Learn Exchange 2013 with me! - Multiple Databases per volume and Automatic Reseed
We continue to make improvements in ESE to make JBOD configurations a better choice for Exchange data. We optimized the engine even further to take the maximum possible advantage from disks that seem to be increasing in size every day, but from a speed perspective there is not much to talk about. Disks are growing in capacity and we want to make sure that we make optimal use of available capacity! Reduction in IO continues to help as well
8TB drives will be available very soon and with the existing recommended maximum database size for Exchange databases at 2TB, you are looking at wasting about 5TB of precious space on these disks!!
An excellent example of this configuration at work is documented on https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638137(v=exchg.150)
Automatic Reseed is another fantastic feature that we bring with Exchange 2013! Have a spare disk? We will use it when needed by Exchange J. We have all been paged for failed disks and sometimes database corruption that requires a database reseed. Sometimes, this has been at 3.00 AM in the morning!
Automatic Reseed comes to our rescue! With this feature, YOU provision spare disks on the Exchange Server and when we detect a failure we will attempt to pull the spare in to production, create the mount points etc. and reseed the databases automagically for you without any manual intervention!
This feature too is well documented on https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638137(v=exchg.150)
NOTE: There are specific configuration tasks that need to be executed for this to work. Also note that Multiple Databases per volume is a great thing, but requires a great deal of planning and design too! As usual, I hope the above helps!