HT/CA: How to get the best performance

[KCompateso]

I have a server running the Hub Transport and Client Access roles.

I have 2 data drives D: and E: I was thinking of putting the HT logs and database on drive D: and the CA IIS stuff on drive E:

Is this the best or recommended configuration to optimize a server running both these roles?

Comps Consulting, LLC.

http://www.CompsConsulting.com

 

[MarkArnold]

Drives or disks?
Any RAID anywhere?

 

[KCompateso]

Disks

Each drive is a seperate disk.

Comps Consulting, LLC.

http://www.CompsConsulting.com

 

[MarkArnold]

OK, whilst I really don't want to go batting back and forth here you haven't talked about where Windows is installed.
I'll assume you have a disk for the C drive?

Really the best thing for you is to have a pair of disks in RAID1 for everything and then discard this third (the E:?) disk.

Unless you're hammering the Exchange server you'll be perfectly fine. I'm assuming the disks are large and space won't be a constraint, not even if you lost the Internet connection for a little while.

Anyway, speculation is fine up to a point. If you want more advice you'll need to provide full details about your server infrastructure, including the MB and traffic flows. Unless you consider the traffic flow to be excessive you're more than likely to be perfectly fine with a single C:\ and go from there.

At the worst you can use

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125177.aspx

to move the queue having set up a D: first.

Of course, if you've got no resilience then I'd suggest you fixed that before even looking at performance.

 

[KCompateso]

Sorry, I had to confirm the disks.

Each drive is 2 disks setup as RAID1.

The infrastructure consists of:
(1) CCR with 18 Storage Groups supporting 5000 mailboxes
(2) CA/HT servers
- All in a single site

As for the CA/HT servers, I'm expecting a lot of activity, especially OWA since only 1000 users have outlook. The mailflow will be alot.

I was thinking about seperating the CA IIS stuff and the HT Logs and databases to different disks.

I'm looking for a "Best Practices" way of configuring the server to support these two roles.

Comps Consulting, LLC.

http://www.CompsConsulting.com

 

[MarkArnold]

Who designed this for you?
There should be a couple of servers here. I'd have separate CA and HT boxes and you're pushing to two of each.

In the short term just follow the link previously given and take it from there.

 

[KCompateso]

I designed it. It's a sound, secure and fault tolerant design.

The HT roles of the 2 servers are automatically load balanced and fault tolerant.

The CA roles of the 2 are load balance by our big IP.

What servers do you think are missing? Further more, why would separate CA and HT across the servers instead of putting them together on the same box? If one box goes down, then your either short a HT or CA server. That doesn't make any sense.

Comps Consulting, LLC.

http://www.CompsConsulting.com

 

[MarkArnold]

Ahh, so the (2) meant you have two physical servers, each of which share the HT and CAS roles.
That's fair enough. It came over that you have a CCR and then a single box doing HT/CAS.