Without mentioning it on their blog, the Microsoft Exchange Team updated the Exchange 2010Â Mailbox Role Calculator to version 7.8. This version includes a small fix compared to 7.7 regarding the Read IOPS per mailbox calculation for all four combinations of desktop search engine and multiplication factor settings.
You can consult the changeblog here, download the calculator here. Instructions on usage can be found here.
The Exchange team at EHLO released a nice paper in the TechNet library on the subject of Client Access Server workloadson Exchange Server 2010. This paper is to illustrate the effect of using different client modes with different protocols (i.e. Outlook Cached Mode yes/no, Outlook Anywhere, OWA, POP, IMAP, ActiveSync). It also shows the differences between using Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in combination with these protocols.
Some examples:
They also perform a comparison between Exchange Server 2007 SP1 and Exchange Server 2010 regarding IMAP. For example, CPU usage on CAS servers when using IMAP clients is reduced by 40% and memory bij 30%.
What does puzzle me is that in some comparisons they left out certain measurements and some graphs are missing scale information. For instance, the graph for Total CPU consumption for IMAP4 has SP2 start at 37.000 while R2 starts at 12.000. Why? Did SP2 produce some weird results or is it off the scale? The paper doesn’t mention it.
Nevertheless, interesting stuff.
You can read the whitepaper here. Unfortunately, there’s only an online version of the paper.
Version 1.0 of the ForeFront Threat Management Gateway2010 Capacity Planning Tool has been released.
This tool is to help you with planning and sizing (or verifying) your TMG 2010 configuration, and gives a calculation on the hardware configuration, number of concurrent users and bandwidth requirements using hardware, concurrent users or bandwith as starting point.
For its calculations the tool uses parameters like number of concurrent users and features you want to enable on the TMG. Regarding features you can make your own selection or use presets, e.g. “Mail Protection” for using TMG as an anti-spam/anti-malware e-mail gateway. The calculator has support for load-balancing and virtualization.
You can download the Forefront TMG 2010 capacity planning tool here.
In the long list of recent Exchange news today Microsoft published the RTM versions of Exchange Jetstress 2010 and Load Generator AKA LoadGen 2010.
Both tools are now at version 14.01.0180.003.
Jetstress can be used to check performance and stability of storage under load. It simulates Exchange I/O behaviour for Exchange 2003, 2007 or 2010 in order to verify dimensioning and check if storage meets performance expectations for a certain number of users with a certain I/O profile.
LoadGen can be used to simulate MAPI, OWA (2007, 2010 or 2010SP1), EAS, IMAP, POP and SMTP client load against Exchange 2007 or 2010 servers. LoadGen will use real clients to simulate the load and, like Jetstress, LoadGen can be used to verify dimensioning and check if the design meets performance expectations.
Unlike Jetstress, which can be used to verify things from a database perspective, LoadGen can be used to verify things from a client (handling) perspective.
You can download the Jetstress 2010 here and LoadGen 2010 here (x64, x86 version here).
Note: If you used the beta version of JetStress you should recreate the databases for the RTM version as Doug Gowans found out.
Updates? Yes, updates. Both the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Role Calculator as well as the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Calculator have been updated.
The Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Calculator has been updated to version 7.7 (was 6.3, so major update). This version includes the following enhancements:
Besides enhancements, the updated Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Calculator also contains some bug fixes which are described in the changeblog. You can download the updated calculator here. Usage instructions can be found here.
Regarding the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Role Calculator, it has been updated to version 17.5 (was 17.3). It contains some minor fixes. The Exchange 2007 Mailbox Role Calculator can be found here (changeblog, instructions).
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