| Author |
Message |
maddessa
Guest
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 Posted:
Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:31 pm Post subject:
Design Help |
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Hi All
Hoping someone can give me some high level advice. I have 1000 users we want
to switch over to Exchange 2003. The physical location of the servers will
be central.
50 Simulataneous POP or IMAP connections
200 Simultaneous OWA Connections
100 quota limit
50000 messages and 700 MB per day
At this point I did not plan on clustering.
My plan was to implement one front-end server and one back-end server. I
used the HP Exchange configurator to come up with a server to support 1000
users. People are telling me that you can't put more than 200 users per
backend server. Is this correct? Does it make sense to put 1000 users on one
server should I split them up? Is 2 servers enough? I tried to use the 2000
capacity planning spreadsheet but it is a dead link on the MS site.
Should I add another server dedicated to just routing SMTP mail?
Does anyone have advise on whether I should use one or more message stores?
Does this make sense?
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Al Mulnick
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Dec 16, 2004 8:39 am Post subject:
Re: Design Help |
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1000 users? That's not very much :)
I've got 5.5 servers that handle more than that.
I think your plan will work fine. You may want to consider using multiple
backend servers, but not for operational effectiveness. More to keep from
putting your eggs in one basket so to speak. If you have a failure on that
one server, you'll effectively take out the entire population. Vs. having
two smaller servers where you might take out half the population.
The 200 users limit might be a reference to the CDO OWA concurrency barrier.
Some swear you can't get more than 200 simultaneous 5.5 OWA connections
going due to the limitation in the architecture.
The number of message stores is something you'll have to figure out.
Generally, if you're going to use Enterprise version of Exchange, you may
want to spread the users out over multiple stores and storage groups to take
advantage of smaller stores. This allows for faster backups and restores as
well as maintenance if needed. In your case, you can take advantage of
single instance storage if you leave them in a single store. However, I
think you should use a few stores (3?) so you can have smaller stores to
work with. You won't get a benefit in the backups if you use one Storage
group so it's left to your discretion and comfort level. I would not want
any one store larger than 100GB if I could help it.
Al
"maddessa" <maddessa@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23PQk0sr4EHA.1292@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
| Quote: | Hi All
Hoping someone can give me some high level advice. I have 1000 users we
want to switch over to Exchange 2003. The physical location of the
servers will be central.
50 Simulataneous POP or IMAP connections
200 Simultaneous OWA Connections
100 quota limit
50000 messages and 700 MB per day
At this point I did not plan on clustering.
My plan was to implement one front-end server and one back-end server. I
used the HP Exchange configurator to come up with a server to support 1000
users. People are telling me that you can't put more than 200 users per
backend server. Is this correct? Does it make sense to put 1000 users on
one server should I split them up? Is 2 servers enough? I tried to use the
2000 capacity planning spreadsheet but it is a dead link on the MS site.
Should I add another server dedicated to just routing SMTP mail?
Does anyone have advise on whether I should use one or more message
stores?
Does this make sense?
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
maddessa
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Dec 19, 2004 12:05 pm Post subject:
Re: Design Help |
|
|
Hi Al
First, thanks for responding. So if I was going to buy two backend
servers would you advise splitting the users or cluster, what we be the most
effective use of the hardware? On other systems I have implemented before
(no exchange) there always seemed to call for an independent mta, is one
advised for use with exchange?
Thanks again
"Al Mulnick" <amulnick_No_SPAM@ncDOTrr.com> wrote in message
news:u1Zm5hx4EHA.828@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
| Quote: | 1000 users? That's not very much :)
I've got 5.5 servers that handle more than that.
I think your plan will work fine. You may want to consider using multiple
backend servers, but not for operational effectiveness. More to keep from
putting your eggs in one basket so to speak. If you have a failure on
that one server, you'll effectively take out the entire population. Vs.
having two smaller servers where you might take out half the population.
The 200 users limit might be a reference to the CDO OWA concurrency
barrier. Some swear you can't get more than 200 simultaneous 5.5 OWA
connections going due to the limitation in the architecture.
The number of message stores is something you'll have to figure out.
Generally, if you're going to use Enterprise version of Exchange, you may
want to spread the users out over multiple stores and storage groups to
take advantage of smaller stores. This allows for faster backups and
restores as well as maintenance if needed. In your case, you can take
advantage of single instance storage if you leave them in a single store.
However, I think you should use a few stores (3?) so you can have smaller
stores to work with. You won't get a benefit in the backups if you use
one Storage group so it's left to your discretion and comfort level. I
would not want any one store larger than 100GB if I could help it.
Al
"maddessa" <maddessa@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23PQk0sr4EHA.1292@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
Hi All
Hoping someone can give me some high level advice. I have 1000 users we
want to switch over to Exchange 2003. The physical location of the
servers will be central.
50 Simulataneous POP or IMAP connections
200 Simultaneous OWA Connections
100 quota limit
50000 messages and 700 MB per day
At this point I did not plan on clustering.
My plan was to implement one front-end server and one back-end server. I
used the HP Exchange configurator to come up with a server to support
1000 users. People are telling me that you can't put more than 200 users
per backend server. Is this correct? Does it make sense to put 1000 users
on one server should I split them up? Is 2 servers enough? I tried to use
the 2000 capacity planning spreadsheet but it is a dead link on the MS
site.
Should I add another server dedicated to just routing SMTP mail?
Does anyone have advise on whether I should use one or more message
stores?
Does this make sense?
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Al Mulnick
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 20, 2004 7:27 am Post subject:
Re: Design Help |
|
|
The idea of splitting the users is to provide hardware failure tolerance of
some level. Clustering can do that as can two standalone servers with some
hardware redundancy in them (power supplies, memory etc). If you can
withstand more than 15 minutes of downtime on either server at a time
(basically, can you withstand how much time it may take to get you back up
and running if you get a hardware failure on one of the servers), then I say
keep it simple and go with two standalone servers. If you have to have the
higher availability and hardware is a concern, then the complexity and cost
may be worth clustering. It'll fail over much faster and you'll have them
available as long as the problem is with the machine hardware itself (mostly
;)
There are some pieces of Exchange that don't like to cluster, such as the
SRS last I checked. I haven't checked in some time however so feel free to
correct as needed.
What I'm trying badly to illustrate is that the decision to use two
machines, or to use one machine or to use a clustered pair of machines has
more to do with our service outage tolerance than any technical reason.
It's a tradeoff you have to make after weighing the different possibilities.
Whatever you do, keep it as simple as you can and you'll be much happier
down the road.
Al
"maddessa" <maddessa@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23%23Tt%23CZ5EHA.2540@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
| Quote: | Hi Al
First, thanks for responding. So if I was going to buy two backend
servers would you advise splitting the users or cluster, what we be the
most effective use of the hardware? On other systems I have implemented
before (no exchange) there always seemed to call for an independent mta,
is one advised for use with exchange?
Thanks again
"Al Mulnick" <amulnick_No_SPAM@ncDOTrr.com> wrote in message
news:u1Zm5hx4EHA.828@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
1000 users? That's not very much :)
I've got 5.5 servers that handle more than that.
I think your plan will work fine. You may want to consider using
multiple backend servers, but not for operational effectiveness. More to
keep from putting your eggs in one basket so to speak. If you have a
failure on that one server, you'll effectively take out the entire
population. Vs. having two smaller servers where you might take out half
the population.
The 200 users limit might be a reference to the CDO OWA concurrency
barrier. Some swear you can't get more than 200 simultaneous 5.5 OWA
connections going due to the limitation in the architecture.
The number of message stores is something you'll have to figure out.
Generally, if you're going to use Enterprise version of Exchange, you may
want to spread the users out over multiple stores and storage groups to
take advantage of smaller stores. This allows for faster backups and
restores as well as maintenance if needed. In your case, you can take
advantage of single instance storage if you leave them in a single store.
However, I think you should use a few stores (3?) so you can have smaller
stores to work with. You won't get a benefit in the backups if you use
one Storage group so it's left to your discretion and comfort level. I
would not want any one store larger than 100GB if I could help it.
Al
"maddessa" <maddessa@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23PQk0sr4EHA.1292@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
Hi All
Hoping someone can give me some high level advice. I have 1000 users we
want to switch over to Exchange 2003. The physical location of the
servers will be central.
50 Simulataneous POP or IMAP connections
200 Simultaneous OWA Connections
100 quota limit
50000 messages and 700 MB per day
At this point I did not plan on clustering.
My plan was to implement one front-end server and one back-end server. I
used the HP Exchange configurator to come up with a server to support
1000 users. People are telling me that you can't put more than 200
users per backend server. Is this correct? Does it make sense to put
1000 users on one server should I split them up? Is 2 servers enough? I
tried to use the 2000 capacity planning spreadsheet but it is a dead
link on the MS site.
Should I add another server dedicated to just routing SMTP mail?
Does anyone have advise on whether I should use one or more message
stores?
Does this make sense?
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
maddessa
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 20, 2004 10:15 pm Post subject:
Re: Design Help |
|
|
Al
You are the man. Thanks for your time.
"Al Mulnick" <amulnick_No_SPAM@ncDOTrr.com> wrote in message
news:OjI9UMj5EHA.1596@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
| Quote: | The idea of splitting the users is to provide hardware failure tolerance
of some level. Clustering can do that as can two standalone servers with
some hardware redundancy in them (power supplies, memory etc). If you can
withstand more than 15 minutes of downtime on either server at a time
(basically, can you withstand how much time it may take to get you back up
and running if you get a hardware failure on one of the servers), then I
say keep it simple and go with two standalone servers. If you have to
have the higher availability and hardware is a concern, then the
complexity and cost may be worth clustering. It'll fail over much faster
and you'll have them available as long as the problem is with the machine
hardware itself (mostly ;)
There are some pieces of Exchange that don't like to cluster, such as the
SRS last I checked. I haven't checked in some time however so feel free
to correct as needed.
What I'm trying badly to illustrate is that the decision to use two
machines, or to use one machine or to use a clustered pair of machines has
more to do with our service outage tolerance than any technical reason.
It's a tradeoff you have to make after weighing the different
possibilities.
Whatever you do, keep it as simple as you can and you'll be much happier
down the road.
Al
"maddessa" <maddessa@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23%23Tt%23CZ5EHA.2540@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
Hi Al
First, thanks for responding. So if I was going to buy two backend
servers would you advise splitting the users or cluster, what we be the
most effective use of the hardware? On other systems I have implemented
before (no exchange) there always seemed to call for an independent mta,
is one advised for use with exchange?
Thanks again
"Al Mulnick" <amulnick_No_SPAM@ncDOTrr.com> wrote in message
news:u1Zm5hx4EHA.828@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
1000 users? That's not very much :)
I've got 5.5 servers that handle more than that.
I think your plan will work fine. You may want to consider using
multiple backend servers, but not for operational effectiveness. More
to keep from putting your eggs in one basket so to speak. If you have a
failure on that one server, you'll effectively take out the entire
population. Vs. having two smaller servers where you might take out
half the population.
The 200 users limit might be a reference to the CDO OWA concurrency
barrier. Some swear you can't get more than 200 simultaneous 5.5 OWA
connections going due to the limitation in the architecture.
The number of message stores is something you'll have to figure out.
Generally, if you're going to use Enterprise version of Exchange, you
may want to spread the users out over multiple stores and storage groups
to take advantage of smaller stores. This allows for faster backups and
restores as well as maintenance if needed. In your case, you can take
advantage of single instance storage if you leave them in a single
store. However, I think you should use a few stores (3?) so you can have
smaller stores to work with. You won't get a benefit in the backups if
you use one Storage group so it's left to your discretion and comfort
level. I would not want any one store larger than 100GB if I could help
it.
Al
"maddessa" <maddessa@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23PQk0sr4EHA.1292@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
Hi All
Hoping someone can give me some high level advice. I have 1000 users we
want to switch over to Exchange 2003. The physical location of the
servers will be central.
50 Simulataneous POP or IMAP connections
200 Simultaneous OWA Connections
100 quota limit
50000 messages and 700 MB per day
At this point I did not plan on clustering.
My plan was to implement one front-end server and one back-end server.
I used the HP Exchange configurator to come up with a server to support
1000 users. People are telling me that you can't put more than 200
users per backend server. Is this correct? Does it make sense to put
1000 users on one server should I split them up? Is 2 servers enough? I
tried to use the 2000 capacity planning spreadsheet but it is a dead
link on the MS site.
Should I add another server dedicated to just routing SMTP mail?
Does anyone have advise on whether I should use one or more message
stores?
Does this make sense?
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