Effect of IOPS on Exchange
Hi All We are introducing a new BES environment to one of our Exchange 2003 sites. I understand that BES will increase the IO on the Exchange mailbox servers - one BES user is equivalent to 3 "normal" Outlook users in terms of IO. There will be thousands of BES users in this site. Questions: 1. All BES effectively does is MAPI calls on Exchange, is this to say that MAPI calls are - by nature - hard on IO? 2. In order to offset the increase in IO, what do we need? More disks, more storage space etc? 3. From people's experience, is IO the greatest effect on Exchange resulting from BES being introduced? We have an EMC SAN where the Exchange mailbox servers are connected to.
June 3rd, 2010 11:30pm

For Exchange 2003, the number I've long heard used is that one BES user is equivalent to 4.5 to 5.5 non-BES users. 1. MAPI calls often result in database operations, so there is usually I/O involved. 2. You might not need anything. You need enough disk spindles in the right places to handle the I/O requirements. 3. Disk I/O is almost always the bottleneck in scaling Exchange systems, especially Exchange 2003. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Yoshi66" wrote in message news:64061f5b-5f9d-4ad3-992b-1f68992e2d31... Hi All We are introducing a new BES environment to one of our Exchange 2003 sites. I understand that BES will increase the IO on the Exchange mailbox servers - one BES user is equivalent to 3 "normal" Outlook users in terms of IO. There will be thousands of BES users in this site. Questions: 1. All BES effectively does is MAPI calls on Exchange, is this to say that MAPI calls are - by nature - hard on IO? 2. In order to offset the increase in IO, what do we need? More disks, more storage space etc? 3. From people's experience, is IO the greatest effect on Exchange resulting from BES being introduced? We have an EMC SAN where the Exchange mailbox servers are connected to. Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."
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June 4th, 2010 12:20am

Great thanks, Ed. From what I understand, the 'cure' (if the system is not up for it and a cure is needed) for disk I/O bottlenecks is more disk spindles...which effectively means more disks?
June 4th, 2010 12:29am

If what you have can't keep up with the demand, yes. But I don't have enough information to tell you that you need more. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Yoshi66" wrote in message news:bad3e8b0-c5bd-4899-a1f9-9ce8c6057439... Great thanks, Ed. From what I understand, the 'cure' (if the system is not up for it and a cure is needed) for disk I/O bottlenecks is more disk spindles...which effectively means more disks? Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."
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June 4th, 2010 4:10am

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