RAID levels are one of the key design and sizing elements for a resilient and high performing Exchange installation. Many Exchange admins will be familiar with the basic best practice recommendations for RAID, but it is important to understand which particular type of RAID configuration should be applied and where.
It is intended that this article will provide a simple and basic primer, to the relevant RAID levels which can be considered with either Exchange 2010 or Exchange 2007.
SAN vs DAS vs iSCSI RAID 1 RAID 5 RAID 10 Cost to Benefit ratios Before we get started it is useful to briefly cover some of the supported Storage Architectures for Exchange 2010 and 2007.
Even if you choose the best sized RAID level to your needs ? if you have not selected the correct hardware which the RAID infrastructure sits upon then you will not realize any benefits within your investment.
This is the traditional type of storage that comes with most servers. In essence - storage is directly attached to the server via SCSI or SATA ?via a supported hardware RAID or SCSI controller.
DAS will normally support all RAID types which are relevant to Exchange, and is found mainly being used for basic Exchange servers (e.g. with no DAG or HA) or for dedicated DAG nodes (in the case of Exchange 2010).
