Re: Performance Exchange 2003 Standard vs Enterprise
- From: "John Fullbright [MVP]" <fjohn@donotspamnetappdotcom>
- Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 13:20:59 -0700
"and your SAN may or may
not do what you think it will. "
In my previous career, prior to IT, the mantra was "In god we trust, all
others we verify"
I guess this mantra carries over to IT: measurement of SAN IO response
times would be a good idea. I've lost count of the number of times
undersized SAN storage did not perform as expected. Again, I would
concentrate on resource bottlenecks.
John
"Al Mulnick" <amulnick_No_SPAM@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eW9KlBFoGHA.4340@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Best technical solution? That would be to not use VMWARE to host the
servers for starters.
The two versions are binary compatible versions. One has more features
than the other. If you would rather run several versions of standard on
separate servers, then you'll get similar performance than if you ran
multiple storage groups/db's on a single except that your network, cpu,
storage and memory wouldn't be hit as hard on the standard boxes.
700+ mailboxes is really not that many in this day and age. Sub-1000
machines are not as common as they used to be in favor of 1500 and greater
mailbox servers.
The biggest factor affecting your db size (and hence your mailbox sizes
etc) is the amount of restore time it requires. Larger db's take longer
to get on and off tape than do smaller one's in multiple storage groups
(which can be backed up and restored in parallel).
There are plenty of sizing guides. Microsoft has a pretty good one at
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/library if you're interested. You can
search the net for John's name and see plenty of sizing related to
Exchange especially around disk sizing. He's very good at it and has
posted consistently good information about it.
VMWARE won't be able to scale as well with Exchange and your SAN may or
may not do what you think it will. Be sure to check and to remember that
Exchange is generally cache-unfriendly when it comes to SAN technology.
There are better SAN algorithms now, but you'll want to be sure you're
running SAN technology that takes that into account.
"Michel" <michel_wets@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:44abdb3e$0$430$4d4ebb8e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi John,
Connectivity or things like availablity of Global Catalog servers are
good, that is not the problem. And with VMWare ESX it's easy to scale up
the recources like processor usage or memory. I just would like to know
if more small standard servers are preferable over fewer heavier
Enterprise servers.
Even the Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2006 doesn't say
anything about Standerd or Enterprise edition.. Nor does it allow you to
take this into account when you run the simulation.
"John Fullbright [MVP]" <fjohn@donotspamnetappdotcom> wrote in message
news:e67VmCEoGHA.1244@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Instead on cocentating on the version, I'd concentrate on resource
bottlenecks.
"Michel" <michel_wets@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:44ab830e$0$429$4d4ebb8e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Performance Exchange 2003 Standard vs Enterprise
Hi,
We are now running an Exchange 2k3 Enterprise cluster but I need to add
more servers as performance drops with 700+ users and ever growing
mailboxes and e-mail usage. To give you an idea of the size: our total
Exchange store size is about 70 GB.
Maibox sizes are generally around 150MB with a few up to 2 GB (yes. I
know.) and may users also use PST files located on the File server.
We already have an network load balanced FrontEnd (Standard Edition).
I have to add one or more new servers to improve performance and want
to migrate the existing servers to a VMWare ESX environment (hooked up
to a high end SAN) as well.
The Exchange Virtual servers would be running on a IBM X366 3.16 GHZ
Xeon server and be given each 2 processors and as much memory as
needed.
What would give a better performance:
- 2 Enterpise Edition servers (not clustered) using all storage
groups to keep the stores relatively small
- 3 or 4 Standard edition servers each hosting 1 store
Up to SP2 we would have to opt for the Enterprise solution, but now the
maximum store size is extended in the Standard edition it's a different
story.
Obviously there is also a licensing cost aspect to the equation, but at
this point I'm wondering what would be the technical best solution.
I spend quite some time searching the web for performance differences
between the Standard and Enterprise Edition versions, but didn't find
anything helping me make this decision.
Many thanks,
Michel
.
- References:
- Performance Exchange 2003 Standard vs Enterprise
- From: Michel
- Re: Performance Exchange 2003 Standard vs Enterprise
- From: John Fullbright [MVP]
- Re: Performance Exchange 2003 Standard vs Enterprise
- From: Michel
- Re: Performance Exchange 2003 Standard vs Enterprise
- From: Al Mulnick
- Performance Exchange 2003 Standard vs Enterprise
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