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Adding second EV server to existing EV site

BigAnvil
Level 5

Hello!  We're looking to possibly add a second EV Server within our existing EV Site.

We have a single EV 10.0.1 Server running against an Exchange 2010 DAG with two mailbox servers, with all live mailboxes on the primary mailbox server in the DAG.  Currently, the single EV 10.0.1 Server is responsible for all of the EV tasks.  It's an HP ProLiant DL380 G6 with the OS and MSMQs running on one mirrored volume and the indexes on the second volume in the server (OS/MSMQ on one set of spindles, and indexes on the other set of spindles).

All the vault stores, for journaling and user mailbox archiving, are located on an external locally attached storage array.  Journaling and user mailbox archiving have been going to the the same vault store up until recently, when I created a separate vault store wihtin the same vault store group.

We only have 500 user mailboxes but we process a lot of mail for a small organization.  Somewhere on the order of 100,000 messages or more per day and many with sizeable attachments (1-3 MB).  I know this is not very specific data but I'm hopeful it's specific enough for general guidance.

I have begun moving user mailbox archives into the new vault store with the idea being that, when we run backups we will not backup the vault store with the user archives as users are constantly trying to archive more messages.  I've been offered a BL460C G7 blade to add as a second EV server to help distribute processing of whatever tasks may help archive and index messages faster.  My thought was to add the blade as a second EV server and have it handle user mailbox related tasks.  After reading a number of forum posts, it sounds like the storage service may still be the bottleneck since all vault stores are all located "on" the DL380.

Mainly, I don't want to add another EV Server and another storage array in order to provide a boost to user mailbox archiving and indexing.  I'm just wondering if I'm missing anything with regards to being able to accomplish this with the resources I already have.  Any input is appreaciated - and if I've missed content here in the forums that spells it out otherwise, feel free to just post a link and I will be happy to read rather than have you spend a bunch of your time re-posting.

Thanks!!!

 

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AndrewB
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if all the mounted databases are on the same Exchange server then adding a second EV server wont help much in this case.

you could, for example, create a db just for the journal mailbox and make it active on the second Exchange server. just doing that might give you an increase in archiving performance since you're pulling from two seperate exchange servers.

100k messages a day may seem like a lot but you *should* be able to archive 40k messages per hour with a properly sized server (8 cores, 16gb ram is what's recommended for EV10.

furthermore, the majority of your 100k messages probably come in during business hours and mailbox archiving typically is scheduled to run after-hours. with 500 users one EV server really should be sufficient.

lastly, the deployment scanner should have told you that it is recommended for the MSMQ to be moved off the OS drive. you should see an increase in performance by doing that too. as for the indexes, you really should consider moving them off local disk too.

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AndrewB
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if all the mounted databases are on the same Exchange server then adding a second EV server wont help much in this case.

you could, for example, create a db just for the journal mailbox and make it active on the second Exchange server. just doing that might give you an increase in archiving performance since you're pulling from two seperate exchange servers.

100k messages a day may seem like a lot but you *should* be able to archive 40k messages per hour with a properly sized server (8 cores, 16gb ram is what's recommended for EV10.

furthermore, the majority of your 100k messages probably come in during business hours and mailbox archiving typically is scheduled to run after-hours. with 500 users one EV server really should be sufficient.

lastly, the deployment scanner should have told you that it is recommended for the MSMQ to be moved off the OS drive. you should see an increase in performance by doing that too. as for the indexes, you really should consider moving them off local disk too.

BigAnvil
Level 5

Andrew,

Many thanks for your input.  I would imagine using the blade to run the journaling tasks after setting up the journal mailbox in it's own DB mounted on the second mailbox server in the DAG could provide a large benefit. 

The DL380 is a dual quad-core CPU with 24GB of memory.  The blade is also a dual quad-core CPU with 12GB of memory.

AndrewB
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you wrote "I don't want to add another EV Server and another storage array"

so i gave you a lot of input on what you could do with your existing EV server. based on the specs and the number of users i really dont think you're maxing it out. if anything the bottleneck is due to best practices not being followed and using local storage for indexes - both of which are fairly easy to change.

of course, adding another server can help and since it's a blade i imagine you'll be attaching to a SAN for storage. you'll probably be better off than with your local disk on the DL380 for that fact alone.

BigAnvil
Level 5

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying about the indexes because last time I read the best practices it simply said to not have the indexes on a volume with other storage or on a volume where other processes utilize drive I/O for that volume. Though the indexes are on internal storage, they are on their own volume - their own array.  I don't see how being on a separate array, though the same storage controller as the OS array (volume), negatively impacts indexing performance in any real way.

Last question - if you were going to estimate a percentage of performance, how much do you think moving the MSMQs to their own volume (array) will benefit performance?  As well as moving the journal mailbox to a separate DB and homing that DB on a different exchange server than the mailboxes?

Andrew - thanks again for your valuable input and for the time you spend answering questions on the forums.  I don't think you guys can be thanked enough for your contribution.

BigAnvil
Level 5

Actually, I just double-checked the server and realized I did split the OS, MSMQs, and Indexes on three separate volumes (arrays) on the EV server.  Totally forgot I did that when we upgraded to EV 8.

So, they are all separated but run off the same array controller... sorry about that.

AndrewB
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storage is a tricky business and while the docs may provide some guidelines (ie, seperate storage for each component) in this case that it's more about the spindle count and the IOPS than physically seperating the locations. if you think about it, an array of 24 x 15k SAS drives with msmq, indexes, EV cache, etc on it should technically outperform 6 local disks in a server where 2 are mirrored for OS, 2 mirrored for index, and 2 mirrored for something else. dont get stuck on that example, just want you to understand the concept and where i'm coming from with my reply.

AndrewB
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i think moving the journal mailbox to the other exchange server will help significantly both exchange and ev. (i tried to answer your other questions in my reply to your follow up post below.)

BigAnvil
Level 5

I'm going to move the journal mailbox to it's own DB and split the DBs between the two mailbox servers in the DAG when I get back from vacation the week of July 9th.  After I've done that I'm going to check the rate we're able to ingest email into EV and report back for anyone who might end up reading this thread.

We are currently only ingesting 28K emails and hour.  I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of improvements result from moving the DBs.  After I follow up next week I'll mark your last post as the answer.  Thanks again.