MS Exchange is the most popular message systems in enterprise market. As the scales of enterprises expand, enterprises are facing with a series of problems, for example, how to improve IT management and communication efficiency, how to reduce the cost of operation and maintenance (O&M), and how to lower the maintenance complexity. The resolution of these problems requires a messaging system of low cost, easy management, high reliability and easy expandibility. Based on deep understanding of enterprises' business requirements, Huawei launches a storage solution based on Microsoft Exchange email systems. The solution combines the features of Huawei T series storage products to assist enterprises in resolving their bottlenecks.Background and Challenge
Huawei
storage solution for Exchange mail systems combines the VMware
platform and Huawei T series storage system. The solution is
cost-effective, reliable, scalable and easy to manage.
To clarify the requirements of enterprises' Exchange email systems,
we construct a typical network topology to explain how to quickly
deploy Exchange applications by using Huawei T series storage
systems. The solution adopts Huawei
Tecal RH5885, a high-performancerack server delivering four data
streams, as the vSphere virtual server, and uses Huawei
OceanStor S5500T as the SAN storage system. Furthermore, the
solution uses a double-site deployment plan and employs the Exchange
2010 DAG function. These qualities ensure the high performance of
Exchange environment, the 24/7 continuity of Exchange applications,
the database-level disaster recovery, and the failover among
different sites.
The following figure shows the detailed networking diagram of the
solution.
The comprehensive solution is based on Huawei's mature and stable OceanStor T series storage system. The storage system's leading performance, high reliability, and intelligent resource management capability provide an efficient and reliable storage platform to Exchange email systems. S5500T is a typical example. Its outstanding performance and capacity expansion capability satisfy 20,000 mailbox users to receive and send 100 emails each every day.
OceanStor S5500T storage system has good scalability. Its performance and capacity increase linearly with the number of hard disks and it can support up to 288 disks. The expansion of storage system is convenient and can be achieved online.
The key parts and the data access paths of the storage system are fully redundant. Meanwhile, the solution supports many data protection methods, such as data coffer, disk precopy, RAID 5, and RAID 6. This high-reliability design ensures the 24/7 running of Exchange applications.
OceanStor T series storage system has been authenticated by VMware vSphere 5. VAAI, SRM, and VASA. The storage system integrates with vSphere and has reduced bandwidth usage, server resource usage, and response time. Furthermore, the storage system effectively improves the availability and business continuity of virtualization platforms and provides an outstanding infrastructure platform to Exchange email systems for their fast deployment and stable service continuity.
High performance of Huawei OceanStor T series storage system and its integration with vSphere greatly enhance the capacity of virtualization platforms and reduce the investment on devices. Its intelligent resource management increases the usage of storage resources such as space and performance. Meanwhile, multiple energy-saving technologies can reduce the system power consumption by 30%.
