Microsoft Exchange Server Profile Analyzer

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Today Microsoft released version 8.03.0056 of the Microsoft Exchange Server Profile Analyzer (EPA). You can use EPA to collect (statistical) information from Exchange mailbox stores or an Exchange organization. For instance, you can collection information on user activity and profile statistics for sets of subsets of the mailbox population, which can be used as input when dimensioning (upgraded) Exchange infrastructure using the Exchange Mailbox Role Calculator (being more specific than the default Light, Average, Heavy and Very Heavy user profiles). The analysis of mailbox servers or organization can also provide input for processes like capacity planning.

Usage of EPA is straightforward, check out this older article on how to use EPA here.

You can download the 32-bit version here or the 64-bit version here.

Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Calculator 4.5

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

It looks like the Microsoft Exchange Team is working very hard on improving the Exchange Mailbox Role Calculator, because today they released version 4.5 (around 2 weeks after releasing 3.5). This version includes the following changes since 3.5:

Included minimum number of global catalog cores in calculation results;
Ability to specify different RAID parity settings for Restore LUN;
Improved formatted capacity of a disk drive calculation;

Version 4.5 of the calculator also includes several bugfixes; consult the changelog (or should that be changeblog 🙂 ).

Looking at the number of changes and the changes itself I’m puzzled why the Mailbox Storage Calculator suddenly jumped 1 major version (3.5->4.5) where one would expect a minor version update.

You can download the calculator here.

Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Calculator 3.5

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

The Microsoft Exchange Team released an update of the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator. The new version is 3.5 and it includes the following features/improvements since 3.2:

Version 3.5
Improved the text on the input tab with regards to the number of database copy instances you would like for both HA and lagged copies. Also fixes an issue where in a high availability architecture the calculator may size the solution based on activating more database copies during a second server failure event than the total number of database copies deployed on the server.

Version 3.4
Corrects a memory and CPU utilization issue where you deploy a site resilient architecture with multiple mailbox servers and a single database copy in the primary datacenter. Specifically, the calculator would determine the active database copy configuration after a single server failure and then size the CPU and memory requirements. However, since there is only a single database copy in the primary datacenter, the solution cannot survive with all copies hosted in the primary datacenter. Therefore, the copies need to be activated in the secondary datacenter. Version 3.4 corrects this scenario by ensuring there are at least 2 database copies in the primary datacenter in order to calculate the active database count after a single server failure.

You can download the calculator here.

Dell Exchange 2010 Advisor Tools

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Dell has released an updated set of advisor tools for Exchange 2010. The tools can be used for rough sizing of servers and storage and utilizes Dell’s Equalogic, PowerVault, EMC and PowerEdge components. Unfortunately, and contrary to the HP Sizing Tools for Exchange 2010, the Dell Advisor can only be used online, so solutions can’t be saved or re-used. To be honest, the tool is more like a linear Wizard. It only supports single-site solutions, but it supports Database Availability Groups (DAG), DAS or or SAN-based storage, high availability and client options, but in a very limited fashion (i.e. Yes/No type of questions).

You can start the Dell Exchange 2010 Advisor by clicking here.

Note that for those involved with OCS, Dell also released the Unified Communications Advisor Tool for OCS 2007 R2.

HP Exchange 2010 Sizing Tool

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

HP has released their sizing tool for Exchange 2010. This successor to the Exchange 2007 Sizing tool does recommendations for deployment and sizing of servers and storage and includes a (HP) bill of materials. The tool supports multi-site deployments, Database Availability Groups (DAG), DAS or or SAN-based storage and high availability and client options.

As with the 2007 version it uses a combination of technical and business requirements and projects best practices for high available Exchange configurations (when applicable). The tool can update itself and the product information it uses.

You can download the HP Sizer for Exchange Server 2010 here.