How should you split your users inside the stores?
My preferred naming conventions are to call the storage groups:
· First Storage Group
· Second Storage Group
And so on.
The upside is that everyone can see what is going on, the folder hierarchy on disk has the same names and the documentation is easily comprehensible. Calling them Fred, Barney, Daphne and Wilma is entirely equally valid of course.
Consider though your recovery plan. When Exchange goes, you implement your recovery plan and assuming you don’t have the luxury of CCR with its few minutes of downtime, you need to recover from some form of backup. Backups work in alphabetical order! Therefore, in my preferred naming strategy, “Fourth Storage Group” would restore before “Second Storage Group” which caught me out first time.
You may (legitimately) think therefore that all key users should go into “First Storage Group” or at least the first one alphabetically. But before you implement that, think strategically for the firm. How about these group names?
“1 – Directors”
“2 – Senior Managers”
“3 – Middle Managers”
“4 – Everyone else”
In that instance, during the restore, the Directors will come back first and can get on with their work and mailboxes will arrive back in hierarchy order. Great! But if you only lose one storage group due to corruption on disk, you can bet your arse that it will be the one with all of the Directors. What happens when one Director loses his email? He goes to see his team. When they all lose email? They all come and see you.
Should you spread the risk? Well, that’s not one I can answer because as with so much in Exchange...”it depends”. Maybe that should be the title of my book.
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