It’s been a while since the last update, but today the Exchange Team released a minor update to the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Calculator, bringing it to version 18.9.

Note: Apparantly there was also a 18.2 version, which wasn’t announced publicly on the EHLO blog. It looks like 18.2 was released on April 7th. I’ll also mention the changes in that version compared to the last publicly announced version, which was 17.8.

Enhancements and Bug Fixes since version 18.2:

• Fixed the Storage worksheet’s “RAID Storage Configuration” Table to exclude showing “Total Number of Disks Required” for designs that do not have lagged database copies and are deploying in a JBOD configuration.
• Added a notification to Role Requirements regarding scenarios that result in >2TB databases.
• Fixed an error notification to indicate when the input parameters have resulted in a design that has more HA copies than available Mailbox servers.
• Fixed the DAG LUN total space calculation to be based on the total number of database copies, not the total number of mailbox servers.
• Fixed the database copy validation formula to ensure there is at least 1 HA copy or lagged database copy in the secondary datacenter when site resilience is enabled.
• Fixed servers.csv to not add a space between the comma and drive letter.
• Fixed cells to have the correct color formatting.
• Updated BDM throughput requirements to stipulate 7.5MB/s per database as the worst case, which aligns with what can potentially be seen in Jetstress runs.

Enhancements and Bug Fixes in version 18.2 when compared to version 17.2:

• Fixed the calculator’s database copy validation check function to allow for a single DAG to be stretched between datacenters when the database copy count is even.
• Fixed the “Storage Design Results Pane – Total Disks Required” when leveraging the “As Calculated” results to not highlight RAID disks for a datacenter’s server when JBOD was the appropriate choice in the “RAID Storage Configuration” choice.  Likewise, the “JBOD Storage Configuration” table’s calculations were also fixed to not highlight the use of JBOD disks for a datacenter’s server when RAID was the appropriate choice.
• Fixed an error in Storage Results where the Secondary Datacenter storage architecture tables would report the Primary Datacenter disk type and capacity instead of Secondary Datacenter disk type for RAID architectures.
• Fixed an erroneous alert on the Input worksheet regarding not having enough IO capability for JBOD due to isolating logs from databases.
• Fixed the calculated maximum database size for JBOD scenarios to allow for 2TB databases when >2.5TB disk sizes are selected.

You can download the calculator here. For more information please consult the changeblog or usage instructions.

Today the Exchange Team released a minor update to the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Calculator, bringing it to version 17.8.

Enhancements and Bug Fixes since version 17.2:

• Added RAID-6 types 4+2 and 8+2;
• Added 10, 20, and 40 processor core options;
• Added 3TB disk capacity;
• Script changes:
  • Removed option to remove first database;
  • Revised Diskpart script to format using 64K unit size.
• Fixed the “Recommended databases per DAG” calculation formula to take into account symmetrical design multiples when the “Calculated Number of Databases for Symmetrical Distribution” is greater than the maximum of databases that can be deployed within the DAG;
• Fixed the validation check for when you select more database copies than available servers.  As a result, when this scenario is presented, the calculator will no longer provide results;
• Fixed “Calculated Number of Supported Databases / DAG” formula to round down to nearest whole number;
• Fixed distribution calculation to allow more copies and servers;
• Fixed “RAID Storage Architecture / SDC Server” to show the optimal RAID configuration for the SDC servers as opposed to the PDC servers;
• Fixed formula issue for number of databases in the environment for standalone scenarios.

You can download the calculator here. For more information please consult the changeblog or usage instructions.

Only 3 weeks after publishing version 16.5 of the Exchange Mailbox Role Calculator, the Exchange Team publishes an update bringing it to version 17.2.

Bug fixes since version 16.5:

• Database Copy Distribution fixes:
• Prevented distribution calculation when Input sheet values are invalid; added row in header for counters for databases assigned to a server;
• Added conditional formatting to highlight error/problem status messages in white text on red background;
• Corrected the issue where Non-English operating system locales could not execute the database copy distribution macro;
• Increased the performance of the Server Failure buttons;
• Corrected an issue that prevented the Diskpart.ps1 script from working when there was only one server line present.
• Updated comments for processor input section to help customers understand the correct value to enter for SPECInt2006 rate value when deploying Mailbox servers as guest machines;
• Fixed CPU percentage calculation formula for lagged database copy servers to use the available megacycles for the Lagged Copy servers as opposed to the primary datacenter Mailbox servers;
• Added 900GB capacity as an option for disk drives.

You can download the calculator here or consult the changeblog here. Usage instructions can be found here.

The Microsoft Exchange Team published an updated of the Exchange Mailbox Role Calculator, bringing it to version 16.5.

Additions since version 14.4:

• Added virtualization support;
• Added database symmetrical distribution with resilience support, cross-site fail-over option;
• Added exportable scripts to support preparation of storage and creation of database copies;
• Added server failure simulations.
• Added throughput requirements information.

Bug fixes since 14.4:

• Fixed an issue with diskpart.ps1 that prevented the script from executing;
• Fixed secondary datacenter disk calculations to use the correct formula for calculating the formatted disk capacity for the transaction log disks;
• Fixed “—“ rounding logic error that could occur in the results tables of the Activation worksheet for site resilient scenarios;
• Fixed a scenario where the calculator would report there were too many copies in the secondary datacenter validation checks.

You can download the calculator here or consult the changeblog here. Related announcement by Exchange team here. Usage instructions can be found here.