RE: MS Exchange on Netapps - toasters

19 Mar 2001

      Personally, if I were adminning an Exchange system (which--I thank all the
deities I can name--I'm not) I would most likely put the Exchange DBs on a
locally attached hardware RAID array.  You can get good-quality hardware
RAID cards for most servers these days.  And in this situation I don't see a
great enough performance or reliability benefit to offset the higher cost
and supportability risks.
As for SAN, I don't trust it yet.  It's a little too bleeding edge for my
tastes to use it for something really mission critical unless I absolutely
had to.  It also seems to be prohibitively expensive based on my limited
exposure to it.  (I just about fell out of my chair when a co-worker quoted
me the cost of a Brocade switch.)
-- 
Mike Sphar - Sr Systems Administrator - Engineering Support Services -
Remedy Corporation

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] 
Sent:	Monday, March 19, 2001 11:30 AM
To:	'Mike Sphar'; toasters@mathworks.com
Subject:	RE: MS Exchange on Netapps

Yes my point exactly, MS is protecting themselves. Is anyone running
Exchange with/without issues.  As for Oracle on NetApp I heard it doesn't
like high transaction dbases.  What is the ideal place for Exchange dbase
?(my bet EMC since that pretty close to have local disk) 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Sphar [mailto:mikey@Remedy.COM]
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 11:21 AM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: RE: MS Exchange on Netapps

My thoughts are that any article that refers to gigabit Ethernet as an
"emerging technology" is highly suspect.

I wonder if Microsoft is trying to insinuate that Oracle databases (which
can run over NAS) are less "robust" and "high-performance" than their
jet-based exchange DB, which allegedly can't.

Having said that, I probably wouldn't put my Exchange DBs on a filer.  Too
much risk of something going wrong and MS saying "Sorry, we told you not to.
You're on your own."

-- 
Mike Sphar - Sr Systems Administrator - Engineering Support Services -
Remedy Corporation
BOFH, GWP, MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, BFD

"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?" - Niels
Bohr

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands and hoist
the black flag." - H.L. Mencken (paraphrased)

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Jennifer Armenta [mailto:ArmentaJ@mascorp.com] 
Sent:	Monday, March 19, 2001 10:32 AM
To:	toasters@mathworks.com
Subject:	MS Exchange on Netapps

Any thoughts on this from anyone one... why is NetApps saying they are
working with MS on this issue? doesn't sound like it from this KB article...

 http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q288/2/12.asp