White Papers

Predeployment
6 Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series and Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 | 3925-BP-EX
Other new or enhanced features introduced with Exchange Server 2016 that are notable for storage
considerations include the following:
In-place archiving, retention, and eDiscovery:
• Public folder support for In-Place eDiscovery and In-Place Hold
• Compliance Search, available only in Exchange Management Shell (EMS)
Improved performance and scalability:
• Search architecture redesigned as asynchronous
• Improved search scalability from 5,000 mailboxes to 10,000 mailboxes, or unlimited in EMS
To provide Exchange Native Data Protection, Exchange 2016 continues to use database availability groups
(DAGs) and mailbox database copies, along with features such as single item recovery, retention policies,
lagged database copies, and others. The high-availability platform, the Exchange Information Store, and the
Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) have all been enhanced to provide greater availability, easier management,
and reduced costs.
With respect to storage, these enhancements include the following:
Reduced IOPS compared to Exchange Server 2013: A reduction in IOPS/mailbox size enables larger disks
to be better utilized, providing capacity and IOPS as efficiently as possible.
Multiple databases per volume: This enables multiple databases (mixtures of active and passive copies) to
be hosted on the same volume and is another enhancement that allows larger disks to be used.
Automatic Reseed for DAS disk failures: This provides a quick restore to database redundancy after a
DAS disk failure. If a physical disk fails, the database copy stored on that disk is copied from the active
database copy to a spare physical DAS disk on the same server. If multiple database copies were stored on
the failed disk, they can all be automatically reseeded on a spare disk. This enables faster reseeds because
the active databases are likely to be on multiple servers and the data is copied in parallel.
Automatic recovery from storage failures: This allows the system to recover from failures that affect
resiliency or redundancy. Exchange Server 2013 includes recovery behaviors for long I/O times, excessive
memory consumption by the Microsoft Exchange Replication service (MSExchangeRepl.exe), and also for
severe cases in which the system is in such a bad state that threads cannot be scheduled.
DAG lagged copy enhancements: Lagged copies can now care for themselves to a certain extent using
automatic log play down. In addition, lagged copies can leverage Safety.Net (previously Transport Dumpster
in Exchange Server 2010), making recovery or activation much easier.