Number of Message Stores

[sarrick]

Will Unity (3.1.5 or above) see all the message stores in a forest, and if so, could I connect to more than five stores if I had to (knowing it is not supported). Can you help me understand why there is a five store limit? Thanks.

[lindborg]

Where are you reading there's a 5 store limit? You can have a single Unity server talking to any number of Exchange servers in a routing group (far more than 5). Do you mean 5 mailstores on a particular server?

[sarrick]

Unless I understand it wrong - this document link (see below) is telling me a single unity box will only support 5 mailstores (one server or 5 servers). I could potentially have up to 20 per server (4 storage groups per server with 5 stores per group) by Microsofts standards. Any idea where this number 5 came from? Is more than 5 stores supported or should I be more concerned adhearing to the supported number of Unity Subscribers per server? Thanks

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/voice/c_unity/design/udg/udg_060.htm#1088555

[lindborg · Accepted solution]

OK... according folks responsible for the info in that doc (the performance team guys) this is actually not correct - they were supposed to be talking about the limit of storage groups per Exchange server, not mailstores Unity can talk to - I think that section is wrong on a few levels (it should be 4 storage groups not 5 mailstores and it doesn't have anything to do with Unity). They'll work on updating that.

Unity can handle subscriber's homed on any number of Exchange servers/mailstores that are configured to Microsoft's spec - so long as the total number of subscribers falls within the specs for the hardware/config of the Unity box you should be fine.

[maratimer_2]

I just checked the documentation and it still states the 5 mail store limitation. Can you please advise us whether or not this is actually the case or if it is actually storage groups? We designed our exchange servers to house 3 storage groups (max. of 14 mailstores per server) for Backup and restore SLAs and if Unity cant utilize all of these mailstores per server (one unity server to one exchagne cluster), then we may have a big issue. Please confirm which statement is correct, the text below from the document or your statement above about the storage groups? We are running Unity 3.1.5.

Thanks in advance.

"Number of Exchange Message Stores Supported by a Single Cisco Unity Server

A single Cisco Unity 4.0 server can support up to five Exchange 2000 message stores running on one or more Exchange 2000 servers in a domain. If connectivity to more than five Exchange 2000 message stores is desired, a second Cisco Unity server is required. A single Cisco Unity 4.0 server can service message stores directly or via the Microsoft Exchange 2000 front end/back end configuration"