Last Update: Version 1.2, July 9th, 2018.

Anyone sizing for Exchange Server 2013/2016 or even still Exchange Server 2010, using the Server Role Requirements Calculator, has to determine processor requirements at some point. This is accomplished by looking up the SPECint_rate2006 score of the planned processor configuration and matching that against the calculated number of required megacycles by the calculator. To account for fail-over situations, additional overhead needs to be added to the number of megacycles. The process as part of the overall sizing has been explained in detail by Jeff Mealiffe here.

The Exchange consultants’ Swiss army knife when determining SPECint rates is the Exchange Processor Query Tool, an Excel sheet designed by Scott Alexander from Microsoft, which allows you to easily look up and determine the SPECint_rate2006 value by inputting a processor model. While still useful, the tool has been out there since 2011. Also, it would be nice sometimes to see which systems are eligible for a certain sizing specification, rather than validating if the planned processor configuration meets the sizing requirements.

So, I wrote a PowerShell script which can query the SPECint rates for you. Because the rating scores are returned as objects, you can perform additional tasks using PowerShell functionality, such as:

• Use additional criteria, such as vendor, min/max number of cores, etc.
• Calculate the average SPECint2006 Rate Value for a certain CPU/cores configuration.
• You can use the SPECint value calculated by the Server Role Requirements Calculator  to find hardware configurations which meet the required total megacycles requirements, optionally including a required overhead percentage.
• You can select if you are sizing for Exchange Server 2010 or Exchange Server 2013.

Requirements
The script requires PowerShell and internet access to query the SPECint database.

Usage
The script is called Exchange-PQT.ps1, in honor of the Processor Query Tool (PQT).  The syntax is as follows:

Exchange-PQT.ps1 [-CPU <String>] [-Vendor <String>] [-System <String>] [-Overhead <Int32>] [-MinMegaCycles <Int32>] [-Type <String>] [-MinCores <Int32>] [-MaxCores <Int32>] [-MinChips <Int32>] [-MaxChips <Int32>] [<CommonParameters>]

The information returned and which you can use for post-processing is: Vendor, System, CPU (processor description), Cores, Chips (number of CPU’s), CoresPerChip (number of Cores per CPU), Speed, Result, Baseline, MCyclesPerCore (megacycles per core), MCyclesTotal (total megacycles), OS and Published. Note that megacycles calculations are based on the selected Exchange version, by default this is Exchange Server 2013.

A quick walk-through on the parameters:

• CPU, Vendor or System can be used for partial matching on the respective attribute.
• Type specifies what calculation to perform. Possible values are 2010 for Exchange Server 2010 and 2013 for Exchange Server 2013. Default value is 2013.
• MinCores/MaxCores/Cores can be used to only return information for systems with less, more or a specific number of cores.
• MinChips/MaxChips/Chips can be used to only return information for systems with this more, less or a specific number of CPU’s.
• MinMegaCycles can be used to specify a threshold for the total megacycles value for returned items, using the specified Type for calculations.
• Overhead can optionally be used to take into account a certain percentage for megacycles overhead. Default is 0 (0%).
• Ratio/vCPU can be used to specify the vCPU:pCPU ratio. For example, specify a Ratio of 2 to use a 2:1 vCPU to pCPU ratio. Default is 1 (1:1). Use the vCPU paramete to specify the the number of vCPU allocated.

Few notes:

• MinCores/MaxCores and MinChips/MaxChips are mutually exclusive, because we can not specify both in the query against the SPECint database. However, you can use additional filtering on objects returned in the pipeline to distill information, e.g.

  Exchange-PQT.ps1 –MaxCores 32 –MaxChips 8 | Where { $_.Cores –ge 4 –and $_.Chips –ge 2}.

  Do note that usage of these parameters is recommended when possibe, as it will minimize the result set from SPECint.

• Make sure you set Type to 2010 when sizing for Exchange 2010.

Examples

Lookup the specifications of the server used by Jeff in his sizing example (Hewlett-Packard DL380p Gen8 server with Intel Xeon E5-2630 processors @2.30GHz):

.\Exchange-PQT.ps1 -System 'DL380p Gen8'  -CPU 2630 | select System,MCycle*

Search all specs for systems from Dell containing x5470 processors and return megacycle information for Exchange 2010 calculations:

.\Exchange-PQT.ps1 -CPU x5470 -Vendor 'Dell Inc.' -Type 2010 | Select System,*cycle*

Calculate average SPECint 2006 rate values for  hex-core x5450 systems:

.\Exchange-PQT.ps1 -CPU x5470 | Where { $_.Cores -eq 8 } | Measure -Average Result

Search all specs for Dell systems using x5670 CPUs, with a minimum total of 16,000 megacycles and 20% megacycle overhead:

.\Exchange-PQT.ps1 –Vendor Dell -CPU x5670  -MinMegaCycles 16000 -Overhead 20 

To calculate when using a non-1:1 vCPU:pCPU ratio, use Ratio in combination with vCPU. For example, to calculate the average SpecInt rate for 20 core systems with an E5-2670 CPU, using a 2:1 vCPU:pCPU ratio, allocating 12 vCPU cores:

.\Exchange-PQT.ps1 -CPU 'e5-2670' -Cores 20 -Ratio 2 -vCPU 12 | Measure-Object -Average -Property Result

Download
You can download the script from the TechNet Gallery page or  GitHub.

Feedback
Feedback is welcomed through the comments. If you got scripting suggestions or questions, do not hesitate using the contact form.

Revision History
See TechNet Gallery page.