exchange 2007 scale out/up question

Hello All,

I need to build an exchange 2007 server(s) to support 1000 users.
I am not sure how heavy the user load will be.
In ms documentation I found a comparison ms uses light....heavy.
For the the heavy user microsoft counts 5 MB memory per user.
The max mailbox size will be 250 MB / user.

I want to get a dual quad-xeon processor dell system with 8 GB of memory.
SAS harddrives with raid 0+1 configuration.

Any thoughts of this system being powerfull enough ?

If I want to scale out, what's the best thing to do ?
How to get more servers to load balance the load.

Then the question of high availability.
I read something about a single copy active/passive cluster.
That should do the trick, but I have difficulties in finding nice load
balancing solutions.

(Or should I buy a dozen servers :)

Thanks for any advice in this.

Regards,

Emiel.

Poo
Wed Apr 11 20:58:02 CDT 2007

Hi,

Good day. You did some research. Good job.

Rule of tumb, we will recommend to put 2GB for Exchange 2007 basic, with 4MB
per users. Your 0+1 configuration is great.

About high availability, you need to look into two category - mailbox server
and non-mailbox server.

For Mailbox server, you can think about LCR, CCR or even the traditional
Single Copy cluster. Do eval LCR and CCR before Single copy cluster as this
will lower down your TCO.

You will just need scale out for non-mailbox server, the load balance will
run auto.

Cheers


"Emiel" wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I need to build an exchange 2007 server(s) to support 1000 users.
> I am not sure how heavy the user load will be.
> In ms documentation I found a comparison ms uses light....heavy.
> For the the heavy user microsoft counts 5 MB memory per user.
> The max mailbox size will be 250 MB / user.
>
> I want to get a dual quad-xeon processor dell system with 8 GB of memory.
> SAS harddrives with raid 0+1 configuration.
>
> Any thoughts of this system being powerfull enough ?
>
> If I want to scale out, what's the best thing to do ?
> How to get more servers to load balance the load.
>
> Then the question of high availability.
> I read something about a single copy active/passive cluster.
> That should do the trick, but I have difficulties in finding nice load
> balancing solutions.
>
> (Or should I buy a dozen servers :)
>
> Thanks for any advice in this.
>
> Regards,
>
> Emiel.
>
>
>

Neil
Thu Apr 12 02:52:37 CDT 2007

1000 users at 5MB, plus the 2GB base memory required is less than 8GB so
that should be fine. Do you have an existing system that you can measure?
If so, you can measure the current load the users place onto the system (in
terms of IOPS, etc). Just having a RAID0+1 configuration is one thing, but
having enough spindles in the configuration is the real consideration.

Why not use the storage calculator available from the Exchange team blog?

Regarding high availability, it sounds like you've got plenty more reading
to do before you venture down that path :
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124721.aspx

--
Neil Hobson
Exchange MVP
http://www.msexchange.org/Neil_Hobson/


"Emiel" <Emiel@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5B1C13DD-7858-4720-95DA-E35CBE9BAD28@microsoft.com...
> Hello All,
>
> I need to build an exchange 2007 server(s) to support 1000 users.
> I am not sure how heavy the user load will be.
> In ms documentation I found a comparison ms uses light....heavy.
> For the the heavy user microsoft counts 5 MB memory per user.
> The max mailbox size will be 250 MB / user.
>
> I want to get a dual quad-xeon processor dell system with 8 GB of memory.
> SAS harddrives with raid 0+1 configuration.
>
> Any thoughts of this system being powerfull enough ?
>
> If I want to scale out, what's the best thing to do ?
> How to get more servers to load balance the load.
>
> Then the question of high availability.
> I read something about a single copy active/passive cluster.
> That should do the trick, but I have difficulties in finding nice load
> balancing solutions.
>
> (Or should I buy a dozen servers :)
>
> Thanks for any advice in this.
>
> Regards,
>
> Emiel.
>
>
>