Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2003 have data configuration requirements with respect to the number of Storage Groups per server, the number of databases per Storage Group, the number of databases per server, Recovery Storage Groups, Recovery Databases, and Storage Groups per virtual server.
A DAG can have up to a maximum of 16 Exchange 2010 member servers.
If you use Exchange Server 2003, each server can have 1 to 4 Storage Groups per server. If you use Exchange Server 2007, each server can have 1 to 50 Storage Groups per server. Storage Groups are not present in Exchange Server 2010.
If you use Exchange Server 2003, each Storage Group can have 1 to 5 databases per Storage Group. If you use Exchange Server 2007, you can mix the Storage Group and database configuration based on your requirements. For example, you can have either 25 databases each in two Storage Groups, or one database each in 50 Storage Groups.
The maximum number of databases that can be associated with each Exchange Server 2010 is 100.
A Recovery Storage Group enables you to mount a copy of a mailbox store on a production server, and recover the data within the restored mailbox store when the current mailbox store is still running.
If you are using Exchange Server 2003, you must use Exchange System Manager (ESM) to manually create the Recovery Storage Group.
If you are using Exchange 2007, SnapManager creates a Recovery Storage Group automatically when you restore a backup to a Recovery Storage Group. You can also create and manage Recovery Storage Groups by using the Exchange Management Shell.
A Recovery Database allows you to restore, recover, and mount your database to a different Exchange server. It is a feature available with Exchange Server 2010. Each Exchange Server 2010 can have only one such Recovery Database mounted at any time.
An Exchange Server 2003 cluster has one or more Exchange virtual servers. In a two-node cluster, you can have a maximum of four Storage Groups on the complete cluster.
An active/passive Exchange Server cluster can have more than two cluster nodes. The maximum number of Exchange virtual servers in an active/passive cluster is one less than the number of nodes in the cluster. An active/passive Exchange cluster can have more than four Storage Groups because only one Exchange virtual server runs on a cluster node at a time.
The following table shows the maximum number of Storage Groups (including the Recovery Storage Group) and databases that Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2007 support.
| Exchange Server | Configurations supported for Standard Edition | Configurations supported for Enterprise Edition | ||
| Storage Group support | Number of databases per Storage Group | Storage Group support | Number of databases per Storage Group | |
| Exchange Server 2003 | 1 | 1 Mailbox store and 1 public folder store | 4 | 5 |
| Exchange Server 2007 | 5 | 5 | 50 | 50 |
The following table shows the maximum number of databases (including the Recovery Database) that Exchange Server 2010 supports.