Exchange 2019 install location best practice

Question

New Exchange 2019 install.

Is it best practice to install Exchange on the C partition or create a new partition?

What is the recommended capacity for this partition?

Is there a reason to not store logs and the database on the same partition?

Answer 1

Hi @Susan Dodds

Refer to the below thread discussed the similar issue best practice for Exchange installation path:

Recommendation for Exchange 2016 default installation path

Intalling on C or on a separate disk are both supported. Make sure you have meet the Exchange Server system requirements

And Database Log File Best Practices / Microsoft Recommended Configuration
Exchange Server 2016: Data and log files location

The official document here introduces about Best practices for supported storage configurations
Mailbox database and log volume co-location are not recommended in standalone architectures. In high availability architectures, there are two possibilities for this scenario:

• Single database per volume
• Multiple databases per volume

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Answer 2

The first link gives conflicting answers as to whether installing on the c partition is recommended or not.

Exchange 2019 is going to be on a Hyper-V vm located on a raid 10 and will all be on that virtual machine with a single virtual hard drive so I am looking at bet practice to partition a single virtual hard drive and install location on that virtual hard drive.

This will be a exchange 2016/2019 coexistence and then eventually a single exchange 2019 server.

Answer 3

The C: is perfectly fine. I prefer making it 500GB to account for diagnostic logging and the transport queue.

The Logs and DB should NOT be on the same volume if this is a stand-alone server.

Answer 4

Would there be any difficulty if the main virtual hard drive was on a raid 10 and the log virtual hard drive was on a raid 1?

Answer 5

No, that would be a great solution. ( Main hard drive means database I assume)

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/Exchange/plan-and-deploy/deployment-ref/storage-configuration?redirectedfrom=MSDN&view=exchserver-2019#best-practices-for-supported-storage-configurations