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Q. What are the sizing recommendations for Exchange 2010?
John Savill
September 24, 2009
1 Min Read
A. There are some changes in architecture in Exchange 2010. All clients, even Outlook, connect via the Client Access Servers (CAS). There are some changes in recommendations around the ratio of resource for CAS/Hub and the mailbox servers.
Microsoft provides detailed guidelines on this Technet page and this one.
The basic guidelines for server role ratios is as follows. They're based on the number of mailbox server cores.
Hub—7:1 (no antivirus on Hub) or 5:1 (antivirus on hub). 1GB of memory for each core.
CAS—4:3 (note this is much higher than with previous Exchange installations). 2GB of memory for each core.
DC—1:4 (32-bit Domain Controller (DC)) or 1:8 (64-bit DC, and the DC has enough memory to cache the entire NTDS.DIT file).
Edge server—Based on peak connections and messages per second and average message size. 1GB of memory for each core.
Each mailbox server should have 4GB of memory plus 2-10MB per mailbox, based on if the mailbox is in light, average, or heavy use.
Related Reading:
Q. Is it true that Exchange 2010 supports SATA disks and disks not in a RAID array?
Exchange 2010: No 32-Bit for You
Check out hundreds more useful Q&As like this in John Savill's FAQ for Windows. Also, watch instructional videos made by John at ITTV.net.
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