Learning Exchange 2007

M

Mabrito

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 24, 2004
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One of my summer goals this summer while on break is to learn Exchange 2007 and get it going. My "learning/test" server consists of the following specs:

2 AMD Opteron 2218's
4 gigs of ram
500 gig SATA hard drive (should be a SAS drive I know)

I have Windows 2008 Enterprise installed for my base OS and created a VM with Hyper-V to install Exchange on. I gave the VM 2 processors and a gig of memory Obviously I know its a bad idea to virtualize Exchange but this for my learning purposes only.

My question is, besides the recommended specs, what specs have you guys found that Exchange runs best on? I plan on putting another 4 gigs of ram into this server soon after my next paycheck and then give the Exchange VM more ram, probably 3 gigs worth. Right now the Exchange server with all the roles installed is killing my memory and wants more.

Also, I have a spare P4 computer with 512mb of ram laying around that I plan on using for the Edge Transport server. Would this PC be enough for the Edge Transport task?

Also, you guys know of any sites with good info on Exchange 2007?
 
Exchange 2007 smokes RAM like a crack whore. I won't install it with less than 4GB and two cores. I prefer to have 8GB and 4 cores for a box with all roles installed. In my experience it runs just fine in a virtual environment, provided you give it enough resources.

Petri is a good source. I like msexchange and exchangeninjas, too.
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8GB and 4 Cores @ 2.5Ghz is what I've got mine running on.

But give it enough horsepower and Exchange 2007 runs beautifully, being 64 bit and all.
 
Alright sounds good, I may just buy some 2 gig sticks instead of 1 gig sticks to fill up the rest of my slots then and give it 4 gigs of ram. I have 4 free slots for ram so I may give it an extra 8 gigs of ram to make a total of 12 gigs and then dedicate 4 gigs to the Exchange VM.
 
I've never even actually deployed Exch 07 on a physical box (outside of SBS 08). Every single deployment has been in ESX.
 
vertices said:
I've never even actually deployed Exch 07 on a physical box (outside of SBS 08). Every single deployment has been in ESX.
Click to expand...

:eek:

Exchange is just one of those deals to where you almost need dedicated hardware...

At least for a busy server. I guess for your home or something a VM would work.
 
TechieSooner said:
:eek:

Exchange is just one of those deals to where you almost need dedicated hardware...

At least for a busy server. I guess for your home or something a VM would work.
Click to expand...

Not true. I just got done setting up an Exchange 2007 server with 4x CPUs and 8GB of RAM in a clustered VMware environment and you'd never know the difference. It's all about how you set things up. This is a network that has about 100 mailboxes. I've also worked on larger deployments with thousands of mailboxes and all exchange 2007 servers were virtualized whith great success.
 
Captain Colonoscopy said:
Not true. I just got done setting up an Exchange 2007 server with 4x CPUs and 8GB of RAM in a clustered VMware environment and you'd never know the difference. It's all about how you set things up. This is a network that has about 100 mailboxes. I've also worked on larger deployments with thousands of mailboxes and all exchange 2007 servers were virtualized whith great success.
Click to expand...

What else was running on it?
 
TechieSooner said:
What else was running on it?
Click to expand...

Right now there is a dedicated Domain Controller/NPS server and four Debian Linux servers running some custom apps and nagios. There are three DL380G5 servers with dual 2.83GHz Quad-Core Xeons and 20GB of RAM in the cluster. VMotion and DRS is enabled so VMs are migrated as needed to spread out the load.
 
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