iSCSI Storage Solutions on the Microsoft Windows Platform

Deploying iSCSI Storage Solutions on the Microsoft Windows Platform provides background on iSCSI technology and information on the current state of iSCSI storage solutions for the Microsoft Windows environment, focusing on the deployment of the iSCSI target solutions from some Microsoft storage partners. Some of these storage solutions are based on the Microsoft iSCSI software target and run on a Microsoft Windows based platform.

iSCSI storage is supported on an Exchange Server environment since version 2003 (I wrote an article about the subject a while ago: Storage Design ? Have You Considered iSCSI?).

Here’s a little excerpt from the document:

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 can be deployed using an iSCSI storage solution. The basic requirements for storage for Exchange Server 2007 are that there is enough capacity, acceptable disk latency and response time, and enough disk throughput to meet service level agreements. The disk storage must be formatted using NTFS. Due to its 64-bit nature, increases in database cache and other improvements, transactional I/O requirements for Exchange Server 2007 have been reduced from previous releases.

Unlike previous versions of Exchange Server, network-attached storage is not supported in Exchange Server 2007. The only network-based storage transports supported for Exchange Server 2007 are iSCSI and Fibre Channel. In Microsoft test labs, iSCSI has been proven as a capable storage transport for Exchange Server. When high throughput is required, Microsoft recommends multiple network adapters and the use of MPIO.

Prerequisites for Deployment
The following steps were completed on the server before installing Exchange Server 2007:

  • All updates applied to Windows 2003 Server R2 Enterprise x64 Edition
  • Domain controller functional level raised to Windows Server 2003 level
  • Server DMRTK-SRVR-B2 joined the DEMARTEK domain
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 installed on server
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 x64 HotFix KB926776 applied
  • Microsoft Windows PowerShell installed
  • iSCSI targets logged on as volumes ?M? and ?N?
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