I'm beginning my investigation of upgrading our current environment from 2007 to 2013. There is a wealth of information about what you can and can't do. Before I get started though I'm interested in any advice anyone may have about hardware.
I understand that 2010 and 2013 both use database availability groups (DAG's) for database redundancy.
We currently have 3 2007 servers. One HUD Transport/MB server, one MB server, and one CAS server.
I understand there is no upgrade path and that one must built out a separate environment and connect it to 2007 then move mailboxes.
My idea was to buy one beefy server, say the latest and greatest with 64GB ram, with a redundant raid 5 drive array and plenty of space, and house everything on this server.
We only have about 320 mailboxes, about 385 GB of total space used, and process about 7000 mails a day. Dell tells me one server could easily handle that.
I would imagine though I don't get any value from DAG, having everything on one server. Does anyone see any pitfalls with this approach?