Hi Rafi:

Sorry in advance for the long email... Everything's still fresh in my mind.

We've now got 2 Exchange 5.5SP4 servers running at our company on NAS. One of them, serving our 100% remote sales staff of 1000, has been up and running for almost a year on the original SnapManager 1.0 software, with very acceptable results.

Last weekend (Memorial Day weekend in the US), we were alerted that our primary Exchange server could no longer be backed up due to possible corruption in the database. This box is our "Bread And Butter" Exchange Server, serving 500 people at our Home Office. The IS was 80GB (don't ask.) and it was stored on a local RAID 0+1 array. Over the weekend, we built a new box running Win2K Advanced Server and installed 5.5SP4 on it, along with the latest and greatest SnapManager. We had some difficulties with the new SnapManager software (mostly due to unfamiliarities, it has an app that replaces the AUTOEXECNT workaround, but it's buggy). We moved all of the mailboxes off of the ailing box, and my Exchange Admins are very impressed with the Filer performance. There are some serious pros and cons about using Snapmanager:

Pros: * You can snapshot whenever you want. We're doing 4 a day and backing up one. * NetApp provides software (SnapManager/SnapRestore) that is very easy to migrate an existing server to NAS * You can add storage to a volume on the fly, invisibly. This was _very_ helpful whilst we were moving so many large mailboxes... We had to grow the logs volume after it filled up when we were moving the mailboxes... 36GB was gone in no time. * If you want, SnapManager will do a database consistency verification... Provided you want to throw 110% of free space at the volume! (Again, back to my 80GB information store (don't ask.)) * SnapManager allows you NOT to do an ESEUTIL. It's _very_ system intensive and lengthy, so we only do 1 a day, for our backup to tape. You can also run the ESEUTIL from a different server without impacting performance.

Cons: * The new SnapManager software provides a utility called NetAppDisk which is pretty buggy. It's supposed to monitor connectivity to the Filer and stop your Exchange services if you lose your connection. When the connection is re-established, it will restart the services you tell it to. In our installation, it started most of the services we wanted it to, and all of the services we DIDN'T want it to. (Even though the app was configured not to start our Lotus cc:Mail connector service (which we don't use), it would. The service, which wasn't configured, would crap out and die. NetAppDisk would try to start it again. It died again. NetAppDisk then pauses itself, so it won't try to start the services again. Since it's paused, it's not monitoring the connectivity to the filer.) It also, for some reason, doesn't start the MS Exchange MTA (This is a Bad Thing(tm)). It's a cool concept, but when the rubber meets the road, the product isn't there yet. I've asked about a new version, but haven't gotten anything back. * I had to update my Filer to 6.1R1... SnapManager requires Data ONTAP 6.0.2 or 6.1. I had no issues, as it was a "F760 I had laying around" and I could do a ground up build... Just something to think about. * I'm using quite a bit of disk... 9 36GB disks in all right now, 3 for transaction logs, and 6 for my IS. That's 324GB RAW space. Subtract 2 disks for parity and FS overhead, snapshot retention... yadda yadda yadda. In my 0+1 array, I had 8 mirrored 18g's and a pair of mirrored 9's for my logs. These snapshot's sure do take up space! I figure if I can avoid/recover from just one virus outbreak, it's paid for.

As far as it goes with M$ support? My NetApp rep, Kevin Bushnick, summed it up pretty well once: "If you're down and have an 8 hour turnaround support contract with M$, would you rather go that route or recover in 2 hours (Worst case scenario; you have to rebuild the OS on your box)." The first box we brought up had some fierce hardware problems and would just shut down when it was under heavy loads... The next time it went down, we pulled the OS drives and slapped them into an identical box. The OS came up, hit the Filer, and has been running fine ever since.

Regarding network connectivity, the "temp Exchange box" is using a single Gigabit Ethernet NIC plugged into our Cisco Catalyst 6500 series backbone switches. The filer in question is connected via a multi GigE vif using Cisco Gig-EtherChannel. We're not using Jumbo Frames, and aren't having any network bottlenecks.

Just my .02 (Which is more like 2.00 now)

Our decision is to rebuild the production server with only GigE and keep all databases on the filer. The performance is acceptable, and the pros really outweighed the cons in our case. I just can't wait until NetApp fixes the NetAppDisk app.

HTH,

-john

John Witham Sr. Data Networking Engineer Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, Inc. Voice ://847.383.3304 FAX ://847.383.3205 Mailto://jwitham@takedapharm.com Pager : http://www.arch.com/message PIN 4149491

-----Original Message----- From: Rafi Mimon [mailto:rmimon@vyyo.co.il] Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 8:12 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Exchange 5.5 on Filer

Hello all, I'm thinking of using the Filer with Exchange 5.5. I have one F740 with ONTAP 6.0.2R1. Microsoft does not recommend to use any NAS system for the exchange database files, so I would like to hear from you guys, did you encountered any problems? should I connect the Exchange server and the Filer Back to back or to the LANs backbone?

Rafi Mimon VYYO.LTD. E-mail :rmimon@vyyo.co.il

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