HP p2000 G3 SAS questions about optimal setup and snapshots
Hello.
First post here so i wanted to just say how much i have appretiated these forums. I have found most of my questions on this site and its invaluable for us non super duper consultants:).
Here are my questions and setup:
I am migrating one customer on w2003 domain with exchange 2003 to w2008 domain and exchange 2010. I have 2 new HP servers and one HP P2000 G3 Sas san. I have very limited san experience fyi. Atm i have setup 2 vdisks. One for fileserver and one for the exchange 2010 databases and logfiles.
- Fileserver: 3x600GB Raid5 vdisk LUN1 (snapshot enabled) (1TB) (Fileserver data)
- Exchange: 6x600GB Raid10 vdisk LUN2 (snapshot enabled) (1.4TB) (Exchange databases and logs)
- One global spare 600GB disk
both servers connected to both controllers and MPIO is installed on servers. Explicit mappings made on both to correct channels.
Goals and questions:
My wish is besides Veritas backup exec backups to robot tape library for backing up exchange and fileserver is to also backup snapshots to media for quick dr recovery if needed. We will also use usb drives for windows backup images on both servers aswell.
Now before i continue with the migration i want to know if this is a good enough solution raid level wise for exchange primary. Should i choose raid 6 instead? Should i separate logfiles?
Should i use different LUNS or anything else.
The other question is about P2000 G3 snapshots. I have also very limited experience with snapshots. From what i read googling it can work and sometimes not work with databases depending on solution. Does the P2000 G3 snapshot (blocklevel right?) work on exchange databases and logfiles? Should i use another snapshot solution? Should i disable snapshot on the vdisks?
Any input is valuable
Thanks in advance...
First post here so i wanted to just say how much i have appretiated these forums. I have found most of my questions on this site and its invaluable for us non super duper consultants:).
Here are my questions and setup:
I am migrating one customer on w2003 domain with exchange 2003 to w2008 domain and exchange 2010. I have 2 new HP servers and one HP P2000 G3 Sas san. I have very limited san experience fyi. Atm i have setup 2 vdisks. One for fileserver and one for the exchange 2010 databases and logfiles.
- Fileserver: 3x600GB Raid5 vdisk LUN1 (snapshot enabled) (1TB) (Fileserver data)
- Exchange: 6x600GB Raid10 vdisk LUN2 (snapshot enabled) (1.4TB) (Exchange databases and logs)
- One global spare 600GB disk
both servers connected to both controllers and MPIO is installed on servers. Explicit mappings made on both to correct channels.
Goals and questions:
My wish is besides Veritas backup exec backups to robot tape library for backing up exchange and fileserver is to also backup snapshots to media for quick dr recovery if needed. We will also use usb drives for windows backup images on both servers aswell.
Now before i continue with the migration i want to know if this is a good enough solution raid level wise for exchange primary. Should i choose raid 6 instead? Should i separate logfiles?
Should i use different LUNS or anything else.
The other question is about P2000 G3 snapshots. I have also very limited experience with snapshots. From what i read googling it can work and sometimes not work with databases depending on solution. Does the P2000 G3 snapshot (blocklevel right?) work on exchange databases and logfiles? Should i use another snapshot solution? Should i disable snapshot on the vdisks?
Any input is valuable
Thanks in advance...
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Hmm, HP should understand how the hardware VSD provider works (although the MSA2000 is made for them by Dot Hill). Windows quiesces the disk I/O, then tells the hardware to do a snapshot via the VSD snapshot provider software. There's no great advantage of the hardware provider over the windows inbuilt software one though, unless you're doing remote snapshots to a DR centre.
ASKER
It just not worth taking the chance it seems with block level san snapshots..Ty for the answer.