Exchange 2019 Preferred Architecture

Posted on December 14, 2018 by Michel de Rooij

Microsoft has been promoting Docs as the new home of product documentation for a while now. And now a long awaited piece of Exchange 2019 documentation has been published, the Exchange 2019 Preferred Architecture.

The Preferred Architecture – or PA – contains information on how to plan and deploy Exchange 2019 using commodity hardware. It also contains more guidelines on deploying Exchange 2019 using its new Metacache database (MCDB) feature; SSDs to store meta data to speed up storage access, improving overall performance and user experience.

Still missing in the planning instruments is an updated Exchange role requirements calculator for Exchange 2019, incorporating things like the metacache database etc. I’m pretty sure that is being worked on to be released at a future date.

Also quiet convenient is that GitHub being the platform allows the team to provide a feed on Exchange content updates. Really nice to quickly see latest additions and changes in documentation.

Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator 8.4

Posted on January 7, 2017 by Michel de Rooij

Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Sizing Calculator 16.4 Last week, the Exchange team published an update for the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator, the tool to aid you in properly sizing your Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Server 2016 deployments.

The new version number is 8.4, and it contains the following changes since version 8.3:

New Functionality

Added support for ReplayLagMaxDelay
Added support for SafetyNetHoldTime in CreateDAG.ps1

Bug Fixes

Improved the DAG auto-calculation results display to highlight deployment configuration in both datacenters
Fixed an issue that prevented DAG auto-calculation in single site DAG deployments
Fixed a SPECInt2006 validation issue with DAG auto-calculation
Fixed a bug with the DAG auto-calculation with Active/Passive deployments
Fixed conditional formatting issues with the transaction log table
Removed data validation from certain unused cells on the Input tab
Fixed bug in calcNumActiveDBsSF formula

You can download the calculator here. For more information, please consult the list of changes here or Read Me here.

Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator 8.3

Posted on September 21, 2016 by Michel de Rooij

The Exchange team published an update for the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator, the tool to aid you in properly sizing your Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Server 2016 deployment.

The new version number is 8.3, and it contains two major enhancements compared to version 7.9:

Added ability for the calculator to automatically determine the number of Mailbox servers and DAGs that need to be deployed to meet the chosen input requirements
Added Read from Passive support for Exchange 2016 deployments which results in decreased bandwidth utilization for HA copies

You can download the calculator here. For more information, please consult the list of changes here or Read Me here.

Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator 7.9

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Michel de Rooij

The Exchange team published an update for the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator, the tool to aid you in properly sizing your Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Server 2016 deployment. The new version number is 7.9, and it contains mainly bug fixes.

Functionality changes and bug fixes since version 7.8:

Added support for 1.8TB disk capacity
Added color formatting for when memory exceeds the maximum recommended value
Fixed calcNumDBCopyInSDC formula to take into account proper number of lagged copies
Fixed calcActDBPDCWorst formula to take into account non-HA deployments
Fixed an issue where ReplayLagManager calculated field did not take into account the user disabling JBOD
Fixed version mismatch and added Add-PartitionAccessPath in Diskpart.ps1 script
Fixed issue with export CreateDAG.ps1 script where it defined Alternate Witness in single datacenter deployments
Fixed diskpart.ps1 script to sleep 10s after creating partition but prior to formatting to minimize error condition
Fixed RetainDeletedItemsUntilBackup to be set to $false for NDP deployments

You can download the calculator here. For more information, please consult the list of changes here or Read Me here.

Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator 7.8

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Michel de Rooij

The Exchange team today published an update for the Exchange 2013 Server Role Requirements Calculator as well. The new version number is 7.8. This version incorporates sizing for Exchange 2016 as well and includes support for ReFS (default for Exchange 2016). The version number is also dropped from the calculator.

More or less complementary to the calculator is the updated sizing guidance for Exchange 2016, which was also published today here. No big changes here, apart from multi-role only option and a slight increase in CPU requirements to cover for unforeseen circumstances as the team is still learning from real-world behavior. This makes sense, looking at the speed in which the calculator was released compared to the one for Exchange 2013. Kudos to the Exchange team!

New and enhanced functionality since version 7.6:

Added support for Exchange 2016
Included CPU utilization guidance changes for Exchange 2016
Diskpart.ps1 and CreateDAG.ps1 now support ReFS
Moved DataMoveReplicationConstraint setting from CreateMBDatabases.ps1 to CreateMBDatabaseCopies.ps1
Revised all of the Distribution dialog controls to load their defaults from variables rather than use hard-coded values
The DAG name from the Input tab now flows through as the default on the Export DAG dialog
Updated Distribution tab dialog controls to persist the global catalog value during a session
Added conditional formatting for ReplayLagTime and SafetyNetThreshold
Removed 2013 from the name of the calculator

Fixes since version 7.6:

Fixed inaccuracies with “Number of Exchange Data Volumes per Server” input
Fixed calcActDBPDCWorst formula to take into account non-HA deployments
Fixed multiple dbs / volume calculation to take into account ReplayLagManager
Fixed calcNumDBCopyInSDC formula to take into account proper number of lagged copies
Fixed MaxPreferredActive not being displayed for A/A (Single DAG) site resilient solutions
Fixed an issue with Fail* buttons on Distribution tab when using some regional settings
Fixed an issue with volume path persistence on the Distribution tab Mount Points dialog

You can download the calculator here. For more information, please consult the list of changes here or Read Me here.