Whats more important – Users per server or Database Size or End user Mailbox Size ????
In Exchange, normally a lot of of emphasize is given to users per server and storage group. Why would that be ???
Its not users per server/SG that matters. Its the total size of the database.
MS recommends not to let your Exchange DB(edb+stm) grow larger than 100GB. This would be high availability and backup and restore purpose…
With E2K7 in highlight with capability of 50 SG’s, I would rather prefer to have 1 DB/SG with DB size of b/w 40-50 Gigs.
Again, coming back to mailbox size. Does it really matter to have a 10 gig or 20gig mailbox size? nope…
Understand that most performance issues are not the result of large mailbox size but instead the number of items in the folder or folders that are being accessed on the server. Having many items in a folder adversely affects performance because operations in those folders will take longer.
Bottom line is, its not the mailbox size that matters, its item count.
In E2K3 we had a recommended to have less than 5000 items per folder in Outlook as more item count has always put burden on the server.
With E2K7, its been improved drastically.
When you use Outlook 2007 SP1 with the February 2009 cumulative update or higher and have more than 50,000 items in a single folder, views other than Arranged By: Date can be slower.
As experts do, set up a CCR (I love the new tech- log shipping) maybe virtual or physical and if its a server with more users, set a Global size limit of 200 – 500 MB and your exchange will work just fine….
FYI… I wont personally recommend the Mailbox role to be on a virtual platform.
This might interest you….
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/03/24/450881.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995715.aspx
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2005/03/14/395229.aspx
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/04/24/438170.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc535025.aspx
PFDAVAdmin is one amazing tool which will take an item count report of per user mailbox.
Also remember the ground rule…
System files, Exchange Logs files and Database on different PHYSICAL drives….
RAID 10 is what MS recommends for E2K7… but SAN works just fine….
July 6th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Hi. I like the way you write. Will you post some more articles?
February 15th, 2012 at 8:15 am
I like it, could you please elaborate it more..