Forefront Protection 2010 Capacity Planning Tool

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The folks at Microsoft released version 1.0 of the Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server capacity planning tool. This tool is to aid you in planning and sizing your FPE configuration.

The tool starts with the question if you want to evaluate your current setup or are planning for a new environment. After that you need to select the required architecture, Standard for small to medium sized organizations or Enterprise for large organizations (e.g. combined Exchange Server roles). You can define the required level of protection (i.e. number of engines on Edge, Hub Transport and Mailbox Server roles) and see the predicted effect on the hardware requirements. After completing the questionnaire you receive the recommended hardware configuration.

You can also see the predicted performance for different setups, i.e. virtual or non-virtual setup, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as Exchange level (2007 or 2010).

You can download the FPE capacity planning tool here.

Exchange 2007 Mailbox Role Calculator 17.3

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Exchange 2007? Yes! With all this Exchange 2010 coverage one might forget about Exchange 2007, but not the Exchange team who updated the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator to version 17.3.

The major change in this version compared to version 16.9 (released April, 2009!) is a change in the IOPS calculation. This change is to based on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Performance Benchmarking Guide which simplifies the IOPS calculation in combination with 3rd party software.

The update also contains some bug fixes which are contained in the release notes. You can download the calculator here; usage instructions can be found here.

Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator

OCS 2007 R2 – UC Voice Specialization

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

In the Exchange UM area, it is good to know an exam is now available for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in relation to Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging and Active Directory. This exam, 74-404 Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 – U.C. Voice Specialization, covers the following topics:

Architecting and designing Microsoft Unified Communications Voice Solutions;
Administering users, clients;
Configuring servers and components, integration (e.g. Exchange UM);
Troubleshooting OCS 2007 R2 deployments.

You should also have experience with network infrastructure components supporting OCS 2007 R2.

Check out the prep guide here, you can register for the exam at Prometric.

Exchange 2010 Protocol Documentation 5.0

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The Exchange 2010 protocol documentation set has been updated to version 5.0. No mentioning of what’s new or updated in this set, but always good to have the latest documents available. You can retrieve the individual documents or the complete set here.

Exchange 2010 Message Tracking error

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

When trying the Message Tracking tool from Exchange 2010 I received an authorization dialog (while being logged in with proper credentials). After authorizing myself, I received the following error message: