Improving Microsoft Exchange Performance Using SanDisk Solid State Drives (SSDs)

Enterprise datacenters have long relied on storage configurations based on hard disk drives (HDDs) to deploy mission-critical tier-1 applications. Due to the inherent performance limitations in HDDs, storage administrators have often adopted costly approaches such as overprovisioning storage or short-stroking HDDs to meet the service level agreements (SLAs) in place with these application owners. SSDs can dramatically improve performance for these applications by delivering very high I/O performance at a very low latency. They do so without relying on mechanical devices, but rather by leveraging semiconductor memory. That memory is nonvolatile, so that power outages will not cause data to be lost; on the contrary, the data will be retained for later use. Microsoft Exchange Server is one such tier-1 application – and it is pervasive in enterprise environments as an e-mail server and collaboration platform. Optimal storage configuration is a key to maximize the end user experience of Microsoft Exchange Server by reducing access times that would affect the customer experience. Both transactional input/output operations per second (IOPS) and latency must perform at the highest levels in order to successfully service large numbers of users accessing the mail server, without adversely affecting their productivity, especially during times of peak usage. These two parameters directly impact the usability of the e-mail system, as well as the number of mailboxes that can be hosted in an Exchange Server environment. This white paper examines how SanDisk Enterprise SSDs can dramatically improve Microsoft Exchange Server performanc