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EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007

EMC® Celerra® Unified Storage Platforms

Reference Architecture

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Published March, 2009

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Microsoft Exchange 2007 EMC Celerra Unified Storage Platforms


P/N H6156.1

2 Microsoft Exchange 2007 EMC Celerra Unified Storage Platforms


Contents

About this Document ...................................................................................................................... 9

Chapter 1 Solution Overview......................................................................................................................... 11 Business challenges....................................................................................................................... 12 Technology solution...................................................................................................................... 13

Solution advantages ..............................................................................................................13 System configuration..................................................................................................................... 14

Storage architecture ..............................................................................................................15 NFS area — Virtual machine boot disks (if applicable) .......................................................15 CIFS area — Database backups............................................................................................16 iSCSI area — Database and log files ....................................................................................16 Network architecture ............................................................................................................16

Virtualization layer........................................................................................................................ 17 Application layer ........................................................................................................................... 17

Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator.......................................................................................17 High availability and failover ...............................................................................................18 Application architecture........................................................................................................18

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 19 Chapter 2 Virtualization Options ................................................................................................................... 21

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 22 VMware Infrastructure 3 ............................................................................................................... 22

Microsoft iSCSI Initiator ......................................................................................................23 VMDK on iSCSI VMFS.......................................................................................................23 Raw Device Mapping ...........................................................................................................23 VMDK on NFS.....................................................................................................................23

Microsoft Windows 2008 with Hyper-V....................................................................................... 24 Guest OS Software iSCSI Initiator .......................................................................................24 VHD on iSCSI NTFS ...........................................................................................................24 Pass-Through ........................................................................................................................24 VHD NFS or CIFS................................................................................................................24

Additional options ......................................................................................................................... 24 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 24

Chapter 3 Backup and Restore Options ......................................................................................................... 25

Microsoft Exchange 2007 EMC Celerra Unified Storage Platforms 3


Contents



Introduction ...................................................................................................................................26 EMC NetWorker and NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications .........................................26 Ontrack PowerControls with Snaps...............................................................................................27 Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007 .....................................................................................27 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................28

Chapter 4 Data Protection and Replication ....................................................................................................29 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................30 Array-based replication options.....................................................................................................30 Server-based replication options ...................................................................................................31 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................33

Chapter 5 Archive ..........................................................................................................................................35 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................36 EmailXtender and Celerra File-Level Retention Toolkit...............................................................36 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................37

Figures

Figure 1 System overview........................................................................................................ 14 Figure 2 Storage layout ............................................................................................................ 15 Figure 3 EMC NS-120/NS-480: Data Mover ports.................................................................. 17 Figure 4 VMware Hypervisor .................................................................................................. 23 Figure 5 Backup configuration using EMC NetWorker........................................................... 26 Figure 6 Backup configuration with EMC Replication Manager and Ontrack PowerControls27 Figure 7 Server-based protect configuration: DPM logical view............................................. 28 Figure 8 Celerra Replicator for iSCSI using EMC Replication Manager ................................ 31 Figure 9 Server-based protect configuration: SCR................................................................... 32 Figure 10 Exchange environment archive architecture .............................................................. 37

Microsoft Exchange 2007 EMC Celerra Unified Storage Platforms 5 Reference Architecture

Figures



Tables

Table 1 Solution advantages.......................................................................................................... 13 Table 2 Application file or activity types and locations ................................................................ 19


Tables



About this Document

EMC's commitment to consistently maintain and improve quality is led by the Total Customer Experience (TCE) program, which is driven by Six Sigma methodologies. As a result, EMC has built Customer Integration Labs in its Global Solutions Centers to reflect real-world deployments in which TCE use cases are developed and executed. These use cases provide EMC with an insight into the challenges currently facing its customers.

Email is a critical application in today’s business environment. It is important to store, back up, protect, and archive email messages. This document provides an overview of the architecture of an EMC Exchange 2007 Solution.

Purpose

Information in this document can be used as the basis for a solution build, white paper, best practices document, or training. Information in this document can also be used by other EMC organizations (for example, the technical services or sales organization) as the basis for producing documentation for a technical services or sales kit.

Audience

This document is intended for internal EMC personnel, EMC partners, and customers.

Scope

This document describes the architecture of an EMC Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 by using EMC Celerra. Implementation instructions and sizing guidelines are beyond the scope of this document.

Related documents

The following documents, located on EMC Powerlink, provide additional, relevant information. Access to these documents is based on your login credentials. If you do not have access to the following content, contact your EMC representative:

♦ EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 EMC Celerra NS Series — Applied Best Practices Guide

♦ EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Data Storage for EMC Celerra NS Series —Validation Test Report


About this Document



♦ EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Virtualization for EMC Celerra NS Series — Validation Test Report

♦ EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Data Backup for EMC Celerra NS Series — Validation Test Report

♦ EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Data Protection for EMC Celerra NS Series — Validation Test Report

♦ EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Module Interactions for EMC Celerra NS Series — Validation Test Report

♦ EMC Replication Manager Administrator’s Guide

Chapter 1 Solution Overview

This chapter presents these topics:

Business challenges....................................................................................................................... 12 Technology solution...................................................................................................................... 13 System configuration..................................................................................................................... 14 Virtualization layer........................................................................................................................ 17 Application layer ........................................................................................................................... 17 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 19


Solution Overview

Business challenges

Midsize enterprises and small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) need best-in-class solutions to store, protect, manage, and archive their growing volumes of email. Therefore, a critical business application such as Microsoft Exchange must be available to them at all times. To manage the data is a challenge in distributed environments with inefficient storage and limited resources. This becomes more demanding with the challenges of email management in the context of internal corporate governance and external regulation, where email messages must be readily available and easily retrieved.

The solution in this document provides a better way to store, protect, manage, and archive email messages. It simplifies email lifecycle management, accelerates backup and restore, extends the mailbox size, and reduces costs. You can also manage an Exchange environment efficiently without requiring valuable time from end users or overburdening IT resources.

When a business grows, email availability becomes critical to its success. Microsoft Exchange environments are growing every year. To manage this growth, the IT administrator needs to:

♦ Maintain uptime.

♦ Restore databases quickly.

♦ Respond to legal discovery, internal corporate governance, and regulatory compliance requirements for email.

Email management is difficult, particularly in distributed environments where skills vary from site to site. For many businesses, incomplete backup and recovery, lost user productivity, and unorganized email archiving are the norm. These businesses may face the additional challenge of insufficient resources to research, test, and validate the best possible storage solution for their Microsoft Exchange environment.

In distributed environments, backup and recovery are often incomplete, too frequent, and time consuming. Business productivity suffers when knowledge workers spend more time managing .pst files and mailbox limits rather than attending to strategic work. During the self-management and self-archival process, many users copy .pst files to shared network drives. This increases the IT workload and the company and user risk, and adds hidden storage costs.

The effects of inefficient email management reach beyond IT all the way to the executive office. To meet legal obligations, you need to depend on the rapid and accurate retrieval of past email messages and ensure that the necessary processes are in place to guarantee authenticity and retention. The costs for legal discovery of email messages mount quickly when you need to search email archives. Without consolidation and centralized storage policies, email retrieval is difficult and time consuming.



Solution Overview

Technology solution

To meet the challenges of email management, the first step is to set up a consolidated Microsoft Exchange infrastructure. The Exchange 2007 EMC® Celerra® Unified Storage Platform solution is an integrated, low-cost, lifecycle solution that maximizes the financial and operational benefits of Exchange and enables rapid database recovery and restoration. The solution offers an enhanced level of archival. You can store years of email in a single storage array. Thus, you can eliminate the need for .pst files and automate the movement of older email messages by archiving them to lower-cost devices. The solution also verifies the authenticity of email messages with optimized search, retrieval, and management of email archives.

Solution advantages

Table 1 on page 13 shows the advantages of this solution.

Table 1 Solution advantages

Benefit Details

Maintain service levels Ensures the availability and peak performance of critical and revenue-generating Microsoft applications.

Reduce costs Minimizes the cost of database and information management.

Reduce risk Consists of a proven reference architecture with tested and proven configurations, including performance and scalability.

Accelerate implementations Provides rapid assessment and efficient implementation with EMC Professional Services and ASN certified EMC partners.


Solution Overview

System configuration

Figure 1 on page 14 outlines the configuration of the tested solution. There are several permutations and additional modules that are considered part of the proven solution and explained in the later sections.

Figure 1 System overview



Solution Overview

Storage architecture

Figure 2 on page 15 outlines how storage is provisioned in one possible configuration of the validated solution.

Figure 2 Storage layout

The validated solution can use storage through the Network File System (NFS), Common Internet File System (CIFS), and Internet SCSI (iSCSI) protocols. The NFS protocol is used to provide storage for the system disks of various virtual machines that are used in the solution. The CIFS protocol provides access to the area used for database backups. The iSCSI protocol is used to provide data storage to the Exchange databases and logs. The underlying architecture of each storage area is based on the anticipated workload that is applied to that area. These areas can have vastly different input/output (I/O) performance, space, and protection requirements. Therefore, you must maintain these areas separately.

Apart from storage for Exchange databases and logs, there are other supplementary storages required. These may include storage for Cluster Quorum, Archive Journaling, or even system drive space for virtual machines. In the validated solutions, these supplementary storages are derived from Celerra system volumes or other redundant array of independent disks (RAID) 1 iSCSI storage, but they are never shared with storage meant for Exchange databases and logs.

NFS area — Virtual machine boot disks (if applicable)

The validated solution uses virtual machines in several roles, including a potential virtual Exchange Server node. These machines are implemented as either physical or virtual servers with no impact to


Solution Overview

the Exchange database and logs portion of the solution. Chapter 2 Virtualization Options outlines several implementation options if virtual machines are required.

If this solution is implemented with virtual machines, it is possible to use networked storage for the virtual machine boot disks. Therefore, you can implement the array-based methods such as snapshots, replication, and Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) backups to protect the virtual machines. You can also protect these virtual machines by using server-based techniques. The method of protection is not specified by the solution.

CIFS area — Database backups

Database backups are critical to the administration of production applications. The CIFS share of the Celerra provides storage space to accommodate Exchange database and transaction log backups based on requirement.

iSCSI area — Database and log files

The validated solution allows both physical and virtual servers in the Exchange Server 2007 mailbox server role. To accommodate a range of potential implementations and to allow several array-based functions, the validated solution specifies that the primary application database must reside on Celerra iSCSI storage. You must size the area according to the needs of your specific database application.

The validated solution also requires a failover cluster. If you implement a failover cluster by using a disk-based quorum, the quorum drive must reside on the iSCSI storage.

Note: In a complete virtual environment, it is possible to host the database and log files by using an NFS datastore. This configuration is not part of this solution. EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Virtualization for EMC Celerra NS20 Reference Architecture on EMC Powerlink explains this configuration.

Network architecture

System-wide network design and architecture are outside the scope of this document and solution. This section presents recommendations for proper functionality that are consistent with industry-accepted best practices and compatible with existing network infrastructure and policies.

Switches

In any highly available solution, you must have multiple network paths between each component in the system so that a single component failure cannot disrupt communication. The solution architecture diagram (Figure 1 on page 14) defines a set of logical networks that are recommended for the solution. The networks do not provide failover protection. Therefore, you must design the networks so that they are highly available on their own.

The validated solution uses Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switches.

Virtual local area networks

When you create highly available networks, you require multiple switches on multiple networks, which can quickly become costly. Virtual local area networks (VLANs) allow each physical network switch to maintain multiple virtual networks that are logically isolated from one another. This solution was validated by using VLANs within a highly available network and implemented with logical separation using them or with physical separation using distinct physical switches.



Solution Overview

EMC Celerra NS-120/NS-480

The EMC Celerra NS-120/NS-480 contains two Data Movers that can operate independently. They can also operate in the active/passive mode, where the passive Data Mover serves as a failover device for the active Data Mover. In this solution, the Data Movers operate in the active/passive mode.

The NS-120/NS-480 Data Mover has four network ports. Figure 3 on page 17 shows the ports on the rear of an EMC Celerra NS-120/NS-480 Data Mover.

Figure 3 EMC NS-120/NS-480: Data Mover ports

Ports cge0 and cge1 handle the storage traffic. Ports cge2 and cge3 are left open for future requirements.

The Data Mover supports several types of link aggregation for Internet Protocol (IP) traffic. However, in this configuration, no link aggregations or Ethernet channels are configured because Celerra also supports iSCSI multiple connections per session (MC/S), which is recommended by Microsoft.

Note: As a best practice, you must dedicate the Data Mover network ports connected to the storage network to storage traffic. However, if the ports are not heavily used, you can use them to share non-storage network traffic. EMC recommends that you monitor the network to avoid bottlenecks.

Virtualization layer

The validated solution uses multiple virtual components to save space in the data center and reduce power and cooling costs. Chapter 2 Virtualization Options validates the solution for both physical and virtual implementations.

As with all other layers in the solution, understand the impact of any virtualization technology on the performance, availability, and recoverability of the system before you implement it in a production environment.

Application layer

This section describes the application server architecture.

Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator

Each application server uses the iSCSI protocol to connect to external storage. Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator manages the iSCSI connections.


Solution Overview

The iSCSI initiator provides the ability to establish redundant paths to send I/O from a source disk to a target disk. Redundant paths facilitate high availability of the target disk.

EMC recommends that you use separate network interface cards (NICs) and iSCSI host bus adapters (HBAs) on the source for each I/O path, separate network infrastructure (cables, switches, routers, and so on), and separate target ports.

High availability and failover

The validated solution provides protection at the storage layer, the iSCSI layer, and the host layer.

Storage layer — Celerra can have multiple Data Movers to provide high availability and load balancing. In the Exchange 2007 NS Series iSCSI solution, primary and standby Data Movers provide seamless failover capabilities for the Celerra storage. This minimizes end-user disruption during routine Celerra maintenance such as upgrading the data access in real time (DART) operating system (OS).

The RAID 1 disk configuration on the Celerra backend provides protection against hard disk failures.

iSCSI layer — The iSCSI protocol supports multiple connections per session (MC/S) for high availability, failover, and load balancing. MC/S supports multiple TCP/IP connections from the initiator to the target within the same iSCSI session. I/O can be sent over any TCP/IP connection to the target. If a connection fails, another connection can continue processing I/O without interrupting the application.

In the validated solution, MC/S provides server port failover capabilities and “Round Robin” load-balancing capabilities.

The solution configuration also includes separate NICs at the source of each I/O path, separate network infrastructure (cables, switches, routers, and so on), and separate target ports.

Host layer — The application hosts have redundant power supplies and network connections to reduce the impact of a host hardware failure.

Application architecture

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 binary files are installed on the application servers. Database files and log files reside on EMC Celerra Unified Storage Platform file systems. Each type of file resides on a separate file system. The file system and logical unit numbers (LUNs) for the backup-to-disk (B2D) files reside in two RAID 5 seven-disk storage pools.

The Exchange server contains four databases and four storage groups (based on the guideline of one database file per storage group). Each database file resides in its own iSCSI LUN. The file system is striped across two RAID 1 sets (four disks).

The database log files reside on their own iSCSI LUN. The file system resides on a single RAID 1 set (two disks).

Table 2 on page 19 lists each file or activity type and indicates where it resides or where it is recorded.



Solution Overview

Table 2 Application file or activity types and locations

File or activity type

Location Number of iSCSI LUNs

RAID level

Celerra Storage Pool

Total number of physical disks

Type

Database log files

NS-120/

NS-480

4 RAID 1 Logs 4 FC

Database files

NS-120/

NS-480

4 RAID 1 Database 8 FC

B2D database files

NS-120/

NS-480

2 RAID 5 clarata_archive 10 ATA

Conclusion

This document provides an RA for solutions based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with EMC Celerra. Several technologies, products, and considerations are presented as working together to create a system that can meet performance, reliability, availability, and recovery targets. However, a customer environment can have different needs. With this in mind, each of the subsequent chapters discusses the reference configuration for a specific functionality, along with other options which you can use.

Exchange Server is a highly configurable environment, and every customer has a different set of availability needs, performance goals, and recovery targets. This document attempts to provide a framework to implement these solutions that address the inherent complexity of many environments and retain the ease of use that characterizes the EMC Celerra platform.


Solution Overview



Chapter 2 Virtualization Options


Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 22 VMware Infrastructure 3 ............................................................................................................... 22 Microsoft Windows 2008 with Hyper-V....................................................................................... 24 Additional options ......................................................................................................................... 24 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 24


Virtualization Options

Introduction

Many companies are exploring ways to virtualize Exchange Server environments to reduce costs, increase flexibility, and use resources more efficiently. When you virtualize the Exchange environment on Celerra, you can:

♦ Consolidate and contain Exchange servers without compromising on performance

♦ Optimize the storage and network infrastructure

♦ Ensure high availability and business continuity

♦ Enable dynamic pooling and sharing of resources

♦ Allow effective capacity management and automation

This section describes how to use various virtualization options with the solution.

VMware Infrastructure 3

The validated solution uses VMware Infrastructure 3 to allow a physical system to host more than one logical system. This is intended as a proof of concept and not as a requirement. There are no functions inherent in the solution that require virtualization.

VMware Infrastructure 3 allows the guest operating systems to connect to storage by using several methods. This RA specifies that you must provide database storage to the server by using the iSCSI protocol without translation at the Hypervisor level. This section also includes the modules that may be supported by other connection methods.

This section summarizes the options available for each connection method. EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Virtualization for EMC Celerra NS Series — Validation Test Report on EMC Powerlink provides more information.

Figure 4 on page 23 shows the configuration tested for VMware Infrastructure 3.




Figure 4 VMware Hypervisor

Microsoft iSCSI Initiator

A Windows guest running within VMware ESX is capable of connecting to Celerra iSCSI storage by using the Microsoft iSCSI initiator just like a physical system. You can support all the modules in this solution by using this connection method.

VMDK on iSCSI VMFS

A Virtual Machine Disk Format (VMDK) on iSCSI Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) datastore drastically changes the underlying storage interaction. The solution also covers this scenario.

Raw Device Mapping

This connection method is very similar to the Microsoft iSCSI initiator method and you can apply many of the same solution modules. This solution supports Raw Device Mapping (RDM) devices and you can use it as a reference when designing such a system.

VMDK on NFS

The EMC Celerra platform can become a NAS datastore for an ESX by using the NFS protocol. In this solution, each type of file resides on a single file system.





Microsoft Windows 2008 with Hyper-V

This solution was tested with Microsoft Windows 2008 with Hyper-V Release Candidate 1 (RC1). Based on these results, it is clear that Hyper-V provides a valid alternative to VMware Infrastructure 3 in some environments. In the Hyper-V environment, there are several methods available to connect storage to a virtual guest system. The differences in those methods impact the supportability of various solution modules that are used in that mode. EMC Solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Virtualization for EMC Celerra NS Series — Validation Test Report on EMC Powerlink provides more information.

The configuration tested for Microsoft Windows 2008 with Hyper-V is similar to the VMware Hypervisor configuration as shown in Figure 4 on page 23 with the exception that Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is used instead of VMware ESX version 3.5.

Guest OS Software iSCSI Initiator

A Windows guest running within Hyper-V is capable of connecting to Celerra iSCSI storage by using the Microsoft iSCSI initiator just like a physical system. You can support all the modules in this solution by using this connection method.

VHD on iSCSI NTFS

A Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) on NTFS datastore introduces significant changes to how the guest OS interacts with the storage. This method is analogous to the VMware VMDK on iSCSI VMware vStorage VMFS scenario, which is not covered in this document.

Pass-Through

This connection method is similar to the guest OS software initiator method and the VMware RDM method. You can apply many of the solution modules by using this method but they have not been validated as part of the solution.

VHD NFS or CIFS

At this time, Microsoft Windows 2008 with Hyper-V allows CIFS and NFS file system shares to serve as data stores for virtual machines. This connection method was validated as part of this solution. However, this configuration is not supported by Microsoft.

Additional options

Additional virtualization options exist but they have not been tested as part of this solution. Many of the concepts, practices, and recommendations that apply to this solution are applicable in those options but they have not been tested and are not supported as part of this solution.

Conclusions

Virtualization provides opportunities to reduce costs, increase flexibility, and use resources efficiently. You can virtualize many of the components in this solution based on the specific needs. However, there are no components in this solution that explicitly require virtualization to be considered part of the validated solution.

Chapter 3 Backup and Restore Options


Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 26 EMC NetWorker and NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications......................................... 26 Ontrack PowerControls with Snaps............................................................................................... 27 Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007 ..................................................................................... 27 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 28


Backup and Restore Options

Introduction

Data backups are an essential part of a production environment. Despite the RAID protection level, hardware redundancy, and other high-availability features present in EMC Celerra storage arrays, there may be instances where you will need to recover an Exchange database to a previous point in time from a data backup.

EMC NetWorker and NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications

EMC NetWorker® can be used to back up the Exchange environment by using either NetWorker Module for Exchange 2007 or NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications (NMM). Microsoft’s NT Backup also can be used in conjunction with Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to perform an online backup of the Exchange environment. These solutions can back up the Exchange environment to Advanced Technology-Attached (ATA) drives on the same Celerra system. You can use a de-duplication technology application to enhance these backup solutions. The de-duplication technology enables effective utilization of the backup storage.

Figure 5 on page 26 shows the backup architecture of the Exchange environment with EMC NetWorker and NetWorker Module for Microsoft Applications.

Figure 5 Backup configuration using EMC NetWorker




Ontrack PowerControls with Snaps

Another method to back up your Exchange environment is to use Ontrack PowerControls with Snaps in conjunction with EMC Replication Manager. This combination allows administrators to recover lost, deleted, and archived email messages, mailboxes or entire Exchange information store database (EDB) files.

Figure 6 on page 27 shows the backup architecture of the Exchange environment with EMC Replication Manager and Ontrack PowerControls.

Figure 6 Backup configuration with EMC Replication Manager and Ontrack PowerControls

Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007

Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) uses transaction log replication and block level synchronization along with the Exchange VSS writer to have a consistent copy of the Exchange database and logs copied to a secondary storage system every 15 minutes. DPM can be used to back up the Exchange data, and recover the data from corruption by restoring point-in-time copies of the production data that are saved on the secondary storage.

Figure 7 on page 28 shows the validated logical protect configuration with DPM.



Figure 7 Server-based protect configuration: DPM logical view

Conclusion

A thoughtful and complete backup strategy is an essential part of the Exchange environment. The validated solution uses EMC NetWorker, Ontrack PowerControls, and Microsoft DPM 2007 backup functionality to ensure recoverability. EMC NetWorker is suitable for many types of customer environments. However, Ontrack PowerControls is useful to recover individual mailboxes or messages, and Microsoft DPM 2007 to restore point-in-time copies of the production data.



Data Protection and Replication

Chapter 4 Data Protection and Replication


Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 30 Array-based replication options .................................................................................................... 30 Server-based replication options ................................................................................................... 31 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 33



Introduction

Data protection and replication involve creating online copies of the data so that the data can be recovered in case of a disaster, and used for functions other than the primary production application such as backup and testing. This solution considers physical distance between copies of data, so that an event at one site will not impact the copy of data at another site. The distance between the sites and the size of data are crucial when discussing disaster recovery options.

Array-based replication options

Celerra Replicator™ for iSCSI allows local snapshots of a database by using the EMC Replication Manager software. With cloning replicas, it can also provide remote replicas. These remote copies of data are updated asynchronously based on a schedule set by the administrator and controlled from the EMC Replication Manager. The EMC Replication Manager Administrator’s Guide on EMC Powerlink provides more information.

By using asynchronous replication along with the snapshot functionality, only changed blocks of data are sent across the network once per update cycle and no additional server resources are required. The process also leverages VSS to ensure inter-database consistency and no application downtime during replication cycles.

Celerra Replicator for iSCSI replicates a single source across multiple destination sites, and from the secondary site to a tertiary site. It also improves the replication throughput on high latency IP networks by autosizing the TCP windows.

Figure 8 on page 31 shows the validated configuration of the Exchange 2007 remote replication configuration over a wide area network.




Figure 8 Celerra Replicator for iSCSI using EMC Replication Manager

Server-based replication options

In addition to an array-based replication method, Microsoft has provided Exchange Server 2007 with various data protection options such as Local Continuous Replication (LCR), Exchange 2007 Clustered Continuous Replication (CCR), Exchange 2007 Standby Continuous Replication (SCR), and Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007. While LCR, CCR, and SCR are built in with Exchange Server 2007, DPM runs as a separate application and interacts with the server.

LCR protects the Exchange production data by replicating the production Exchange database into a secondary storage system by using asynchronous log shipping and log replay technology. LCR enables the Exchange administrator to switch to the secondary storage immediately, in case of data corruption on the production storage.

CCR protects Exchange data and the Exchange Server against failure. CCR uses asynchronous log shipping and replay technology to create and maintain a copy of each production Exchange storage group on the secondary Exchange Server. CCR provides high availability by utilizing the Windows clustering failover feature to automatically fail over the Exchange services on the secondary server, in case of failure on the production Exchange Server.



SCR also protects the Exchange data and the server. SCR uses asynchronous log shipping and replay technology to create and maintain multiple copies of the production Exchange storage group on multiple standby Exchange servers. SCR provides more flexibility in configuration than CCR, and enables users to deploy site resiliency on the Exchange production server. You must install Exchange 2007 SP1 to configure the environment for SCR.

Figure 9 on page 32 shows the validated configuration for SCR.

Figure 9 Server-based protect configuration: SCR




Conclusion

As Exchange environments grow, they tend to increase the requirements for daily operation and their criticality to the business. Even if disaster recovery may not be the immediate requirement during an initial application deployment, it is prudent to understand how disaster recovery can be added to a system in the future. This solution provides options to create local and remote replicas of application data that are suitable for disaster recovery, and many other uses that are important in your environment.


Chapter 5 Archive


Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 36 EmailXtender and Celerra File-Level Retention Toolkit .............................................................. 36 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 37


Archive

Introduction

The ability to archive Exchange mailbox content is becoming increasingly important. Companies with poorly managed archives face consequences such as increased discovery costs, punitive damages, and threats of lost business. On the operational side, poorly archived content can lead to unnecessary costs and poor support for business processes requiring value-added capabilities, such as cross-repository search.

The validation solution uses EMC EmailXtender® along with Celerra’s file-level retention capabilities to provide a comprehensive and secure email archiving solution.

EmailXtender and Celerra File-Level Retention Toolkit

EmailXtender stores unaltered copies of messages and attachments in a centralized online archive for cost-effective, long-term retention. Because the full message is no longer stored on the Exchange Server, EmailXtender reduces the burden of storing older messages and aging attachments in the production environment. The combination of EmailXtender and the Celerra’s file-level retention capabilities allows administrators to archive email messages to a permanent, unalterable location. This ensures integrity of data. The Celerra File-Level Retention Toolkit provides an added feature of automatically enabling the archiving solution to set the retention policy on each archiving file independently.

Note: The archived email messages cannot be accessed by using Outlook Web Access. The end user has to access the archived email messages by using the Outlook client. Microsoft is working on a fix to address this issue.

Figure 10 on page 37 shows the logical view of the validated archive architecture. In the validated architecture, email messages are archived to a file-level retention-enabled file system on ATA drives in the same Celerra system.



Archive

Figure 10 Exchange environment archive architecture

Conclusion

An effective and complete archive strategy is an essential part of the Exchange environment. The validated solution uses EMC EmailXtender archive functionality to ensure recoverability and compliance. EMC Celerra Unified Storage along with EMC EmailXtender and File-Level Retention toolkit enables the customer to implement Exchange solutions with archiving in a single Unified Storage Platform.


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