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anyone here ever built a storage server

Smallguy

hi everyone I'm wondering if anyone here has built a storge server before.

reason being my IT manager bought us a new exchange macihn e and wants to create a cluster....which I'm all for except he wants to use the built-instorage on the new server which will be in a RAID 5

now the bovious issues with tihs are

1. new mail server dies (powersupply,mobo opr any hardware) you loose the cluster

2. if the server freeezes for any reason except an exchange service stopping you can cloose access to the shared drive.

what I want to do is try to build my own storage server because the ones I've seen online are far better than what we need.

all we need is a box with a hardware RAID (5) 3 70gb drives would suffice for the exchange for 50 users(mail store right now is 13gb) and the ability to connect 2 nodes to it using SCSI.

and some type of OS that is compatiable with MS clustering

has anyone here tried to build one and if do you have any tips.

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Comments

sprkymrk

Please correct me if I am wrong (I sometimes miss the obvious) but is your solution actually solving the problems you are pointing out on the Exchange Cluster idea?

Smallguy wrote:

1. new mail server dies (powersupply,mobo opr any hardware) you loose the cluster

2. if the server freeezes for any reason except an exchange service stopping you can cloose access to the shared drive.

Note:

1. If the storage server dies you lose access to everything on it.

2. If the storage server freezes for any reason you can still lose access to the priv and pub edb files.

So are you suggesting the storage server instead of the cluster or in addition to the cluster?

Smallguy

I guess I explained the situation badly

What I want is a seperate device that will have the cluster data on it

which from my understanding is the correct way to do it (acitve node, passive node, seperate external sotrage)

instead of using our exchange server (which also does DNS, BES and is a DC) to store the data (and just sharing out thre drive so the passive node can see it)

so if the active node fails the passive one takes over and theorectically we get as close to 100% uptime as possiable

instead of implmenting a "cluster" by just sharing out the drive on the New exchange server... which if the new exchange server failed the passive node couldn't find the exchange mailboxes to keep things running. I know this is not really a cluster at best it is a loose cluster.

Smallguy

tried attaching a paint diagram but it failed

Trailerisf

We've done cluster servers with identical hardware. We use an external array to hold the quorum data.

We did our exchange cluster last week. Just be sure you have the exact same service packs installed on both machines.

MS has some okay technotes on installing exchange on a 2003 cluster server.

Smallguy

Trailerisf wrote:

We've done cluster servers with identical hardware. We use an external array to hold the quorum data.

We did our exchange cluster last week. Just be sure you have the exact same service packs installed on both machines.

MS has some okay technotes on installing exchange on a 2003 cluster server.

thanks

this is exactly what my goal is I jsut need to try and build my own external storage

all the external sotrage devices I've seen are for a tereabyte of data+ and since all we will be using it for is exchange we shouln't ever need more than 250gb foir 50 users..... if I could find a company that will allow me to strip down the device to what i need I'd be set....but unfortunately it looks like you can add additional drives but not subtract

Trailerisf

We bought an external array from dell and simply added 5-6 hard drives...
We aren't using the other half of the array.

I didn't do the purchasing so I couldn't tell you the price.