Scaling the Vault databases (good or bad)

[mike_niccum]

I have 2 dedicated Exchange journaling servers with 8 journal mailboxes.  I have 4 EV servers dedicated to journaling.  An average day EV ingests 300,000k emails.  I was wondering if anyone could explain if it would be better to have 8 vault store databases (one for each journal mailbox) or fewer?  The directory and vault store databases will be on the same dedicated SQL server.  If I created 8 vault store databases the load would be spread across these individual databases, in my mind improving performance.  We will also be using CA and DA.  Would more vault store databases help with those apps?

The next question would be, if it's recommended to have more databases, should I have multiple SQL instances?  If so, one per DB?  Or maybe one for the directory and one for the vault store databases?

If I missed this information in the documentation please let me know.

Thanks,

Mike Niccum

[mike_niccum]

BTW...

Windows 2003 SP1

EV 7.0 SP1

SQL 2005

[Michael_Bilsbor]

Hi,

Why so many servers that are just dedicated to journalling?  that seems like a lot.

What's your backend storage, NTFS, Centera?

[mike_niccum]

We have Centera on the backend.  We have 300,000 messages a day with the potential for much more.  How many messages can a single Vault Store database handle?  That's 675 million messages in a six year retention period.  Can a single database handle that?  Will the performance of CA and DA be impacted by having 675 million messages in one vault store database.  Let's say I have four Exchange mailbox servers with users spead evenly across all four servers.  I think creating four Vault Store databases sounds like a reasonable choice.  The messages would be divided up between the four databases.  If I scale out the mailbox servers, I scale out the Vault Store databases.  A one for one match. 

Is there any negative impact to this idea when it comes to CA and DA?

Thanks,

Mike Niccum