Zimbra Forums

Hi,

I'm looking forward to install a new server to migrate from Ubuntu 12.04 in order to install the next updates.

Our infrastructure is 2 ESX servers and a SAN.

Current disk config on Zimbra (df -h):
I have not installed this server and the person who did no longer works for our company.

What is the best storage configuration to set at the installation of Ubuntu ? I'd like to allocate 2TB to Zimbra on the new server

Also what are the best CPU/vCPU, storage (thin, static/eager or static/lazy) and RAM settings in vSphere ?

Thanks !

Best Regards

What's your current (VM) server specifications for the ZCS server and what hardware does the ESXi hosts and the SAN have?

Hello,
As phoenix said, please let us know what kind of SAN you have, for the compute, etc, my advice will be:
- CPU/vCPU - It depends on the number of users, and what these users do if they connect using ActiveSync, or web client, or ZCO, etc. You can use the next tool to create a VM which is accurate to your NUMA - http://wintelguy.com/vmcalc.pl
- Storage: Please use PVSCI controller for the VM and THICK/EAGER, this will give you the best performance. But also you said you have 2TB, do the action as THICK/EAGER will take a long time.
- Net: Please use VMXNET3 for the network type

Other than that, the performance will depend of the Storage you have, and the resources of the VM. Try to avoid RAID5/6 to storage this, and try to have SAS, SSD or NVME if possible for the storage.

Please let us know

Hello Jorge,

Thank you for taking time to reply.

Current config :

Zimbra is hosted on our Raid5 SAN (HP P2000) with SAS 15k hard drives
The VM has :
14GB of RAM
2 vCPUs (2 sockets/1 core per socket)
2 hard drives (25GB & 1.5TB)
Controller is LSI LogicParallel, I'll take a look à PVSCI, I didn't know this.
1 LAN adapter (E1000)

We have 480 accounts in Zimbra so it's not a very large infrastructure
We have an ESX cluster of 2 servers with 196GB of RAM each, 8CPUs for the first, 12 for the other one.
This setup is 30 months old, one of the servers (with the lesser CPUs) is a bit older (4-5 years maybe). All HP (ML350p G8 and DL380p G8)

Hope you have enough information with this.

Appreciate your help. Thanks.

Hello,

Any advice ?

Best regards
David.

Hello David,
The number of vCPU is low, I will recommend to go to 4, also pleaseuse VMXNET3 for Networking, and please use PVSCI for the disk controller.

If you install Ubuntu 16.04 for the Operating system, you will have not trouble with that Virtual Hardwarde configuration.

Still, with all that users, I would recommend a multi-server configuration, with one LDAP (1vCPU, 2GB RAM, 25GB Disk) (Protected by Veeam or similar at Hypervirsor level) You can install another and do a multi-master, one MTA/Proxy (2vCPU, 2GB RAM, 25GB Disk) (Protected by Veeam or similar at Hypervirsor level), Mailboxes up to 200 Users (4vCPU, 8GB RAM, 25GB Disk + Mailboxes space kind of 750GB per each server) (Protected by Veeam or similar at Hypervirsor level)

Still, this is just advice, and don't take as official Zimbra recommendation or such. We have a Professional Services team here at Zimbra which can orientate you better, more information here - https://www.zimbra.com/support/expert-services-offered/

Hello Jorge,

Ok I'll investigate this multi-server configuration which may not be the easiest to maintain but according to the disk space needed, it may be more flexible.

Thanks for your help.

Best Regards