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BP1013 Best Practices for Enhancing Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Data Protection and Availability 14
4 Test topology and architecture
We decided to use a real world scenario simulation to identify the benefits of using EqualLogic SAN
snapshots to strengthen the Exchange 2010 data protection. The main areas which we identified to
test were:
• The Smart Copy snapshot process impact and efficiency on an Exchange Server host
• The recovery scenarios where a Smart Copy snapshot can assist and improve recovery time or
point objectives
To conduct the tests detailed in this paper, we deployed and tested a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
configuration hosted by Dell EqualLogic storage and a virtual infrastructure built upon VMware
vSphere 4.1 hypervisor.
Our test architecture consisted of a configuration designed to support the messaging services for a
medium-sized organization (up to 5000 users), and to provide both high availability and resiliency by
implementing a two node DAG, redundant client connectivity, and messages routing components.
Our exercise targeted the local protection of a messaging service and, as such, the entire topology
resided in a single datacenter.
4.1 Functional system design
The functional elements of the test infrastructure are shown in Figure 3. Some key elements of the
design were:
• Single Active Directory forest, single domain, single site
• Redundant HUB transport servers and resilient Client Access servers (load balanced)
• Mailbox database servers configured within a DAG for HA and resiliency
• Dedicated resources for infrastructure management, load simulation and monitoring