Justifying hardware and software purchases is often a
difficult task for organizations of any size. It is, therefore,
important to balance the need for performance and redundancy with the
available funds in the budget, and, thus, deploy the optimal Exchange
Server hardware and software configuration.
Unlike versions of
Exchange Server prior to Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2010
requires the use of 64-bit capable systems, so it is critical to order
the appropriate equipment when deploying Exchange Server 2010 systems.
Designing Server Number and Placement
Exchange Server scales
very well to a large number of mailboxes on a single machine, depending
on the hardware chosen for the Exchange server. Subsequently, Exchange
Server 2010 is optimal for organizations that want to limit the amount
of servers that are deployed and supported in an environment.
Exchange 2000 Server
previously had one major exception to this concept, however. If multiple
sites required high-speed access to an Exchange server, multiple
servers were necessary for deployment. Exchange Server 2010, on the
other hand, expands upon the concept of site consolidation, introduced
in Exchange Server 2003. This concept enables smaller sites to use the
Exchange servers in the larger sites through the more efficient
bandwidth usage present in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003 and other
mobile technologies.
Providing for Server Redundancy and Optimization
The ability of the
Exchange server to recover from hardware failures is more than just a
“nice-to-have” feature. Many server models come with an array of
redundancy features, such as multiple fans and power supplies and
mirrored disk capabilities. These features incur additional costs,
however, so it is wise to perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine
what redundancy features are required. Midsize and larger organizations
should seriously consider robust redundancy options, however, because
the increased reliability and uptime is often well worth the up-front
costs.
Exchange Server 2010
further expands the redundancy options with the concept of Database
Availability Groups (DAGs), which enable for a mailbox database to
reside in up to 16 different locations at one time. This enables for
unprecedented levels of redundancy and frees the architect from the
requirement to focus heavily on server level redundancy because the loss
of a single server is no longer a catastrophic event.
One of the
most critical but overlooked performance strategies for Exchange Server
is the concept of separating the Exchange Server logs and database onto
separate physical drive sets. Because Exchange Server logs are very
write-intensive, and the database is read-intensive, having these
components on the same disk set would degrade performance. Separating
these components onto different disk sets, however, is the best way to
get the most out of Exchange Server.
Reviewing Server Memory and Processor Recommendations
Exchange
Server is a resource-hungry application that, left to its own devices,
will consume a good portion of any amount of processor or memory that is
given to it. The amount of processors and random access memory (RAM)
required should reflect the budgetary needs of the organization. In
general, midsize and larger organizations should consider multiprocessor
servers and greater amounts of RAM—8GB or 16GB or more. This helps
increase the amount of mailboxes that can be homed to any particular
server.
Note
The rule of thumb
when sizing an Exchange Server 2010 mailbox server is to start with 2GB
of RAM for a server; then add 5MB of RAM for each mailbox that will be
homed on it. For example, on a server with 3,000 mailboxes, at least
17GB of RAM would be required (2GB + (3000*.005GB)).
Outlining Server Operating System Considerations
The base operating system
(OS) for Exchange Server, Windows Server, comes in two versions,
Enterprise and Standard. Some midsize and larger organizations could
deploy the Enterprise Edition of the Windows Server product, namely for
clustering support. If this functionality is not required, the Standard
Edition of the OS is sufficient.
