Systems Center Capacity Planner for Exchange 2007 February 5, 2008
Posted by Brenden Bryan in Exchange.trackback
Microsoft released a very cool utility to assist in the capacity planning for your Exchange 2007 environment, the Systems Center Capacity Planner for Exchange 2007 will allow you to input usage scenarios, redundancy and availability requirements and will output a recommended configuration.
For example, I put in the details for what the details would look like for the existing Exchange 2003 environment I manage today if we were going to deploy Exchange 2007 using the same availability assumptions we have in the current environment. This is the solution the tool recommended:
Topology
Sites with servers: 1
Sites with clients only: 100
Total number of clients: 700
Site: Lenexa
Number of users: 600
Number of servers: 8
Number of SAN connections: 1
Server: Client Access Server 1
Processor: 2-processor, 2.13 GHz, Xeon 3000-Series (1-chip x 2-core)
Minimum memory: 4.0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (Data Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Disk (OS Volume): Separate two-disk RAID-1 array for OS
NIC: 1 x 1,000 Mb/s
Roles: Client Access
Server: Client Access Server 2
Processor: 2-processor, 2.13 GHz, Xeon 3000-Series (1-chip x 2-core)
Minimum memory: 4.0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (Data Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Disk (OS Volume): Separate two-disk RAID-1 array for OS
NIC: 1 x 1,000 Mb/s
Roles: Client Access
Server: Edge Transport Server 1
Processor: 2-processor, 2.13 GHz, Xeon 3000-Series (1-chip x 2-core)
Minimum memory: 2.0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (Data Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
DiskArray 1\Volume 2 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Disk (OS Volume): Separate two-disk RAID-1 array for OS
NIC: 1 x 1,000 Mb/s
Roles: Edge Transport
Server: Edge Transport Server 2
Processor: 2-processor, 2.13 GHz, Xeon 3000-Series (1-chip x 2-core)
Minimum memory: 2.0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (Data Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
DiskArray 1\Volume 2 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Disk (OS Volume): Separate two-disk RAID-1 array for OS
NIC: 1 x 1,000 Mb/s
Roles: Edge Transport
Server: Hub Transport Server 1
Processor: 2-processor, 2.13 GHz, Xeon 3000-Series (1-chip x 2-core)
Minimum memory: 2.0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (Data Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
DiskArray 1\Volume 2 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Disk (OS Volume): Separate two-disk RAID-1 array for OS
NIC: 1 x 1,000 Mb/s
Roles: Hub Transport
Server: Hub Transport Server 2
Processor: 2-processor, 2.13 GHz, Xeon 3000-Series (1-chip x 2-core)
Minimum memory: 2.0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (Data Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
DiskArray 1\Volume 2 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Disk (OS Volume): Separate two-disk RAID-1 array for OS
NIC: 1 x 1,000 Mb/s
Roles: Hub Transport
Server: Mailbox Server
Processor: 4-processor, 2.20 GHz, Opteron (2-chip x 2-core)
Minimum memory: 8.0 GB
Disk (OS Volume): Separate two-disk RAID-1 array for OS
NIC: 1 x 1,000 Mb/s
SAN connections: 2 x 4 Gb/s
SANs: SAN Array\Volume 1 (Data Files), 1200 GB RAID 10 (8 x 300.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
SAN Array\Volume 2 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
SAN Array\Volume 3 (Replica Data Files), 1200 GB RAID 10 (8 x 300.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
SAN Array\Volume 4 (Replica Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Roles: Mailbox(Local Continuous Replication)
Server: Remote Passive Mailbox Server
Processor: 4-processor, 2.20 GHz, Opteron (2-chip x 2-core)
Minimum memory: 8.0 GB
Disk (OS Volume): Separate two-disk RAID-1 array for OS
NIC: 1 x 1,000 Mb/s
SAN connections: 2 x 4 Gb/s
SANs: SAN Array\Volume 5 (Data Files), 1200 GB RAID 10 (8 x 300.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
SAN Array\Volume 6 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
SAN Array\Volume 7 (Replica Data Files), 1200 GB RAID 10 (8 x 300.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
SAN Array\Volume 8 (Replica Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Roles: Passive Mailbox(Standby plus Local Continuous Replication)
SAN: SAN Array
Disk: Volume 1 (Data Files), 1200 GB RAID 10 (8 x 300.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Volume 2 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Volume 3 (Replica Data Files), 1200 GB RAID 10 (8 x 300.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Volume 4 (Replica Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Volume 5 (Data Files), 1200 GB RAID 10 (8 x 300.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Volume 6 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Volume 7 (Replica Data Files), 1200 GB RAID 10 (8 x 300.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
Volume 8 (Replica Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146.00 GB SCSI 15,000 RPM)
So 8 servers, I assume they want all these to be Blades or VM’s of some sort. Or is MS saying cluster each role server?
Exchange 2k7 makes no sense for any entity under 500 users.
The physical layer would be left up to the individual IT department, as some have a preference for blades or VMs or even VMs on blades. This output would assume that clustering would not be used as the role separation would provide redundancy and load-balancing.
As far as E2k7 not being a fit for anyone under 500 users, it would depend on what the requirements are for an organization under 500 users and if the features of E2k7 match up with those requirements.
Also, I may not have made it clear, this would be supporting approximately 2000 users, 500 of which access the environment through a shared WAN. 8 servers may seem excessive, but that is a direct result of SLA and uptime requirements. Every environment is different, so its not one size fits all.