Kurt Shintaku's Blog

My coworker passed this EHLO post on about Exchange Server.  It was interesting enough to me that I thought it might warrant a repost for those of you involved with Exchange Messaging and the decision to consider Exchange Server 2010.

Top 10 Exchange Storage Myths

Many of you have heard about the changes we’ve made in Exchange 2010 that combine to give you the ability to use less expensive storage and deploy large mailboxes. There have been many discussions around the choices you have around Exchange storage, and along the way we’ve heard some interesting questions. To add some clarity to the discussion, we’ve put together some resources to bust some of the most common myths and mis-perceptions that we have heard.

To help you better understand our thinking around large mailboxes, we’ve published the Large Mailbox Vision Whitepaper.

AND here are the top 10 Myths about Exchange storage that we’ve heard . Busted!

• Myth #1: Exchange requires expensive, high-performing storage . I can’t afford large mailboxes!
  Reality: Exchange 2010 enables you to implement large, low-cost mailboxes. It performs well on less expensive disks and supports a range of storage options. See the Large Mailbox Vision Whitepaper.
• Myth #2: Exchange 2010 doesn’t support storage area networks (SANs).
  Reality: Exchange 2010 doesn’t support network-attached storage (NAS) (maybe the similar spelling confuses people ?), but it does support a large range of storage options including SAN and DAS. Depending on your high availability model, storage can be configured using RAID or RAID-less (JBOD) storage. Different customers will require different solutions based on their requirements, but everyone has the ability to deploy large mailboxes at low cost.
• Myth #3: I already have a SAN (or I just bought one), so it doesn’t make sense to implement DAS. By the way, my SAN can use those less expensive SATA disks too.
  Reality: This one is not really a myth, but it is often misunderstood. SAN deployment may make sense for customers as long as you are able to deploy large mailboxes at low cost. Remember that Exchange supports a range of storage options including SAN and DAS. If you are looking to take advantage of multiple independent copies of databases, then consider the full cost of your storage solution.

Read about Myths 4-10 at the jump.

• EXCHANGE TEAM BLOG:  Top 10 Exchange Storage Myths
  http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/03/29/454443.aspx