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BP1013 Best Practices for Enhancing Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Data Protection and Availability 24
Figure 9 Disk I/O pattern during multiple Smart Copy snapshots on one volume
Note: I/O operations (reads or writes) counter values for processes reported by Performance Monitor
include all the operations executed by the process against the entire disk sub-system, not only the
volume we are analyzing, nevertheless the reads spike is clearly due to the process reported
(store.exe).
The analysis of the Exchange KPIs combined with the systems indicators proved that the host impact
while taking Smart Copies was minimal. Not only that the user experience would have been seamless
in both regular operation and critical situation, but that the retrieved values matched against the
Microsoft thresholds also showed the infrastructure would have room for additional workload,
specifically in the storage subsystem.
6.3 Optional ASM/ME functionalities: checksum and verification
The choice to create a mailbox database snapshot has various aims: have offline access to production
data to run tests or verification, or reuse the snapshot as a component of a wider recovery mechanism.
Either way, one task that is necessary is the integrity check of the data (i.e. Exchange checksum
verification). The outcome of this activity is valid collateral for the health of the production
environment in one case, or is a signature of the consistency of the data that is available offline within
the snapshot.
ASM/ME offers the opportunity to take ownership of this checksum verification process by seamlessly
automating the usage of a Microsoft Exchange utility (ESEUTIL.EXE). This action verifies the integrity of
the files contained within the Smart Copy snapshot.
The verification process can be activated in different ways:
Immediately the task runs immediately after the Smart Copy snapshot has been created
On demand the task runs when activated interactively, on a Smart Copy snapshot
previously created
Global verification the task runs as part of a broader schedule within defined time windows