Exchange 2010 # of Mailboxes?

K

KapsZ28

2[H]4U
Joined
May 29, 2009
Messages
2,114
I know there isn't any actual limit for the number of mailboxes, but just wondering what you typically see.

Let's say this is Exchange 2010 with all roles installed on a single VM. The VM would probably have 4 vCPUs and 24 GB of vRAM. Disk space can be increased to many terabytes if needed. Average user mailbox is about 2 GB in size. The Exchange VM will be located in a datacenter and there are 5 client locations that will be accessing the Exchange server.

With a setup like that, have many mailboxes do you think the server can comfortably support?
 
You need to spend a bit of time reading this because there's a lot of factors that go into exchange performance that you haven't talked about. It's nowhere near as simple as X RAM/mailbox.
 
-Dragon- said:
You need to spend a bit of time reading this because there's a lot of factors that go into exchange performance that you haven't talked about. It's nowhere near as simple as X RAM/mailbox.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I already read that.

Although, one clarification to what I said. Only Mailbox, CAS, and HT roles will be installed, but they will all be on one VM. No Edge Transport or Unified Messaging.
 
It still depends on your storage subsystem and what kind of mail load you expect. As far as just RAM goes it says 3-30MB/mailbox over the recommended 8GB minimum, so 16GB / 3-30MB is ~550 to 5500 mailboxes. Does that really help you without knowing all the other stuff that article talks about? Probably not.
 
-Dragon- said:
It still depends on your storage subsystem and what kind of mail load you expect. As far as just RAM goes it says 3-30MB/mailbox over the recommended 8GB minimum, so 16GB / 3-30MB is ~550 to 5500 mailboxes. Does that really help you without knowing all the other stuff that article talks about? Probably not.
Click to expand...


Yes, that is more helpful. Thank you!
 
KapsZ28 said:
NetApp FAS3240 with 15K SAS drives. Although I believe Microsoft recommends SATA drives now.
Click to expand...

They say you can use SATA thanks to DAG but if you buy that I have some ocean front property in Arizona to sell you. And at any rate, you a) aren't using DAG, and b) have a nice SAN to use. That NetApp should be plenty fast enough.
 
Make sure you are using iSCSI with that Netapp, OS can be on NFS if you really want to, but everything else exchange related should be on iSCSI.
 
ND40oz said:
Make sure you are using iSCSI with that Netapp, OS can be on NFS if you really want to, but everything else exchange related should be on iSCSI.
Click to expand...

Really? Interesting that you mention that. Our guys setup the NetApp to only use NFS. What is the difference between the two?
 
Yeah, but if you are using iSCSI, shouldn't that be going through a completely separate network? Right now we have everything going through the same switches. Just separate VLANs.
 
Separate VLANs are fine, you can trunk the ports, especially if you're using 10GbE.
 
I mainly started this thread after speaking to the owner of a small MSP IT company. We are a cloud provider and will be setting up IAAS for him. When talking about the company that is going to be migrated to Exchange 2010, the owner requested two Exchange servers because there are 100 mailboxes for a total of almost 75 GB.

My enterprise experience was mostly Exchange 2003. When I supported that company, we had about 150,000 mailboxes and probably 30+ Exchange servers. As for Exchange 2010, I've only support SMB's with maybe 300 users max. And those have almost been dedicated servers with local storage.
 
You should tell him he could probably run his email just fine on an atom powered server with a slow sata drive.
 
For the most part the others have it nailed. Although MS has made significant progress at reducing the disk I/O requirements with 07, 10, and 13. But for 100mailboxes and 75GB, a better question to help you guage need would be how long it took to get to 75GB. i.e. What is their daily mailflow?
 
We have 2200 mailboxes on a single server. Why in the world would you want two of them for 100 mailboxes?

You don't get HA unless you set up a CAS array anyway so all 2 gets you is a copy of your database on another server. You'll still be down if the one holding the cas role eats it.

For that type of setup I would recommend just fast as possible recovery time instead of trying for redundancy. HA configs introduce a lot of complexity (and licensing) that most SMB's can't afford or support anyway.
 
Eickst said:
We have 2200 mailboxes on a single server. Why in the world would you want two of them for 100 mailboxes?

You don't get HA unless you set up a CAS array anyway so all 2 gets you is a copy of your database on another server. You'll still be down if the one holding the cas role eats it.

For that type of setup I would recommend just fast as possible recovery time instead of trying for redundancy. HA configs introduce a lot of complexity (and licensing) that most SMB's can't afford or support anyway.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've configured DAG before and it is a pain in the ass if you don't know what it takes to make it completely HA.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top