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Predeployment
5 Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series and Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 | 3925-BP-EX
1 Predeployment
1.1 Storage virtualization options for ME4 Series
Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series arrays support a variety of options for storage configurations and can
improve the performance and availability of storage for Microsoft Exchange Server. These options are
detailed in this paper to help you understand the benefits of each.
ME4 Series storage also supports several connectivity options which are discussed in this paper but not from
a performance perspective. The scope of this document does not include sizing or performance data. The
storage design will be driven by business requirements for performance and availability.
1.2 Understanding Exchange I/O
The SAN configuration is an important part of any application configuration, and this is especially true with
Exchange Server. Understanding how Exchange Server works with storage helps administrators make sure
that systems run in their most capable state. To ensure that Exchange Server will run in its optimal
environment, performing some simple tests can determine whether a server and disk subsystem can provide
the necessary performance.
Several tools exist to put a load against and test the performance of Exchange Server and disk storage,
including Exchange Load Generator (LoadGen) and Jetstress. Each of these has the capability to simulate
Exchange I/O patterns as well as the client experience, which can provide the estimated performance
numbers to expect from the disk subsystem. LoadGen and Jetstress are available from Microsoft as free
downloads and are discussed further in section 2.8, Mailbox server sizing considerations.
Another useful tool is the Windows Performance Monitor, which can help define a baseline and show how the
application may perform in the current environment. This tool is discussed further in section 3, Exchange
performance monitoring.
1.3 Exchange 2016 architecture changes
With the decreasing cost of CPU hardware, the constraint of expensive server hardware has been alleviated.
Exchange Server 2016 takes advantage of this with a primary design goal of simplicity in scale and hardware
utilization. The number of server roles has been reduced to two: Mailbox server and Edge Transport server.
The Exchange Server 2016 Mailbox server role includes all server components from Exchange 2013
Mailbox and Client Access roles:
Client Access services: These provide authentication, limited re-direction, and proxy services offering the
usual client access protocols: HTTP, POP, IMAP and SMTP.
Mailbox services: These include the back-end client access protocols, Transport service, mailbox
databases, as well as Unified Messaging; the Mailbox server manages all active mailboxes on that server.