White Paper - Mosaic TechnologyMimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server is a unified email...

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White Paper

Mimosa Systems, Inc.

November 2007

A System for Email Archiving, Recovery, and Storage Optimization

Mimosa™ NearPoint™ for Microsoft® Exchange Server and EqualLogic® PS Series Storage Arrays

Mimosa Systems Inc. | 3200 Coronado Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054 | www.mimosasystems.com | 408-970-9070

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CONTENTS About This Document........................................................................3

Mimosa NearPoint Overview.............................................................4

Mimosa NearPoint Basic Requirements...............................................5

EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI Storage....................................................6

EqualLogic Configuration................................................ ..................9

EqualLogic Configuration for Disaster Recovery..................................10

Mimosa NearPoint Support Tips.......................................................12

For More Information......................................................................12

This document introduces the Mimosa Systems™ NearPoint™ storage configuration with the EqualLogic® PS Series iSCSI storage arrays. Detailed EqualLogic configuration information based on test results in the Mimosa lab is provided to assist with the proper storage configuration and installation of Mimosa™ NearPoint.

Intended Audience

The intended audience for this guide is system administrators whose primary responsi-bilities involve installing, configuring, and administrating the software. Readers should have a sound understanding of the Exchange Server and the EqualLogic PS Storage products. Readers who administer the Exchange Server and backups might also find this guide useful.

Prerequisites

This document assumes that the reader has experience in the design, installation, and management of Windows-based products, including Windows Server, Active Direc-tory, and Exchange Server, and has experience with the deployment of Storage Area Networks (SAN—Fibre Channel or iSCSI). The reader should also have knowledge of basic storage concepts such as RAID, LUN, and disk volume management.

Additional Assistance

Mimosa has many resources and documents available to assist you in your NearPoint deployment. You can find additional resources at http://www.mimosasystems.com/html/supp_login.htm.

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Mimosa Systems Inc. | 3200 Coronado Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054 | www.MimosaSystems.com | 408-970-9070

About This Document

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Mimosa NearPoint Overview

Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server is a unified email data management solution that combines archiving, immediate recovery, and mailbox extension in a single solution. In this integrated solution, NearPoint delivers features that are typically found in multiple products (Figure 1).

Some of the benefits of NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server include::

• Enforcement of email retention and disposition policies for corporate gover-nance, regulatory, or compliance purposes

• eDiscovery of archived data for internal or external audit

• Re-creation of information states at points in time, for legal investigation

• Message, mailbox, and database recovery

• Exchange disaster recovery

• Vastly improved recovery time—minutes, not hours or days

• Optimized storage by migration of attachments, providing users with “super-sized” mailboxes that eliminate the need for PST files

• Increased end-user productivity with intuitive, self-service search and retrieval

The Mimosa NearPoint software solution is an application-intelligent solution that provides deep integration with Exchange and Outlook. NearPoint leverages cost-effective EqualLogic PS Series archive storage to provide archiving and near-real-time data protection for multiple Exchange Servers. Administrators perform immediate restores and configure policies using the standard Microsoft Management Console. NearPoint provides users and auditors with instant search and access to email that has been protected, archived, and extended via a standard Microsoft Outlook® or Outlook Web Access user interface.


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Figure 1. NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server

Mimosa NearPoint Basic Requirements

The Mimosa NearPoint Server integrates within a Microsoft Exchange Server environment and runs on a dedicated server. For larger Exchange deployments, a dedicated SQL 2005 server is required (Figure 2). NearPoint supports Exchange 2000 SP3, Exchange 2003 SP1, and Exchange 2007; NearPoint offers archiving-only support for Exchange 5.5. The host operating system for the Exchange Server(s) must be supported by Exchange and should be fully patched to the latest OS patch release. The minimum system requirements for hosting Exchange should be in line with Microsoft guidelines. Microsoft SQL Server is a required component of Mimosa NearPoint and is most often hosted on its own dedicated server.


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Figure 2. NearPoint Basic System Configuration

EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI Storage

PS Series—Intelligent, Enterprise-Class Storage

Founded on the premise of simplifying networked storage, EqualLogic’s PS Series is a family of intelligent, iSCSI-based storage arrays that fundamentally change storage economics—from purchase and set up to operation and upgrades. The PS family ranges from iSCSI arrays offering SATA with the PS100, to SAS with the PS3600. All configurations are completely interoperable and upgradable, with performance and capacity scaling from a single TB to more than 100TB—without disruption of application or data availability.

Enterprise Reliability

Each PS array offers fully redundant, hot-swappable components, including controllers, fan trays, and power supplies. Support for RAID 10 and 50, hot drive sparing, automatic failover and rebuild, and patent-pending proactive media error detection result in a bottom line of 99.999 percent data availability or five minutes of planned downtime per year.

Enterprise Performance

Starting with 300MBps and 60,000 IOPS, and scaling to more than a million IOPS, the PS Series delivers unmatched performance in its class. Automated load balancing seamlessly moves data across all active RAID sets, maximizing performance by intelligently optimizing network connections, cache, and controllers in real time.

Enterprise Data Services

The PS Series comes standard with a comprehensive set of software features, including virtual volume management and space-efficient snapshots for instant backup and restore; volume cloning for rapid server provisioning; and Auto-Replication, multipath I/O support, and cluster support for comprehensive disaster recovery.


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The benefits of deploying NearPoint with a PS Series SAN include:

• Rapid configuration of the NearPoint storage pool. Whether the PS Series storage is configured as an additional volume or volumes within the NearPoint storage pool or used as the total storage provider for the NearPoint storage pool, management operations can be completed quickly. In less than 20 minutes, the iSCSI SAN can be operating and providing storage for the NearPoint server.

• Redundant hardware and hot-serviceable configuration. PS Series storage arrays are fully redundant with dual controllers, power supplies, and fans, which can be serviced online and without disruption to applications. When utilizing SAN boot, server hardware can be quickly replaced in the event of a failure—without the need to re-install the server or applications—thus dramatically reducing recovery time. Support for multipath I/O provides end-to-end redundancy for primary data as well as the NearPoint storage pool. This capability ensures maximum reliability and online operation.

• Simple and immediate NearPoint storage pool expansion. A PS Series SAN works in harmony with the NearPoint software to provide online storage pool expansion. NearPoint Storage can be quickly expanded—both for primary applications as well as for the continuous-protection servers.

• SAN boot capability. iSCSI HBAs provide increased I/O performance, as well as the ability to install and boot the Windows operating system from a PS Series volume. SAN boot benefits also include increased disaster tolerance. If the server hardware fails, the unit can be quickly removed and replaced with a similarly configured spare hardware platform. This new platform can be directed to the SAN boot vol-ume and, in minutes, resume providing application services. Other benefits of SAN boot include centralized storage management and reliable and highly available storage resources that eliminate the need for mirrored boot volumes.

• Network path protection and load balancing. Multipath I/O, also known as MPIO, enhances the reliability and performance of NearPoint by providing dynamic load balancing of iSCSI SAN traffic across multiple paths between the NearPoint server and the PS Series SAN. When iSCSI HBAs are combined with the latest Microsoft software initiator iSCSI service version, multiple iSCSI HBAs can be configured within the NearPoint server.


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• Remote site volume replication. With PS Series replication, storage data can be automatically transferred to remote data centers. Data is protected from serious failures—ranging from destruction of the volume to a complete site disaster—with no impact on data availability or performance.

• Backup snapshots. The EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Manager delivers a Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) provider and a VSS requestor. The Auto-Snapshot Manager can quickly take full and incremental snapshots of the NearPoint Shadow copy and Indexed Object Repository (IOR), while the NearPoint server and the SQL server remain online with no performance impact. The backup windows for NearPoint Shadow and IOR backup are minimized and data is consistent and usable for recovery. The Auto-Snapshot Manager VSS requestor supports transport-able shadow copies, a feature that allows snapshots to be restored to a different server.

• Tiered storage. NearPoint Tiered Storage provides the capability to create multiple tiers of storage based on cost/performance parameters. One reason for deploying NearPoint Tiered Storage is to facilitate the migration of less frequently used data to lower-cost tiers via policy. Volumes of PS Series Storage can be part of a high-performance storage tier that is also cost effective.

• NearPoint GRID storage provisioning. The NearPoint GRID consists of a set of co-operating NearPoint servers that are connected to multiple storage volumes. Using the NearPoint GRID, it is possible to scale to hundreds or thousands of mailboxes. Storage volumes may be provisioned ahead of time or dynamically added on demand. Using the EqualLogic Virtual Disk Service (VDS) provider, Microsoft Stor-age Manager for SANs can be used to create volumes and automatically set up access controls in a PS Series group, greatly simplifying the process of NearPoint GRID storage provisioning.

• NearPoint virtualization. Running NearPoint on VMware offers a number of benefits, such as lower overall cost of deployment and greater flexibility. With NearPoint running on VMware using EqualLogic PS Storage, the EqualLogic VMware Provi-sioning tool facilitates the process of discovering targets in a PS Series group. Using the tool, one or more VMware ESX servers managed by VMware VirtualCenter can scan available targets and automatically log in to PS Series volumes in the SAN.


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EqualLogic Configuration

The Mimosa NearPoint Servers and the Mimosa SQL Servers each connect to multiple vol-umes with varying I/O patterns and capacity requirements. The EqualLogic Management Interface (Figure 3) provides a simple means to configure disk volumes of varying size and RAID level. We recommend that administrators follow EqualLogic best practices when creat-ing Windows 2003 sp1 or r2 volumes. The NearPoint volumes include the Shadow, IOR, and IOR Index for the NearPoint Host; and the SQL Data Volume, 1 SQL Blob, and SQL log for the SQL Host Mimosa User Instances.

Figure 3. EqualLogic Management Interface

A minimum of eight volumes is necessary to support the NearPoint and SQL storage needs.

The Shadow volume is the Continuous Data Protection Exchange database target. It is used not only for the initial Full Copy target, but also for all Log Replays (logs are shipped from Exchange to NearPoint, then NearPoint replays the logs into the offline EDBs to keep consistent with the Production Exchange Store), as well as for reads by Smart Extract archiving of messages. Therefore, the I/O may be typified as high. For example, when testing a two Exchange 2003 topology with eight storage groups, the Log Replay process averaged 610 IOPS on the Shadow volume provisioned on a PS300. The recommended disk configuration for the Shadow volume is RAID 50 SATA; of course, RAID 10 and SAS drives are supported. A note of caution based on further workload tests: If fewer than eight logs per minute per storage group must be replayed on average, then we strongly recommend that the Shadow volume be isolated into its own Storage Pool, as the I/O requirements for Log Replay will cause negative disk latency for other key Mimosa processes (Smart Extract, Indexer, Query, and so on) that share the same Storage Pool.


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The NearPoint IOR volume contains the individual message items and attachments that are produced by the NearPoint Smart Extraction process. The recommended configura-tion for the IOR volume is RAID 50 SATA. The I/O may be typified as medium. For an example, when testing a two Exchange 2003 topology with eight storage groups, the IOPS needs of the Shadow volume averaged 340 IOPS and the IOR volume averaged 120 IOPS provisioned on a PS300.

The NearPoint IOR Index volume contains the full text indices for the archived messages. The recommended configuration for the IOR volume is RAID 50 SATA. The I/O may be typified as medium. For example, when testing a two Exchange 2003 topology with eight storage groups, the IOPS needs of the IOR volume averaged 510 IOPS and the IOR Index Volume averaged 240 IOPS provisioned on a PS300.

The SQL host runs NearPoint user database instances and should be deployed accord-ing to host and storage best practices: separate volumes for the System Instances versus the User Instances, separate volumes for the User Instance Data versus the User Instance Logs, and, ideally, separate volumes for each User Instance. The capacity for the SQL database and SQL log volumes can be calculated by multiplying the total number of messages by 5KB. The recommended RAID level for the SQL volumes is RAID 10 SAS and, less ideally, RAID 50 and SATA for small or low archive rates. When tested with various workloads on a PS3600 with SAS disks, it was determined that the minimal IOPS for the SQL Logs is 350, and for the SQL Data, Blob, and Index, 528 IOPS.

Please note that the above instances are only examples observed at some customer sites and in the Mimosa labs; rates and IOPS can increase and decrease depending on various factors of the system topology, such as the composition of the customer’s Exchange data, connectivity, NearPoint and SQL system configuration, PS Array con-figuration, and so on. A detailed sizing by Mimosa Systems Support is required in order to correctly manage any customer’s Exchange topology. Detailed sizings are especially relevant when deploying the Mimosa NearPoint GRID.

EqualLogic Configuration for Disaster Recovery

In conjunction with EqualLogic PS Series Storage, the Mimosa NearPoint Disaster Re-covery Option provides automated disaster recovery of Exchange service in an applica-tion-intelligent manner, performing off-host and maintaining application consistency and integrity. Using this solution, administrators can recover Exchange services to a local (or remote) standby Exchange Server with a “one-click” operation.

Figure 4 shows a NearPoint Disaster Recovery configuration with EqualLogic PS Series Storage volumes assigned to Exchange Databases, Exchange Logs, and NearPoint Shadow and IOR on Site A and Site B. The NearPoint Dynamic Log Shipping mecha-nism is used to capture Exchange log files as soon as log files are generated on the Exchange Server. Subsequently, the NearPoint Log Replay mechanism is used to update primary volumes on Site A, which triggers snapshot updates to standby volumes on Site B. EqualLogic storage replication is used as the replication mechanism between source and target volumes.

When failover is triggered, standby Exchange and NearPoint servers mount the Equal-Logic storage volumes. Subsequently, mailboxes are migrated to the standby site’s Ac-tive Directory and Exchange roles and services are migrated from Primary to Standby, followed by restoration of service to standby Exchange and NearPoint servers. Near-Point and EqualLogic PS Series storage deliver an Exchange and NearPoint cross-site disaster recovery capability that is unmatched in terms of Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RT0).


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Figure 4. Disaster Recovery Configuration

© 2007 Mimosa Systems, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Mimosa, Mimosa Systems, NearPoint, and One Pass Protection are trademarks of Mimosa Systems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

At a minimum, consider a dedicated NIC and LAN for iSCSI traffic; ideally, consider Toe-enabled NIC or HBA (Broadcom is affordable). Definitely consider enabling CHAP Security and Zoning to iSCSI HBA IP Address.

Make SQL and NearPoint services dependent on iSCSI service using the command line “sc <server> [command] [service name] = [service name]” (“sc \\yourhostnamehere config MSSQLSERVER depend= MSiSCSI”).

Align the OS partition and hardware vendor’s RAID Stripe segments. For Windows 2003 sp1 and r2, use Diskpart, select the disk associated with EqualLogic LUN, and “create partition primary align=64”. This procedure will align on the 64kb (129th sector) starting OS sector with PS RAID Stripe segment, which reduces I/O requests crossing segment boundaries and results in more efficient I/O utilization (from the EqualLogic paper titled “Microsoft Windows Aligning Disk Sectors for Optimal Perfor-mance,” page 6).

For optimal SQL 2005 volume layout, please consult the latest Microsoft 2005 best practices. At a high level, consider creating separate volumes for the System Instances and the NearPoint User Instance (main focus = tempdb); creating separate volumes for the NearPoint User Instance Data, Blob, and Log Filegroups types (different I/O patterns); and sizing the NearPoint User Instance Filegroups for at least one year of archive usage (reduce invocation of SQL “Automatically grow”). Choose RAID 10 not only for SQL Logs but also for SQL Data and Blob. This practice is not that important for customers who are utilizing only CDP, but it is very important for customers who are implementing Archive, Mailbox Extension for Exchange space savings, and eDiscovery for auditing (from the EqualLogic paper titled “PS Series Best Practice Deploying Micro-soft SQL Server in an iSCSI SAN,” pages 13 and 17).

For More Information

Mimosa Systems Inc.The Mimosa website has the latest information about this product, as well as updated best practices guides and support notes. http://www.mimosasystems.com/

EqualLogic Inc.The EqualLogic website has the latest information about the PS Series, as well as the latest drivers. http://www.equallogic.com


Mimosa NearPoint Support Tips

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White Paper - Mosaic TechnologyMimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server is a unified email...

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