The Sun BigAdmin paper "Sun StorageTek 6140 Array Storage Solution for 6000 Mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange 2007" describes a Microsoft Exchange 2007 primary storage solution on the Sun StorageTek 6140 array that is targeted for an environment in which there are mailboxes for 6000 users.

The Sun StorageTek 6140 array is an excellent choice for medium and large sized businesses. In the case of this test scenario, the tested user profile was 0.5 (0.42 + 20%) Input/Output Per Second (IOPS) per mailbox with a limit of 300 Mbytes. (See [20660].)

The Sun StorageTek 6140 RAID unit featured sixteen 73-Gbyte 15,000-rpm Fibre Channel (FC) 4-Gbps drives and two expansion units with thirty-two 73-Gbyte 15,000-rpm FC 4-Gbps drives for 3.5 Tbytes (raw) / 1.8 Tbytes (usable, RAID 10). This solution can be expanded to six expansion units for a total of 84 Tbytes (raw) / 74 Tbytes (usable, RAID 5 with hot spares) SATA-II.

Primary storage performance testing was designed to exercise the storage with maximum sustainable Microsoft Exchange type of I/O for 2 hours. The test shows how long it takes for the storage to respond to an I/O under load. The results follow, the first being the sum of all the logical disk I/O operations and an average of all the logical disks I/O latency in the 2-hour test duration. Each server is listed separately and the aggregate numbers across all servers are listed as well:

Database I/O

Average database disk transfers/sec 2972.726 Average database disk reads/sec 1523.119 Average database disk writes/sec 1449.605 Average database disk read latency 15.8 ms Average database disk write latency 9.5 ms Sun StorageTek 6140 Array Storage Solution for 6000 Mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange 2007.

Transaction Log I/O

Average log disk writes/sec 842.655 Average log disk write latency 2 m

For the Version 1.0 release, only streaming backup type is supported for testing in the framework. There are two tests in this section. The first one measures the read I/O performance metrics by running a checksum on all the databases and log files. The second test measures the end-to-end performance when the databases are backed up to disks.

Database Read-only Performance

The test measures the maximum rate at which databases could be streaming backed up, revealing an average rate for a single database file.

I/O Read Performance

MB read/sec per storage group 38.003 MB read/sec total 684.05

Log Read-only Performance

This test measures the maximum rate at which the log files can be played against the databases, showing the average rate for 500 log files played in a single storage group. Each log file is 1 Mbyte.

End-to-End Performance

Average time to play one log file 1.17 sec

The paper concludes with this caution: "This document was developed by storage solution providers and reviewed by the Microsoft Exchange Product team. The test results and data presented in this document are based on the tests introduced in the ESRP test framework. Customers should not quote the data directly for their pre-deployment verification. It is still necessary to go through the exercises to validate the storage design for a specific customer environment." [...read more...]

		fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter