Specifications

17 Reference Architecture | Dell
TM
Unified Communication Solution with Microsoft® Lync® Server 2013 for Single Site
Implementation | Version 1.0
3.2.2 Storage for Lync, SQL, and Hypervisor
All physical servers hosting the entire Lync core infrastructure leverage internal server storage. Using local
storage instead of iSCSI or Fibre Channel SANs or direct-attached external arrays is a cost-effective
solution for this small Lync deployment. The internal server storage in this design has been logically
partitioned into three separate storage blocks with multiple RAID sets, which comprise separate disks. One
storage block each is allocated to the host operating system, VM storage and Lync SQL database storage.
Use of different storage blocks with isolated disks guarantees that there is no contention for disk access
among the three different stores.
3.2.3 Storage for Hyper-V Hosts
The functional separation of disk drives allows for simplified storage management. This storage design for
the physical hosts abides by the Hyper-V best practice that recommends against the placing of system
files, application data and logs on shared physical storage drives. Table 2 details the storage design for the
physical hosts.
Table 2 Lync Core Architecture Storage Requirements
Storage Building Blocks Disks Allocated RAID Configuration
Hyper-V® Server hypervisor
2 x 900-GB 10K RPM SAS
RAID 1
Virtual machines 2 x 900-GB 10K RPM SAS RAID 1
SQL databases
3
6 x 900-GB 10K RPM SAS
RAID 10
As shown in Table 2, 10,000 RPM SAS drives were leveraged for their throughput rather than higher
capacity NL-SAS or SATA drives. By using standardized 900-GB drives, sufficient capacity is provided for
the VM store and for the SQL databases. Note that these volumes are mirrored and therefore the effective
capacity is only half the total. For the VM store, a single VHDX volume was created for all VMs. The Lync
Standard Edition VMs need to be allocated some extra local hard disk space to account for the Lync
database.
Since Microsoft recommends VHDX format from Hyper-V 2012 onward, this solution leverages VHDX
volumes to ensure performance from all virtual machines. VHDX format has multiple benefits, including
several-fold improved performance over VHD format and its capability to store custom metadata about
operating system version, patches applied and more. Only fixed VHDX volumes are used for this solution.
3
Not required for PowerEdge R420 hosts running Edge and Reverse Proxy services. Only required for PowerEdge R620 hosts
running SQL server database.