testing ESG Lab began with a pre-installed and configured Microsoft Exchange environment on the FAS3270, which presented storage from aggregates for database and log LUNs to a Windows 2008 Hyper-V server running multiple virtual machines. An aggregate is a storage pool built from a collection of physical disks that have been protected in NetApp RAID-DP RAID groups (RAID-DP is the IEEE-recognized NetApp implementation of RAID-6). The aggregate is how NetApp logically separates the capacity and performance from a physical disk and serves it via a resource pool to a number of datasets or applications. Aggregates are divided into Flexible Volumes, or FlexVols, which contain the LUNs that are presented to hosts. Figure 5 illustrates the relationship between aggregates, FlexVols, and LUNs. This architecture provides a high level of storage virtualization, enabling capacity-efficient thin provisioning of data LUNs, as well as space-efficient pointer-based snapshots and clones which consume only the changed data blocks in a volume, protected by NetApp RAID DP. Using easy to follow configuration wizards, ESG Lab walked through the process of creating aggregates and volumes; this would normally be done during initial installation or after an upgrade. With the NetApp wizards, a new aggregate and volume were created in less than a minute. 2 Detailed configuration information can be found in the Appendix.

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 7 Figure 5. NetApp Storage Virtualization To validate the ease of integration into a Hyper-V consolidated Exchange environment, ESG Lab created LUNs for a new Exchange server using NetApp SnapDrive software through the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) on the server under test. NetApp SnapDrive complements native disk and volume management with virtualization capabilities. SnapDrive enables server and application administrators to create disks from virtual pools of storage that can be distributed among multiple storage appliances, optimizing storage utilization, and enhancing agility to rapidly changing storage needs. To the host, storage managed by SnapDrive appears to come from a locally attached storage subsystem, while providing advanced NetApp virtualization, availability, and performance attributes. Figure 6. Provisioning with NetApp SnapDrive

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 8 Using NetApp SnapDrive, ESG Lab created a LUN directly from the MMC of a Windows 2008 server, and was ready to begin copying data to it in less than two minutes. Why This Matters E-mail applications like Microsoft Exchange have long been business-critical applications for many organizations, functioning as the primary means of both internal and external communication. IT executives treat e-mail as one of the most critical applications they support as they strive for an optimal balance of performance, availability, and cost-effectiveness. A major challenge with both direct attached storage and midrange storage systems in Exchange environments has been the administrative effort required to manage scalability and performance. With traditional midrange storage systems, administrators must carefully map servers to resources to avoid bottlenecks and balance the load evenly. With DAS, administrators are limited by the number of drives that can be attached to a single server, which can be a very inefficient use of powerful server resources. ESG Lab has verified that NetApp FAS storage controllers can cost-effectively provide easy-to-configure storage for mission-critical applications with excellent performance. A storage environment for Exchange was created in less than five minutes using clear, easy to follow configuration wizards. NetApp SnapDrive integration with the Microsoft Management Console was especially intuitive and powerful, enabling fast, native provisioning of storage and availability features.

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 9 Performance and Availability The Microsoft Exchange Solution Reviewed Program (ESRP) is designed to facilitate third-party storage testing and solution publishing for Exchange Server. Microsoft Gold Certified or Certified Storage Partners use the ESRP framework to test their storage solutions in the context of a Microsoft Exchange deployment. The programs combine a storage testing harness (Jetstress) with publishing guidelines. Manufacturers use the ESRP framework to test storage solutions and then submit results to Microsoft for review with approved solution results getting posted on the Microsoft Exchange ESRP website. 3 ESRP version 3.0 focuses on Exchange 2010 and Microsoft provides specific recommendations regarding Exchange database size, IO profiles, mailboxes per server, and mailbox size. Table 1 shows the configuration and assumptions used for ESRP testing of a 12,000 mailbox solution using a NetApp FAS3140 HA controller pair. Table 1. 12,000 Mailbox Exchange 2010 Mailbox Resiliency Configuration Number of Exchange Mailboxes Simulated 12,000 Number of Database Availability Groups (DAGs) 2 Number of servers per DAG 2 Number of active mailboxes per server 6,000 Number of databases per host 6 (12 total) Number of copies per database 2 Number of mailboxes per database 1,000 Simulated profile IOs per second IOPS per mailbox (include 20% headroom) 0.120 IOPs per mailbox (0.10 IOPs plus 20% headroom) Database LUN size 2.08 TB Log LUN size 100 GB Total database size for performance testing 23,438 GB % of storage capacity used by Exchange database 92% The publishing guidelines require vendors to specify the server, storage, and Exchange configurations tested. In addition to the Exchange Simulation data shown in Table 1, vendors must also provide details of the configuration and layout of the disk array and Exchange deployment tested. ESRP differs from standard IO generation benchmarking suites in three important ways. First, it employs the Jetstress utility to simulate Exchange traffic against real Exchange databases, with logging and file attachments. Second, the testing is designed to measure both the performance and the reliability of a given solution. The performance test runs for two hours while the reliability test runs for 24 hours, and both tests must run without exceeding a prescribed disk latency threshold (20 milliseconds). A reliability test is performed to check for database and log corruption at the end of the run. Finally, ESRP is focused on producing recommendations from vendors for configuring and deploying Exchange 2010 on their solutions. Microsoft has made significant changes to Exchange 2010, greatly reducing disk IO requirements, which not only increases the number of mailboxes that can be supported by each disk in a solution, but also enables the option to use larger format disks to support larger mailboxes. Exchange 2010 also offers the Mailbox Resiliency feature which maintains redundant copies of message store databases using DAGs. NetApp advanced storage virtualization capabilities and integration with Microsoft Windows and Exchange reduce administrative overhead by eliminating the need to pre-provision based on future capacity or performance requirements and enabling storage provisioning and high availability configuration directly from the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). Microsoft released the ESRP 3.0 test methodology and tools to address these changes. A significant change to the user profiles was made to adjust to the altered disk IO requirements. In Exchange 2007, user profiles fell into five 3 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/ff182054.aspx

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 10 classes ranked by the number of messages sent or received in a day on average. Values ranged from light (25 messages per day) to extra heavy (200 messages per day). User profiles for Exchange 2010 are now simply identified by the number of messages per day (starting at 100, which was the Exchange 2007 heavy profile) and climb in increments of 50 to 500. As is in this analysis, Exchange 2010 s reduced IO requirements enable users to support more and larger mailboxes in a given system. Microsoft has asserted that larger mailboxes are better for users, IT administrators, and organizations as they utilize storage systems more efficiently while giving users better access to historical e-mail. The goal of ESRP is to verify that a vendor s storage solution can reliably sustain an Exchange IO load in a specific configuration with predictable response times. Microsoft makes it quite clear that these tests should not be used for performance comparisons, but in practice, end-users routinely look to these detailed test results to gauge how well a given configuration will perform under specific conditions. This is not a bad use of these results, provided that all relevant factors are taken into consideration. The ESRP Test Bed As shown in Table 2, FAS3140 and FAS3270 systems were utilized for the testing, both configured with 7.2K RPM 1 TB SATA drives. Four IBM x3650 servers were used to simulate Exchange 2010 Servers (two active and two passive). Table 2. NetApp ESRP and Jetstress Configurations System NetApp FAS3140 (ESRP 3.0) NetApp FAS3270 (Jetstress) Physical Disks 64 1 TB SATA 512 GB total Flash Cache 32 1 TB SATA 1 TB total Flash Cache Storage Capacity Utilization User Profile (Msgs per Day) Mailbox Size Number of Mailboxes 93% 100 2GB 12,000 93% 100 1GB 23,000 Table 2 shows both NetApp-submitted ESRP 3.0 results and results obtained in the lab using the Microsoft Jetstress utility. It s important to note a few things here: NetApp FAS has demonstrated the performance and reliability required to support mission-critical Microsoft Exchange deployments. ESG Lab testing of a current generation NetApp FAS system was able to support nearly twice the users of the previous generation controllers with half the disk drives. No environment is completely homogeneous and every Exchange implementation will have a mix of different user profiles in unique proportions, so the supportable number of mailboxes will never fall exactly into any one of these scenarios. ESRP is designed to assess storage performance and reliability only. Storage is only one factor to be considered when designing an Exchange solution. Users also need to consider server CPU and memory, network infrastructure and latency, recovery requirements, and resources consumed by other applications as well as the specific mix of mailbox sizes and usage patterns that will need to be supported. Microsoft provides extensive information on analyzing Exchange Server performance looking at all of these factors, which are outside of the scope of the ESRP-Storage program. 4 4 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/2010/default.aspx

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 11 Why This Matters ESG research indicates that performance is a key concern when deploying mission-critical applications in a consolidated, virtualized environment. With multiple application servers relying on a shared storage infrastructure, there is concern that performance requirements can t be met affordably. When asked to name significant challenges with respect to their server virtualization environment, respondents reported that performance was their top concern, followed closely by capital costs and capacity planning. 5 Through careful examination of ESRP results combined with hands-on testing, ESG Lab has verified that NetApp FAS can be deployed to provide cost-effective, easy-to-configure storage for Exchange environments of all sizes with excellent scalability and performance. NetApp Flash Cache enabled a high performance Exchange environment to run on high capacity SATA drives with excellent response times. Solution and Cost Efficiency NetApp storage solutions include numerous features that increase data availability and efficiency to reduce the number of mailbox servers and database copies required to meet customer service level agreements while utilizing space efficient snapshots to prevent reseeding of databases and shrink organizations recovery time objectives (RTOs). NetApp uses a variety of technologies to achieve these ends: FlexVol with thin provisioning increases storage efficiency by providing just-in-time capacity for applications accessing storage using block-based or file-based protocols (e.g., iscsi, FC, FCoE, CIFS, NFS). Instead of allocating the maximum amount of storage an application might use over time, NetApp thin provisioning allocates capacity on demand from a shared pool of storage. FlexClone technology creates transparent clones instantly replicated data volumes and data sets without requiring additional storage space. A cloned copy created with FlexClone through the Rapid Cloning Utility magnifies capacity savings as it stores just changed data instead of whole copies. Block level deduplication reduces storage capacity by eliminating redundant chunks of data within a storage volume (block or file) via a background operation. Virtual server images are excellent candidates for deduplication because they tend to contain a large percentage of common data blocks between them. The combined efficiency of NetApp FlexVol, thin provisioning, FlexClone, and deduplication is illustrated in Figure 7. FlexVol with thin provisioning increases storage efficiency as it eliminates the differences between the capacity allocated to an application and what is actually consumed. FlexClone instantly replicates data volumes as virtual copies to save space while deduplication adds to storage efficiency by eliminating redundant copies of data. Figure 7. NetApp Capacity Efficiency in Action 5 Source: ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010.

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 12 ESG Lab also evaluated the relative cost efficiency of traditional JBOD and RAID configurations with NetApp RAID- DP and snapshot technology. The following service level agreements (SLAs) were used as a requirement for an imagined customer environment and configurations to meet these requirements were built using traditional disk and NetApp storage. The requirements used for this exercise were: The system should be able to sustain two disk failures while maintaining redundancy. The system should be able to contain one week of backup data. All existing PST files needed to be imported from the file servers to the archive mailbox. Users should be configured with a 1 GB Primary Mailbox and a 4 GB Archive Mailbox. Users would send and receive an average of 100 messages per day. The system should be sized to host 10,000 mailboxes. The Exchange 2010 environment should be built with a six- server DAG configuration. Table 3 summarizes the estimated capital outlay required to implement an Exchange environment in compliance with the requirements listed above. The cost of hardware, software, and maintenance was obtained from a combination of publically available sources, including reseller web sites, GSA pricing schedules, and online order forms used by vendors. These prices are discounted street prices roughly what a corporate customer would pay. The total cost of hardware, software, and maintenance for DAS solutions from two major vendors was calculated. The solution with the lower overall price was used for the comparisons presented in this report. Table 3. Capital Outlay Costs NetApp vs. Traditional Storage System Database Copies Physical Disks Support Coverage Price NetApp FAS3210 2 120 2 TB SATA 3 Yr., 4 hour On-site Support $205,500 JBOD + RAID 10 5 360 2 TB SATA 3 Yr. Customer Self-repair $276,720 RAID 10 4 408 2 TB SATA 3 Yr. Customer Self-repair $306,816 The NetApp solution presents a compelling cost of acquisition advantage in comparison to both JBOD (25%) and RAID 10 (31%) solutions. Fewer physical disks translates into operational savings, considering that the greatly reduced number of disks required consume less power and require less cooling. Fewer database copies also requires fewer Exchange Mailbox Servers to meet the defined SLA, further reducing rack space, power and cooling, server acquisition costs, and server operating costs. Finally, ESG Lab tested the availability and operational efficiency of a live NetApp Exchange environment by simulating an exchange database failure, and assessing the time and effort required to recover the database to full functionality. Figure 8 shows how NetApp is able to restore an Exchange database nearly instantly from a point-intime snapshot without having to reseed the database using the DAG. Figure 8. NetApp Operational Efficiency and Availability

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 13 First, ESG Lab suspended the database to enable read/write access to the database files from a command prompt. Once the database was suspended, the.edb files were deleted, as were the log files. Once the files were deleted, the command to resume the database was issued and the status of the deleted database was confirmed to be Failed. Next, the database was removed from the server, which would normally require a reseed. At this point, the commands required to restore a LUN from a snapshot were executed, dismounting the LUNs that formerly held the Exchange database and transaction log, restoring the LUNs from the most recent snapshot, remounting the LUNs, and resuming the database. Each LUN was restored from its snapshot in less than 15 seconds. The total time elapsed from issuing the first dismount command in the restore procedure to the Exchange database up and running was less than one minute. Why This Matters Storage capacity requirements, and associated costs, are increasing dramatically for organizations with traditional infrastructure environments for business-critical applications like Microsoft Exchange. Server virtualization can help decrease the capital cost associated with compute infrastructure, but it doesn t ease the strain on storage capacity requirements. 6 NetApp efficiency technologies are designed to deliver capacity, cost, and operational savings to enable the creation of large, low cost mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange 2010 environments. ESG Lab validated that NetApp FAS, using high capacity SATA drives supplemented with Flash Cache, along with thin provisioning and deduplication, was able to provide a large pool of high performance storage, reducing capital costs for new equipment as well as operational costs associated with storage management. NetApp availability functionality and integration with Microsoft Windows and Exchange proved particularly powerful, restoring a downed Exchange database in less than 60 seconds. 6 Source: ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010.

Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 14 ESG Lab Validation Highlights ESG Lab quickly and easily configured and presented storage to a server for an Exchange deployment, completing provisioning in less than five minutes. NetApp SnapDrive was especially intuitive and powerful, enabling native access to powerful storage functionality from within the MMC. NetApp FAS can be deployed to provide cost effective, easy-to-configure storage for Exchange environments of all sizes with excellent scalability and performance. ESG Lab confirmed that an environment built on high capacity SATA drives enhanced with NetApp Flash Cache was able to support a large number of simulated exchange mailboxes with very low response times, demonstrating excellent price/performance. NetApp availability functionality and integration with Microsoft Windows and Exchange restored a destroyed Exchange database in less than 60 seconds. Issues to Consider ESG Lab has confirmed that the combination of FlexVol, FlexClone, and deduplication can be used to greatly increase storage efficiency in a consolidated, virtualized environment, but storage administrators familiar with legacy storage systems need to change the way they ve been managing storage capacity to take advantage of these capabilities. Instead of waiting for an application or an operating system to signal that it is out of storage capacity, a FlexVol just-in-time storage pool must be monitored to make sure it never runs out of storage. The good news is that the NetApp unified management approach can be used to simplify and automate these tasks using familiar management interfaces. NetApp has extensive best practices for Exchange 2010 deployments. For organizations with a single location or for those deploying Exchange 2010 for a single site, NetApp recommends a two-node DAG and a minimum of two copies of each mailbox database. This provides high availability for the single site. When extending a DAG across multiple sites, NetApp recommends at least three mailbox servers as well as three copies of each mailbox database: two at the primary site and one at the secondary site. This provides high availability within the primary site as well as disaster recovery and can be configured either using a threenode DAG or a two-node local DAG plus NetApp SnapMirror to replicate Exchange data to the remote location. SnapMirror thin replication technology and network compression can make this a compelling alternative in situations where network bandwidth is limited or latency is high. The performance results presented in this report are based on benchmarks and tools deployed in a controlled environment. Due to the many variables in each production data center, Exchange sizing and planning, including testing in users own environments, is recommended.

The Bigger Truth Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 15 IT executives treat Microsoft Exchange as one of the most critical applications they support for the business, constantly balancing availability with cost effectiveness and regulatory compliance. Microsoft Exchange has become a lifeline for many businesses, functioning as the primary means of communication, collaboration, and business workflow. Its latest incarnation, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, brings a rich set of technologies, features, and services to an already powerful business application. In an ESG survey of 516 midmarket organizations, nearly one in four (24%) cited storage requirements related to specific applications such as e-mail as one of their top storage challenges. 7 It goes without saying that careful consideration and planning are paramount, especially when it comes to choosing the underlying storage platform since end-users, business applications, and customers all use e-mail as a primary means of communication and collaboration. As such, e-mail and specifically Microsoft Exchange is a mission-critical application deserving the utmost attention and respect. The infrastructure decisions made to support the environment must take into account the application s impact on the entire business and also other major data center initiatives, such as virtualization, which may provide greater value. Using NetApp, users can manage all the Microsoft Exchange storage in their environment as a single pool using well understood, common tools. Every NetApp FAS or V-Series system runs Data ONTAP. Data ONTAP provides a consistent user interface and deep, powerful storage efficiency technology. ESG Lab hands-on testing has confirmed that NetApp FAS can be used to meet the performance, scalability, and resiliency requirements of Microsoft Exchange 2010 application workloads. Predictably low IO response times and excellent performance scalability were achieved during ESG Lab testing as a single server hosting 23,000 virtualized Exchange 2010 mailboxes was deployed within two Hyper-V virtual machines. Tested solutions developed and documented by NetApp have confirmed that NetApp solutions can be used to meet the requirements of organizations with a wide variety of performance and availability requirements. ESG Lab quickly and easily provisioned a centralized pool storage supporting Microsoft Exchange 2010 using NetApp FAS. One-click access to powerful storage functionality from within the MMC was provided by NetApp SnapDrive. In less than five minutes, ESG Lab provided high performance, high capacity, and highly available, easy-to-manage storage for Microsoft Exchange. NetApp integration with Microsoft Exchange and Windows continues to impress, and ESG Lab counts it among the best in the industry. If your organization is struggling to keep up with e-mail data growth, keep costs in check, and increase the availability of business-critical messaging applications, ESG Lab recommends that you take a serious look at the benefits that can be realized from running Microsoft Exchange 2010 on NetApp. With an integrated family of management capabilities, capacity efficiency that enables large, resilient, low-cost mailboxes, and applicationaware snapshots and clones that are extremely fast and efficient, ESG Lab has confirmed that NetApp can increase scalability, performance, and availability for Microsoft Exchange 2010 environments while greatly reducing complexity. 7 Source: ESG Research Report, Medium-Size Business Server and Storage Priorities, June 2008.

Appendix Lab Validation: NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 16 Table 4. ESG Lab Test Bed NetApp FAS3270 (two controllers) Storage Software Hypervisor NetApp FAS Clients Data ONTAP 7.3.2 16 GB Cache per Controller 512 GB Flash Cache Module NetApp System Manager, v1.1 NetApp SnapManager for Exchange, v6.0 NetApp SnapDrive for Windows, v6.2 Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V Guest Operating Systems Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SAN Connectivity Fibre Channel Switch Brocade 200E, 4Gb x 16 ports Microsoft Exchange 2010 User Profile User Type Estimated IOPS per User Used for Mailbox Calculation (+20%) 100 messages per day.1 (.12)

20 Asylum Street Milford, MA 01757 Tel:508.482.0188 Fax: 508.482.0218 www.enterprisestrategygroup.com